Combing Working From Everywhere With Being A Tourist In My Own Country

I don’t have an office (till 2022). My office is my laptop, my mobile phone and the cloud (for storage of my files). So even in Holland I am free to work from everywhere. And I do that also a lot. Sometimes I go to Amsterdam, Rotterdam or other cities just to work from there and most of the time I combine that with being a tourist in my own country, The Netherlands, by visiting something or taking a tour.

In Utrecht My Favorite Places To Work From Are

• Home

• Seats2meet

• Meetingplaza

• Aristo

• Koffie & ik

• Kopi Susu

• De ontdekking

• Hooi

• Parks in Utrecht (only in the summer or be prepare for cold)

On The Road I Develop My Own Favorite Places, Most Of The Time This Is

• My hotel/hostel room

• Lobby of the hotel/hostel

• Small cafes

• Parks

• Co-working spaces

Challenges

With this lifestyle there are a few challenges to overcome:

• I myself struggled with staying grounded, so I decided to keep a room in Holland where I can always return to, to call home. Nowaydays it is a apartment

• Other issues I as a nomad struggled with was that in order to have health insurance, I have to have my company subscribed to a country. I have to have an address, except if I live in Estonia. There they have e-citizenship. Together with another digital nomad I made short movies about why The Netherland should also introduce e-citizenship (They are not online anymore). I also had a petition, which wasn't made by us but I helped distributed it to get the number necessary to make the life of digital nomads a bit easier. There is a possibility for the first 2 years to have a international health insurrance, but there are restrictions in what they insure (previous health issues are not insured)

• Another thing that can be difficult, but don’t have to be is maintaining long distance relationships with friends, family and lovers. If people are not familiar with internet or don’t like it, it will be difficult to keep contact. Both parties have to be willing to put the effort to keep these relationships sane

• If instead of having my own company, I work in contract for others it can be difficult to obtain a working visa in some countries.

The Future

With more and more people not getting that lifetime contract and the pension being more and more a myth. More and more people will be starting to work location independent or at least work from contract to contract even if that is in the same town. There is work to be done on the rules of countries to accommodate this lifestyle in the way that suits the individual culture of the countries.

What Else?

There is going to be a first ever international conference for Digital Nomads (DNX) in Berlin, 1 august 2015. Also there is a cruise ship leaving from Gran Canaria to Brazil full of digital nomads going on a digital detox (because of the prices of internet on board are high). It’s a cool cruise and cheap. I went to the DNX in Berlin in 2015, but never went with the digital nomad cruise.