It was August 2011, and my girlfriend Amanda and I were staying in a hostel in Interlaken, Switzerland. It was more of a hostel complex than a hostel. Four or five quaint wooden buildings. The type of small, two-story buildings that you think of when you imagine houses in the Swiss Alps.
On one of our last days in Interlaken, we were sitting a table in the main reception and lounge building of the hostel. We happened to sit down with an American guy in his late twenties.
He was lanky and tall, maybe six foot two with dark brown hair and he was wearing a flannel shirt, the lumberjack/ hipster type. He was sitting at the same table, doing some work on a black IBM laptop, while Amanda and I scrolled through Facebook on our phones.
The three of us eventually started talking about life. Where we were from and what we did at home.
The conversation eventually turned to the work that he did. He was a web developer. He worked remotely as a freelancer. For the last week or so he had been working from Interlaken.
This was 2011, and the idea of being a digital nomad was not nearly as popular. As we sat at the table across from him, hearing him talk about the life that he was living, I couldn’t help but feel envious. How cool was it that he was able to make a living while staying at a cool hostel in one of the most scenic places in the world.
As a 21-year-old, faced with the uncertainty of going home and finding a job, this life he was living seemed magical. Something amazing, but beyond me. I remember thinking to myself that I wished I had taken computer science in college.
Amanda and I had graduated with business degrees in June and left on this trip days later. We were halfway through a six-month backpacking trip. The reality that we wouldn’t be on this vacation forever was starting to settle in.
Finishing college can cause a lot of anxiety. I had spent 21 years inside of a bubble. Venturing out into work and real life was nerve racking.
Going on a backpacking trip was a good way to distract me from the fear, anxiety, and uncertainty of finding a job, and to continue to avoid “real life” after so many years as a student.
In my mind, this adventure was a one-time thing. Going out having a six-month vacation from responsibility. Seeing the world before returning to reality; a job, a career.
Eventually, we got up from the table and left to make dinner. We left the hostel a couple of days later, and I didn’t think about that conversation again for three years.
Our trip eventually ended. We went home and found corporate jobs and jumped into a pretty conventional life. We went out with friends on weekends. Resenting Monday morning, and counting away work days as they went by. The jobs paid well, we had vacation time, benefits, everything an adult would want.
On the surface things were good, but for two years my life was slowly spiraling out of control. I was unhappy. My relationships were falling apart; my health was falling apart. All the joy and happiness we experienced traveling was slowly replaced by a nagging sense of burden. My life slowly became a burden. A burden that I didn’t want to carry.
So we quit. We sold our stuff. Moved out of our apartment, and bought one-way tickets to Colombia.
We didn’t have a plan for what we’d do when our savings ran out. We didn’t consider the long-term consequences. We just needed to escape. So we did.
We went to South America for six months. Learned Spanish, evaded any sense of responsibility, and eventually found the space to start to enjoy life again.
Over the course of three years, we had seen two worlds. The travel world, a youthful, carefree place. It was a world that helped us feel excited, lighthearted and alive. But it was a world that we couldn’t live in.
And we had also seen the corporate world. Where all of our material needs were met. Where we had a clear path through the ordinary life course, but where life had become a burden. Where we had made a lot of money, but been more miserable than ever.
We came back from our adventure to South America knowing that we couldn’t live in either of the worlds that we had seen. The conversation with the guy in the hostel in Switzerland in 2011 had ignited a dream. A dream that I didn’t think was possible, but one that I was starting to consider more and more.
At 21 I had resigned myself to the way we thought the world worked. I set my sights low. I was passive. I had a vision for the life I wanted. One that incorporated freedom with and income, but I had been too afraid to pursue it.
At 24 I realized I didn’t have a choice. I had seen what passivity brought; I had seen that playing it safe wasn’t safe at all. It had almost killed me.
I set out in a new direction. Choosing to guide myself by my sense of enjoyment, instead of by a sense of sacrifice.
We chose where we wanted to live based on where we would be happiest.
We chose where we would work based on where we would be happiest.
We chose to start a podcast because it made us happy. We got to have fun conversations. We got to relive our travel memories. We got to meet new and fascinating people.
There is a wonderful anecdote about a Wall Street banker in a small Mexican fishing village.
The banker goes out fishing every day on his vacation and meets a local fisherman. The fisherman knows all the best spots and catches great fish every day. But he just catches enough for himself and a few friends.
The banker tries to push the fisherman to be more entrepreneurial:
“If you go to the bank and take out a loan you could buy a bigger boat, hire some help and start catching 20 times more fish. You could sell them at the market and re-invest the profits in a second boat and a new crew. In ten years you could be a rich man.”
“And what would I do with the money” the fisherman replies.
The banker is a bit taken aback, but after a second of thought says ” Well, you could buy a house in a tropical destination, and fish all day.”
The fisherman laughs.
We chose to live a fisherman life.
In our corporate lives, we had been sacrificing the enjoyment of the present moment for an elusive hope of enjoyment in the future. What I actually wanted to do with my time was have interesting conversations with people, enjoy the outdoors. Learn new skills. And read, write and explore interesting ideas.
If I had won the lottery, this is what I would have done. But while I was caught up in a job that I didn’t like, living a life that I didn’t like, I didn’t take the time to consider that I didn’t have to win the lottery to get this dream life, I could just move to the mountains and get a job as a cook.
I could learn the skill of cooking, I could meet interesting people at work, interview authors and have amazing conversations on my podcast, I could start a blog and people would start reading, I could rent an apartment with a mountain view from the patio and a trailhead a minute away.
The life I wanted wasn’t elusive. It didn’t require a lottery or a massive amount of luck. It simply required some introspection, some re-evaluation of what would make me happy, and a choice. The straight forward choice to do what I thought was best for me, no matter how unconventional it looked from the outside.
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