Leave Your Cubicle Behind

I can’t remember my life before now. I broke out of the cubicle early. Lots of people want to leave the cubicle behind but most never do. Office life isn’t inherently bad. I have many friends who work in offices doing jobs they love. But those same friends lack the one thing that breaking free gave me: time.

That’s what leaving the cubicle is about. It’s about getting time. Life as a digital nomad doesn’t mean I don’t work. In fact, some days I may put in 12 hours on a computer. But what leaving the cubicle gives me is the flexibility to choose how I spend my time. Time to go places, time to see things, time to sleep in late. I can work 12 hours one day and take the next day off or I can work at night. My work schedule is my own. I work when I feel I can be the most productive.

But it wasn’t always that way. Out of college, I worked in a hospital. I enjoyed my co-workers and bosses but the work itself was unfulfilling. And I worked a lot. Sometimes as much as 60 hours a week. Why? I’m not really sure anymore. I was saving. Saving for what? I’m not sure about that too. When I got a promotion, I was stuck behind the desk from 9 to 5. Even if there wasn’t work to be done, I had to be there.

Then my friend and I went to Thailand and everything changed. While we were there, I met my first backpackers. It was love at first sight. We were in northern Thailand taking a cooking class. Three backpackers and a bunch of two week holidaymakers. Listening to their stories of months here and months there, I feel in love. I was so amazed by their freedom and what they were doing. They were experiencing a life I dreamed from my cubicle and was waiting to do in retirement. But they were doing it now! It was there I decided to join them. A year and one finished MBA I will never use later; I set out to explore the world.

The idea of working remotely, of being a digital nomad, was always in my head. I started a blog, partly out of ego, partly to join the make money online craze. Long hours in front of the computer yielded little return but I was learning and eventually, I started earning a little bit of money. Than a little bit more. And I kept learning. Reading as much as I could. Networking as much as I could. Asking questions from other bloggers.
My conversion to digital nomad took many years with the digital part only occurring a year ago. But the most important part of the conversion isn’t the digital part, it’s the nomad part. It was saying no to cubicle life and saying yes to more time. Our life is defined by our experiences. I chose not to have most of that experience inside an office building. I traveled. You may just want to tend a garden. Or learn a guitar. It’s your choice. In 2005, I choose to have time. What I thought would be a year turned into four and that will now turn into a lifetime. Now, I have time…and I am never giving it back.