Help! I'm Location Independent

“Location independent” is a phrase I, frankly, loathe. Though, with its implication that anyone who’s not travelling has somehow failed to think about what they want in life, “lifestyle design” is worse.

Like “digital nomad”, another way of saying the same thing, it’s a phrase you don’t often find in print.

“Location independence” is more of a tag than a term. A handle for tweets. An SEO search term. And, all too often, a frankly cynical hook for pyramid-selling a specific lifestyle dream to people who will, most likely, never achieve it.

What does it mean? Well, it’s the wired answer to “expat”.

When you’re location independent, you can work and travel at the same time. Work wirelessly from a beach, a rice field, overlooking a glacier. Set up your office in any wifi cafe on the planet.

An appealing concept to many who are stuck in the cubicle of cliche – and plenty who aren’t. And one that should, in theory, work easily for anyone who’s ever worked freelance or remotely.

Well, I love travel. So I’m giving it a go.

Z and I have been travelling for over a year now. Our original plan of six months in Asia then six months in Latin America has segued into two years exploring Asia, broken by a stint in Australia, followed by exploring Europe and the Middle East from a base in Spain.

Quite how? Well, that’s another story. But you see more of the world travelling slow than you do travelling fast. And we kind of fell in love with Indonesia.

Despite the hospitality of family and friends, Australia – not to mention our fondness for non-budget activities like diving, eating steak and drinking beer (me) and milkshakes (him) – has left something of a dint in the old travel budget (which was, in any case, only intended to last a year).

After more than a year out, I picked up my first job in December, have had a couple more since then, and am beginning to focus on it seriously now. Which, I guess, means I’m becoming location independent.

Or back at work… In a foreign country.

The bulk of how I’ve earned my living over the years has been through journalism and copywriting.

I love travel, good food and good drinks. I’ve previously written on food and drink, so the plan is to develop myself as a travel writer, pick up more writing about food and drink and do a little light, low pressure copywriting.

I’m also beginning to make a little money blogging. Which is nice, and something I intend to do more of. (As my best friend in the UK observed, “You love doing it, and you’re doing it anyway, so why not make money from it?”)

And I’m working on the fiction project I was intending to complete this year until, well, travel intervened…

On the one hand, I’m really excited by this. It’s a beautiful thing to sit in a beachside café, my son playing in the water and work from there. It’s lovely to sit here, with my view over the rice fields of Bali, and be productive.

I really enjoyed bouncing around Sydney and Melbourne’s best bars for work. I’m looking forward to more of the same in Singapore and other cities later this year.

On the other? I’m, well, I’m, honestly, scared. After a year of living high on the hog, spending the travel budget, the return to earning is a real shock.

You mean, I have to do this? For the rest of my life?!

Now, I walked away from journalism a few years after Z was born. Because, until you build up longstanding relationships with editors and acquire regular gigs (which takes time) freelance journalism is an extremely tough way to make a living.

It’s about persistence. About pitching stories. About handling rejection. About reading mangled copy. And, sometimes, about having the balls to reject a rate that counts as ludicrously low.

By which I don’t mean the internet $5 per 1000 words sweatshops, like elance.com. I don’t mean the increasing number of brand and indie websites populated entirely by free content in return for “exposure”.

You’d be surprised by how many legitimate, sometimes well-known publications, both online and offline, pay not that far above the minimum wage.

There are well-paid jobs out there. But they are few and far between.

The rates many book publishers, for example, pay their non-fiction authors for an entire, intensely researched book wouldn’t cover a year’s rent on a studio flat in the cities they are based in. Many travel guide authors traipse around the five-star hotels they write up from a base in a hostel dorm, an activity which, I’m guessing, is the working definition of “dispiriting”.

Anywise… I figured out a while back that the two of us can travel much of the world very happily for a total monthly figure rather less than the cost of a London rent.

So, given the lower cost of living, I should be able to work much less than previously, and at things I enjoy, and have a better quality of life. Enter location independence.

Now, in theory, it should be easy enough for me to become location independent. All I need is an internet connection, a laptop and a camera.

I have some existing clients, a range of contacts, a few advertisers on this site. Oh, and I just scored my first travel writing gig.

Which, I guess, makes me location independent already.

But I’m also a single parent. I’m responsible for Z’s education, his wellbeing, his happiness, his meals, his laundry…

And I don’t want to return to the traditional freelance pattern of working all the hours god sends, just in a different location.

Because that, whatever you may read about four hour work weeks, is what a lot of freelancers do.

Particularly since the vast majority of clients in many industries expect you to be constantly available, no matter what. You know.

They don’t want to wait for their website until you get down off that mountain, or back from that deserted island. Conference calls are on their time, not yours. And many would kind of like you available for face to face meetings too.

So, paradoxically, my first steps to location independence involve, erm, having a base for a couple of months.

Why? Well, firstly there’s the internet thing. Our next destination is Papua, a region better known for chaps with bones through their noses, gourds on their penises and charming collections of not-that-antique heads than for 24/7 connectivity and mobile working.

I don’t want to be pitching to new clients or restarting work for old clients when I don’t know when I’ll next get online. Or stabbing at the reload button for ten minutes down a Jayapura back street surrounded by gaming teenagers while trying to send an email.

I want to be able to respond fast, establish a relationship, develop a history of delivering. Then I can go back to being unplugged.

Now, I know folk who have achieved location independence by working for a few home clients while travelling, and support a family solely by this. There’s some folk out there, though fewer than you’d think from the number selling “make money online” schemes, who earn their living blogging.

I know others who have struggled with it, finding they have to pass on jobs to others because of the vagaries of internet access, and never get them back again.

Secondly? The not-so-small matter of Z’s education. We’ve been unschooling, which has delivered fantastic results despite its patchy nature.

Right now, we’re studying Bahasa Indonesia together two mornings a week, and he’s done courses from fruit-carving to gamelan, via silver-smithing, with more to come.

But as I begin a relatively intensive period of re-entering the working world and dealing with the practicalities around that, I can’t simultaneously deliver his entire education.

So we’ve found a lovely little multicultural primary in the rice fields a mile or so from here, with a playground by a stream and bamboo classrooms, which takes drop-in students and follows a British-ish curriculum.

He’s going there two days a week at the moment, and we’re considering a third day. He’s enjoying the fun classes like yoga, music, art and swimming, and the assault course in the playground.

Formal lessons like science, maths, English and social studies aren’t a stretch. And he’s loving the playground interaction with other kids.

Thirdly, there’s the old payment issue. In location independent working, or any form of freelance working, chasing payment is a fact of life for most.

I am not mad keen to head out into the wilds of Papua with invoices awaiting payment and no guaranteed access to Skype calling with which to chase them or online access with which to confirm payment.

Particularly since I intend to work very significantly less while back on the road than I am in our little house in Ubud.

Fourthly, there’s learning. Having traveled in regions of Indonesia where barely any English is spoken, equipped with only a spectacularly crap dictionary, two pages of guidebook phrases and a gift for blagging, I’m quite keen for both of us to get a better handle on the language before we head back.

And I’d like to shed my motorbike fears and conquer the art of riding decent distances on Balinese roads, before we negotiate, say, China.

Taking a base, of course, doesn’t mean we’ve stopped travelling, though it does mean we can move with a smaller pack.

We’ve been all over Bali in the last couple of weeks: from the beaches and national park in the far north-western corner to the temple of Ulu Watu at the island’s southernmost point.

We’ve wound through the centre of the country, rising up from sunny beaches into mist-filled craters and vertiginous crater rims, zipwired in the rain, had hot chocolate by an open fire (it rains a lot in those central mountains!), stayed in a beautiful garden by the beach…

I’m planning trips to a bunch of islands, considering Lombok, and we’re developing a social life round here, too.

It’s a good place to be. And I’m grateful for it.

But it’s a scary one, too. I’ll keep you posted how it goes.