I was born to be a digital nomad.
No, seriously, even in my childhood I’ve never liked the idea to be a tourist. Going to somewhere for one or two weeks, being desperate to visit everything what other people think important? Doing a lot of unusual things only because of the fear of missing something? Meanwhile you and the place you’ve visited miss any real interaction and remain stragers to each other? No, it’s not for me. It never was.
Also, as a person with autism spectrum disorder the good old fashioned family vacation was always a bit of a nightmare for me. The annoying requirement to behave differently than you used to in your everyday life just because it’s what other people used to do during their hollidays was alway unbearable for me.
On the other hand, reading many 19th-centurian classic novels during my teenage years, I was aware of a different type of travelling, a differently paced time spending in different places. But I was aware also of the differences between the mid-19th-centurian lifestyle of the “idle classes” and the late 20th-centurian reality.
I just could not imagine how it would work in my life to be a traveller.
And there was that stupid, very stupid idea of mine that because I’m using Hungarian language and all my business ideas – yes, even in my teenage years – are somehow connected to the written world, I can’t really leave the country for months or even for years.
But the world has changed a lot since the 1990s. Especially during the recent few years. As my perspective and my priorities in life did too.
Nowadays thinking about being a traveller still countains an upleasant level of strangeness. It’s still a bit about ceasing your normal everyday life for the sake of a journey, changing your life only temporarily and then coming back to your normal way of existence when you’re returnig from your journey. From this point of view being a traveller is still very close to be a tourist.
But being a digital nomad is something different.
First and foremost it earases the difference between work-time and free time in a way I feel very confortable. There is an enjoyable dichotomy of not-changing and constantly changing. I don’t have to give up the daily joy of working with written texts, even in my mother tongue, and yet enjoying the constant changes of my surroundigs.
Being able to live as a digital nomad one of those great things I really love to life in the 21st century.