How to go from single mother to full-time traveller
Or why become a Digital Nomad at 45 ?
Aren’t you supposed to finally be all settled down with a house a car and a white picket fence by the time you’re 45 ? Aren’t you supposed to do all your adventuring when you’re in your twenties before having kids so that when you get older you can retire and play golf or something ? Isn’t that the “normal” thing to do ?
Normal is not something I’ve ever been good at doing. So yes I did end up having kids and complementing that adventure with all the material comforts that were the most appropriate at the time. The thought did cross our minds as young parents to travel with kids but home-schooling wasn’t a thing back then in 1999. The question was rather French school or English school ?
Once you taste adventure and travel the bug doesn’t go away. I wish I could have travelled more with my kids when they were growing up, during school holidays at least, but as a single working mother that was simply too expensive, unfortunately. DoI consider this a failure on my part to show them the world ? to teach them the love of travelling ? I certainly do. But it is what it is, and beating myself up about it is not productive.
I promised myself when they were little that I would give everything I had of myself to bring them up to the end of their school days, and after that, I would relinquish all responsibility. Well not overnight obviously… once a mother always a mother… and just because they’ve turned 18 doesn’t mean they are going to magically fly away hahaha !
The day my youngest wrote his last high school exam a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. That’s it ! This is the day I had been waiting for since I made that promise. It was very emotional, thinking all those years of hard work were finally over. What now ?? Wow, all the possibilities that I had not even let myself think about before suddenly stood crowded in front of my internal eyes.
Three months later Covid hit the world and crowds became a historical artefact. From commuting at 08h00 and again at 17h00 (or later) I went to sleeping late, working an hour or two during the day, and watching lots and lots and lots of YouTube documentaries (which I hadn’t know exited before this). I rediscovered the world through the small screen would you believe it. I explored France and India and learned about precious stones and growing cocoa. My mind started opening up from the small routine world it had becomed accustomed to for the last 15 years.
Having recently started a new hobby - recording voice-overs for pocket money from my bedroom desk, I realised during the Lockdowns that there was a lot of ongoing work in this field, not hindered by the sanitary situation. So much so that I ended up telling my employer that I was going to focus on paying clients for the foreseeable future instead of relying on an unreliable salary. And that’s how I became a full-time voice-over freelancer, in August 2020.
Two things happened in 2021.
First, I very quickly completely replaced my old salary in this way, and that by only working four to six hours a day, waking up at my body’s leasure and having time to just enjoy Being.
Second, one of my cousins in France announced his wedding date for that summer. There was no way I was missing out on that. Even in the middle of a pandemic. With the situation slightly more open in June 2021 I found myself on a flight from South Africa to France with six whole weeks all to myself. No employer waiting for me to get back, no school holiday to limit the time away. No kids or husband waiting for me to return. My two were perfectly happy to experience the freedom of living on their own without me.
During those six weeks of summer I reconnected with family I hadn’t seen in many years, and I explored France all on my own by hopping on trains between cities, suitcase in hand and recording gear on my back. I realised that it is absolutely possible to work on the road, and even to record pretty acceptable sound in makeshift setups wherever I went. And so the Digital Nomad dream was born.
The only thing that reminded me that I was 45 and not 25 was that I was very unfit. Running to catch trains, sleeping in a different place every two days and walking eight hours every day in beautiful cities and towns was hard work. But the freedom I felt right there was the same as it had been back then. And back in 1998 there was no mobile internet and no remote working. That I know of. Not like today anyway.
So the conclusion was simple. Why sit at home at the same desk every day, watch documentaries on the same couch after work, and drive the same roads to shop for groceries at the same places all the time when I could do all that while exploring new horizons and meeting new people ?
Recording professional voice-overs takes a bit more equipment than working on a laptop like other digital nomads, and makeshift setups are not an ideal solution. But I could travel in a mobile recording studio couldn’t I ? then I wouldn’t have to run after schedules and be limited to exploring only areas served by trains.
Therefore. #vanlife. Here I come.