What made you want to give up everything ?

Swapping my comfortable sedentary life in Africa to become a digital nomad in France, at 45 ? Let me tell you what on Earth has taken me over.

Friends keep asking me “But why? How did you come up with this crazy idea of giving up all your worldly goods here in Johannesburg, land of sunshine and swimming pools, in exchange for a homeless life on the roads in France, living and working out of a vehicle ? “ That does sound very grim and demented.

Just before the pandemic hit the planet, I had come to realise that my life’s work had been completed: both my children had passed their school-leaving exams successfully, were driving themselves around without my help and were on their way to spreading their own wings. That had been the only reason why I went to work every day and shopped for groceries every week and paid my mortgage and insurance and whatever else a sedentary life raising two kids called for.

So at the beginning of 2020 I decided to make a little visit to Europe, on my own, letting the kids experiment looking after their own selves at home. Oh the excitement of seeing such freedom around the corner !! Until of course, we all got locked up inside our homes.

The pandemic also allowed me to step out of a nine-to-five work regime and swap my retail architecture career for the work-from-home freelance universe of voice-overs. I realised in that first year that I had the power to decide when and where I wanted to work. Voice-Over is not entirely a location-free career though, I rely heavily on my soundproof booth to deliver noise-free audio recordings, but there are ways to get around that..

Then 2021 rolled around and I still had that ticket-to-ride in my pocket. Feeling free-er than ever, and with 14-day quarantines planned all over the place, I scheduled a 6-week long voyage to the land of my birth, quite decided by then to do a bit of visiting while I was there. Yes, during the first month of lockdown, I had discovered the plentiful YouTube documentary section and found myself bingeing everything I could find about France, which made me want to see it with my own eyes…

So that’s exactly what I did. Starting with a mandatory 14 days quarantine at my sister’s home in the north of the country - with no checks by authorities anyway because they forgot to ask my address at the airport… There was a family wedding in a lovely manoir, many catch-ups with aunts, uncles and long-lost friends, and finally a very french rainy day at the beach with cousins, before I hopped on to a string of very french trains for my very own Tour de France 2021.

Seeing the green green green fields and forests whizz by, I couldn’t get enough of all that green, coming from a mostly dry brown country, especially in winter. It reminded me that I had not travelled on my own since 1998 !! It was certainly exhilarating.

My tour-by-train took me to Rouen, Limoges, Toulouse, Marseille, the Ardèche region, and ended with Bruxelles, Brugges, Amsterdam, Haarlem and Zandvoort where I met up with old friends. Along the way, I met in-real-life some fellow voice-over artists whom I knew from a common Facebook group, and a couple of girl-friends I hadn’t seen since 1994 when we all left high school… I’d love to tell you all the things I saw and did on my mystical-magical-tour, but that would make this post too long, so let me know in the comments if you’d like me to tell you some stories with pictures and I will.

What I really want to tell you is how seeing all those people and wonderful new places turned my world upside-down. With the pandemic, I’d got used to sitting at home and hardly ever seeing anyone outside my bubble, driving out once a week to keep my car battery charged, always on the same roads, past the same buildings I’ve been seeing for the last 37 years that I have lived in the same 10km² (by the way that’s alt+0178 on your keyboard)… And that was OK, it was my routine, my life that I had built and I was content. Until now.

With my newfound available freedom, all these things I was seeing suddenly took on a new meaning for me. No longer just holiday vistas, but real possibilities. When I returned home and found my city in its least attractive winter-dead-brown-cold attire, I plummeted into a state of “what the hell I am still doing here” misery. I love my house, and I love my kids, and my friends, and my dad, and my dog - but… time to try something new.

At first I was thinking, I could stay at my aunts and uncles houses until my paperwork allows me to rent on my own - yes, I have a french passport, but no fiscal records to gain the trust of any potential landlords or banks… But that sounded too heavy and dependent. Or ! stay in Airbnbs around the country at discounted monthly rates ! That way I’d also be able to experience all of France, one month at a time ! Or, apply for a permanent job at something I’m good at and rent a flat. Something by the ocean then. I miss the ocean terribly. More on that another time.

Until my friend YouTube started showing me more and more videos of people living, working and travelling full time in very comfortable-looking converted vans… Imagine not having a mortgage, no electricity bills, no gardener, no cleaning-lady, only one room to clean instead of half-a-dozen; seeing a new garden outside my door every day, going to the ocean as often as I want, discovering new towns, new countries, new people…

And that was it. The seed was planted, the idea grew and bloomed and now it’s a full-sized jungle that is not going away. My house is on the market, everyone has been informed of and approved my plans, there’s no backing down now.

Let me know in the comments if you want me to tell you how I plan to make this work. I mean, because I would have to have thought about that right ?

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