NuNomad Location Independent Living, Lifestyle Design, Independent Travel

This weekend I’m thinking of taking my girls and a friend to the beach in Mazunte here in the state of Oaxaca.  Mazunte is a beach that’s not very developed and has a few eco-lodge style places to stay.  It’s known for the sea turtles that come to lay their eggs each year.  That’s exactly the kind of place I like to go.  Not over crowded, lots of natural beauty, and budget friendly prices.  We’d like to stay 5 nights.  That’s a perk of homeschooling.  We don’t have to be wed to a school schedule.

This year has been an amazing privilege to be able to wander the globe with my three daughters full time.  It’s the culmination of many years of developing my coaching business (Dr. Coach) to be mobile.  Actually, for 11 years now I’ve been working with people via telephone and internet and our family has taken increasingly longer and further nomading journeys in the process.  I’ve been able to speak with my clients as I’ve watched barges slowly move down river in New Orleans, looked onto the blue waters of the Carribean, into the mountains of Brazil, onto the boulevards of Paris, and watched cyclists make their way down the streets of Holland.  I’m ever grateful of the experiences we’ve had, of my husband whose kind patience has allowed us to leave him for months at a time and of the clients who have the patience to allow me to live this lifestyle while we work together.

Because I feel I’m living a very privileged existence, in return, I’m very mindful of keeping appointments, trying to have the best sound quality, internet reliability, and overall good service in my coaching practice that I can.  I mean, my clients pay good money and they know where I’m going and what I’m doing.  I feel it is my responsibility that they are not negatively affected by my adventures and hopefully even positively affected.  I certainly believe that modeling is the strongest form of teaching.  If you’re coaching people to live their dreams – you as the coach need to be living yours as well.

In addition to the coaching practice, obviously, I’ve got a website and blog to think about (actually several websites because I’ve built some for others on the side).  The combination of these activities has meant that I’m on my laptop a lot.  I mean A LOT.  At this point it feels like an appendage.  In fact, I call it my “brain annex” because I think it holds more of my memories than my actual brain. However, I do believe that we shouldn’t live our lives in front of screens and that we need to have balance, exercise, etc. etc.

Why Can’t I Leave the Laptop Behind?

So – here I am with a week on a beautiful beach ahead.  It turns out that I have been able to re-schedule my clients to clear those days.  That’s a step in the right direction because normally I would have made sure I had internet capability to continue my sessions from the beach.  But the idea of going without the laptop is completely freaking me out.  How did I ever get so addicted to this damn laptop and why should I care at all about leaving it behind?

Somehow I have this nagging voice in my head saying “If you don’t produce blogs from the beach, your stats are going to plummet and you’re going to lose the small following you’ve worked hard to build”.  It also shouts out “You don’t have the right to go 5 days without working!  What do you think you are – a queen?”

What the…..!  How did this situation ever get such an insidious hold on me?  I’ve thought about it and to be honest I think my hesitation is completely fear based.  The fears come in several forms.  Here are a few that I can name:

• Fear of not staying up with the competition.  I’m a hugely competitive person and I don’t like the feeling that I’m falling behind.
• Fear that I’ll lose what I’ve built.
• Fear that I’ll be seen as a slacker for not working for 5 days.
• Fear of how I’ll fill the time without the laptop.  In all honesty, I spend so much time working on it I haven’t had a large span of down time in years and I’m not really sure what to do with it.
• Fear that there’s something on this laptop that I’ll wish I had if I don’t bring it.  What if I need a map, need to look at my bank account, etc.  What if we all go to hell in a handbasket because I didnt’ bring it?

I know these fears seem stupid and small.  They even do to me while reading them.  And yet the thing has such a hold on me.  My goal this coming week is this:

• Not to bring the laptop
• Not to write any blog
• Not to answer any email
• To remember how to spend time away from a screen

I’m going to be leaving this Friday.  If you see any work produced from here you have every right to chastise me to the fullest (I don’t have posts in my arsenal just to schedule in the future). I promise to let you know what happens.

I’m wondering – do you have this problem?  Am I the only one?

Photo: Yourdon