chiang mai

Yes, so I’ve finally done it… after 10 years of slaving away in the same company I’ve finally bitten the bullet and handed my notice in.

I’ve got a great job working in a Digital Agency in the centre of London, where I get to work with great brands and talented people, so you might well be asking:

Why would you do such a crazy thing?

Well, to be honest there are a number of reasons:

Time

As hard as I have tried over the past 18 months I have found it increasingly difficult to dedicate time and effort to the things that I care about the most at the moment such as really cracking how I can make money online and start to live a location independent lifestyle.

The job I work in is really fast paced and often stressful, so by the time I get home from work I am pretty exhausted and find it hard to motivate myself to work on my side businesses.
I usually don’t get home until about 7pm, so by the time I get some food there is very little of the day and my brain energy left to focus on other things, so I just haven’t been dedicating the necessary hours to my other income streams.

On a positive note, however, it has meant that I have had to find ways to keep things ticking along with a minimal investment of my time, such as hiring a Virtual Assistant and a bunch of writers.

Motivation

I think whatever you do in life that after a while you get bored of it and want to move on and get some more excitement. As soon as you have mastered something, then it doesn’t become challenging anymore.

For me I feel the same way about Project Management and the job I’m working in. To be honest it never really excited me and was more of a means to an end than anything else, but now I am coasting and find it hard to really get engaged in what I’m doing.

I think this is partly to do with the industry that I am in, because we’re not exactly saving lives, or doing anything good for the world, but are just creating poxy websites for companies and brands who think they are a lot more important than they actually are.

Everything is so critical and important to most of our clients when actually I am finding it very, very hard to give a funk!

In the world that I work in most people only stay in their job for a max of a couple of years, so after working for 10 years in one company I’m starting to feel like a bit of a freak and it’s time to move on.

I could go on, and tell you about some of the characters that I am working with, because it’s getting more and more Nathan Barley every day, but I better leave it there or I’ll probably have a heart attack!

Opportunity

We only get a limited time on this planet and I really am starting to believe that you need to make the most of it. I could easily hang on in my existing job and keep doing the same old stuff every day, like millions of people around the world, but somehow that’s just not going to satisfy me.

I’ve travelled all over the world and now, more than ever, am I more curious about what’s out there and what opportunities lie ahead of me…. It’s so freaking exciting!!!

Seriously, there is so much that we can do and achieve in this world that we really shouldn’t limit our dreams by a desk and a computer.

Unfortunately though, Mr Opportunity doesn’t usually just come up to your door and ask you to be let in, you usually need to be out looking for him, so for this reason I’m moving on.

So, What you Going to Do?

Well, I’ve booked a flight and me and my girl are heading to Thailand for 3 months at the end of September.

We haven’t really nailed down a plan yet but the idea is that we have a couple of weeks chilling out then head up to Chiang Mai to check it out and see if it is really the Digital Nomad haven that it’s cracked up to be.

This first trip, is more of a tester to see if we can crack a few nuts in one trip:

• Can we find a place that we’d like to go back to and work from in the future?
• Can we build up our businesses sufficiently within 3 months to support us in the future?
• Will we enjoy working whilst we are travelling and living in another country?
• How will we find spending 24 hours a day together?
• Is this lifestyle really as good as it seems in our minds at the moment?

I think 3 months, should be a good enough timeframe for us to figure some of these things out and determine if this is something we want to pursue in the future.

So, Why Chiang Mai?

My impressions at the moment are that it is a fairly busy city, which retains a rural feel to it and has a reputation of a place where young(ish) people go to bootstrap their online businesses.

From my side I think Chiang Mai on paper ticks the boxes from 2 main angles:

The Lifestyle

By all accounts, the food in Chiang Mai is meant to be out of this world and because it is so cheap to live there you can carve out a really cool lifestyle that you might not be able to or want to have back home.

I’m looking forward to try and lead a healthy lifestyle, eating well, taking plenty of exercise and getting a great balance between working and leisure.
I’m also really interested in developing some new skills and habits whilst we’re away. I constantly hear about the benefits of mindfulness and meditation, but my mind is on London time here, so that has no room in my life.

I’d also love to workout regularly and try some Muay Thai, which may even have a positive effect on my terribly low kicks in Capoeira!

The People

I’ve stated learning Thai, and want to have at least a basic vocabulary that I can use over there to impress the locals, or at least show an intention of goodwill! I’m also really keen to learn more about the Thai culture and way of life, as the last time I went (20 years ago), that wasn’t top of my agenda to be honest.

The other side of thing is I want to learn from the huge community of young entrepreneurs who are setting up online businesses from Chiang Mai. This is the place where everyone is practising the things I’ve been listening to podcasts and reading blogs about for the past 18 months, so it would be great to surround myself with these influences and really see how my knowledge can explode.

There’s so much for me to learn and it just feels like this is the right time and the right place to do it, but hey, who knows, what the future will bring?

So what’s the worst that can happen?

Chiang Mai won’t Fly!

I don’t know why though, but I have this irrational fear that they will just be a bunch of dicks in Chiang Mai and I won’t really warm to the place. I’d prefer not to be in a big City for my time away and I know from past experiences that you really need to give a place at least a month before you really get a feel for its vibe and to meet a good number of people.

Travel vs Working

There’s going to be a struggle in my head as well between whether I should be treating this time as a holiday or more for travelling and experiencing new things. I’d really prefer to be going out travelling, but I see this trip more of an enabler for a future lifestyle, so I just hope I can stick to these plans.

Shiny Object Syndrome

If I do end up meeting a lot of people when I’m away my head is going to be swilling with ideas for new things that I can do and new ways to make money online. I have to remember that first of all I need to focus on mastering the monetisation of my niche website and building up my eBay business and try and put all the new shiny things to one side so I can look at these in the future.

Homecoming

We’re coming home a couple of days before Christmas into the cold, dark, rainy English winter! I think the first week or so will be fine, but then we’re going to have to find new jobs (unless of course our businesses have really taken off!)

For me, I will have to head off into the freelance Project Management market, which I don’t particularly want to do and my girlfriend has found it particularly hard to find anything decent in London.

Carpe Diem

‘Seize the Day’ is all I can think of to finish this off. Yes, there are risks, but the rewards are massive as well. If all goes well we will be able to create a lifestyle which most people can only dream of and we’re already well on the way to achieving that goal.

Surely, that’s worth rolling the dice isn’t it?