Nomad by accident

“Where do you live?”

I still don’t have a set, easy answer for that question. Sometimes I’ll say “Oh, I’m doing the whole nomad thing” or “Oh, just kinda living everywhere right now”. Sometimes I’ll make the knee-jerk joke that I’m homeless, but I feel shitty every time I say it. I feel like the skinny girl who eats two french fries and jokes that it’s gonna make her fat. I’m able to do what I’m doing because of huge amount of luck, and I’m constantly trying to be more and more grateful for that.

Home

Growing up in Maryland, home was always obvious – it was the single-family house in Rockville, halfway down Bartram Street, with a basement, a porch, a swing set in the back yard, and a very climbable dogwood tree out front. I grew up there from toddler to twenty-one, then moved out to Los Angeles for what was supposed to be a year or two. I just wanted to see what west coast living was about, but I immediately fell in love with the climate and the culture, made some friends, and pretty quickly realized I wasn’t going back anytime soon. I remember one trip back to Rockville where I ended up having to shovel snow in our driveway and thinking “I’m…not sure I want to deal with this anymore.”

I ended up staying in California for just about 15 years, and in that time, usually for work or relationship-related reasons, I ended up moving within the state 10 times. My dad has also long since moved out of that Rockville home. That’s all to say that it’s probably not surprising that I now see “where I live” as very different from “home”. Home is family in New York and Maryland, but it’s definitely also friends (aka chosen family) in California and Japan. Home is wherever there are people that I care about and who care about me.

Hopping

When I moved to Japan in late-2020 for school, I expected to be there for at least four years. Then all the bureaucratic, university drama happened, and by mid-2021, I’d realized that I might not even make it a full calendar year. My initial thought was to move back to LA, but while researching schools, I started re-considering an online degree. Originally, I thought I’d really benefit from in-person teaching, but after a year of it, plus positive changes in online programs because of the pandemic, I changed my mind. At this point it just felt obvious that I should take advantage of the freedom of remote-learning.

It’s been almost exactly a year now since I gave up having a permanent address. The big trip we did in my last relationship was supposed to be like this – settling in places for a while and seeing what it would be like to live there. But I had a different mindset about travel back then, and I kinda (kinda really) strong-armed it into becoming a country-count-chasing, full-time-tourism trip. I think I’m kinda trying to give myself a redo. 

$$$$

This lifestyle is definitely more expensive than living in Japan (at least, where I was). I’m a fan of financial transparency, and I’ll make a separate post with the cost details for anyone that’s curious. One thing that helps a lot is having access to grants and both subsidized and low-interest loans that I couldn’t qualify for while in Japan. Personal finance-wise, loans can be a little tricky. As a rule-of-thumb, you should probably avoid borrowing money if you have or can earn the money you need. Of course, there are exceptions. I can technically pay for my tuition from my savings, but because I can get loans where the interest I pay is lower than the interest I expect to earn on my savings, it makes sense for me to borrow.

So…do you like it?

I love it. I love the travel, figuring out the logistics of where I’m going and where to stay, getting to experience living in different cultures, the solitude. I was having pizza in NYC last month, fish tacos in LA this month, and I’ll be eating sushi in Tokyo next week. Of course, it’s not all perfect. 

Routine can be nice, and as much as I love being active on my own with runs and hikes, I really miss being able to consistently go to the gym, swim, play basketball, ride my bike. I also miss random things like salad, black beans, having a dresser with sock and underwear drawers. And I especially miss Max – I was able to take him to Spain, and he’s with me whenever I’m in the US, but it hasn’t worked out for him to come with me on any of the other international stays so far. But the pros outweigh the cons, for sure. I’ll settle down and stop moving around so much one day. But for now…zoom zoom.