This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome back to Side Hustle School, your host here, Chris Guillebeau, episode 2,505. And once again, we have come to Friday. Friday, also known as Failure Friday, a collection of short stories about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure. This is a segment where we dissect something that goes wrong or a lesson learned perhaps along the way.
And like I'm trying to point out more frequently now, the whole point of these exercises is to actually encourage you, not to discourage you, okay? I want people to become more comfortable with the idea that not everything you try to do is going to work and that is okay. It might actually lead you to something that works much better. And so, yeah, I mean, lots of different stories that illustrate that point. Today, we're going to look at one involving remote year.
A remote year nomad experiences blogger burnout. So just as some context, lots of digital nomads out there or people who are choosing to work remotely from around the world. I don't always love the term digital nomad myself, but that's just me. It's definitely true that there are people interested in working remotely and traveling. And so in the past few years, there have been a number of companies and organizations that have sprung up to kind of facilitate the process of travel and relocating and going to different places for a month or two to work and then moving on to somewhere else.
If you don't want to think about all the logistics associated with that, I think it's actually a really smart business model because it's a big market of people interested in it. I do also think that people sometimes underestimate what is involved, even when you go with one of these companies or organizations, just in terms of adapting to another culture and location and different working hours and such. If you've been doing this for a while on your own, then you understand that. But if you've never done it before, it really is a big adjustment. So with that little setup, we're gonna hear today from Amanda.
And so she is one of these people who undertook the process of relocating and nomading and such, either running a business or working for a company. I'm not entirely sure which one. But the point was she enjoyed lots of it and she also struggled with some parts of it. So I think that's perfectly natural and reasonable. Let's hear the detailed story from her.
I'll have a few brief comments at the end. [Music]
There's a certain allure to the digital nomad lifestyle, one that had captivated me for years. When I discovered remote year during one of my late night internet dives, it seemed like the universe was giving me a sign. Here was my chance to explore the world and finally kickstart the travel blog I've been planning for months. The idea was simple, to document my year-long journey across 12 countries, sharing the beauty, culture and raw experiences with an audience back home.
The thought of starting in the bustling streets of Mexico City, moving through the historical lanes of Prague and ending in the lush landscapes of Chiang Mai was intoxicating. Eager and filled with boundless enthusiasm, I quit my nine to five, dove deep into preparations and set out on my adventure. I was armed with a camera, a fresh notebook and dreams of becoming the next big travel influencer. But the reality of building a blog from scratch, while constantly on the move, began to sink in sooner than I'd anticipated. In Mexico City, instead of savoring the flavors of churros and chocolate, I found myself agonizing over website templates, domain names and hosting plans.
By the time I reached Buenos Aires, I was more engrossed in figuring out SEO than learning to dance the tango. Each new city brought with it a wealth of experiences, but instead of living in the moment, I was overwhelmed with the pressure of documenting everything. The cobbled streets of Prague became a backdrop for photo shoots, rather than lanes to wander and get lost in. I noticed I spent more time stressing about capturing perfect shots than actually appreciating my surroundings. I remember the exact moment the burnout hit.
It was in a beautiful shared home in Marrakesh, surrounded by intricate mosaics in the scent of jasmine. Instead of being in the moment, I was on the verge of tears, struggling with a website bug, with no new content posted in weeks. The weight of my unlaunched blog, coupled with the rapidly passing months of remote year, felt suffocating. Taking a deep breath, I made a pivotal decision. I would pause.
No more stressing about the blog launch, no more frantic content creation, I decided to truly immerse myself in the experiences, to collect stories, not for an audience, but for myself. During my hiatus, I rediscovered the joy of travel. I swam in the crystal clear waters of Bali and savored the street food in Bangkok, all without the pressure of documentation. By the end of my year abroad, my travel blog, "Wonderful Words," was still a dream, but one that now had a treasure trove of authentic stories. I returned home and got back to work, now planning a well-curated collection of my experiences, instead of an instantaneous reflection of my travels.
In hindsight, the initial failure to launch while on remote year was a blessing in disguise. It taught me the importance of being present and collecting genuine experiences. Because at the end of the day, genuine stories resonate more than manufactured ones. The world will wait for your tales, but only if they're told from the heart. Also stress less.
That was the biggest lesson I learned, so I hope it's helpful to someone else who's feeling the pressure. [Music]
- Amanda, thank you for sharing this story. I wish we would have more of these, or at least more people, sharing both highlights and lowlights of working abroad. I'm a big fan of working abroad and traveling while working, and I've been doing it for much of my life in different ways, but it does take some adjustment for people. And traveling and working are not always the same thing.
And for me, one simple tip that I have kind of learned for myself and I offer for others as well is it's relatively easy, or at least it's possible, more possible, let's say, to maintain a project or just kind of do the work that you need to do on an ongoing basis while traveling compared to starting a new project and the creative process and the birthing process, the launching process that goes along with that. That is a little bit more difficult. And so in my case, I have always been much better at just kind of running an existing business, but when it comes to launching something new or writing a book, I kind of need to be in one place at least much of the time, maybe not always, but much of the time. And so that has been helpful to me. And also to have a predictable routine.
That's the other thing. It's not just being in one place, but to kind of know, okay, here's how I go about my day, and here's the time that I exercise, and here's my peak productivity time. I'm gonna work best during these hours, so I'm gonna make sure that I structure my life around that and such. So you kind of learn that stuff as you go, but if you just get dropped into it like on an experience like this, it can be a little abrupt for some folks. Anyway, Amanda, thank you again for sharing the story.
Listeners, if you have an experience, a question, an update, comment, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Today is of course Friday, episode 2,505. We've got more coming out tomorrow the next day, every day after that. It's always completely free. I'm so grateful that you're out there.
My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
