Update: here is a Q&A version if you’d rather read that — it’s condensed and you can skim it to have the burning questions you have answered.
A few years ago, I had the thought of living in a different European city for a month throughout one year. I believe this idea came to me in 2015 before my solo traveling days, and I’m not sure where I got the idea from and I don’t think I even knew the term “digital nomad” at the time. But, I thought that living in different places for a short period of time, especially in Europe, would be fun, and afterward, I started Couchsurfing and meeting people who have actually lived nomadically and the idea of digital nomads became normal to me.
I never thought I would actually have the chance to live nomadically. I’m the type of person to work for what I want to eventually get it, but it was never a priority, just an idea, a thought, perhaps a pipe dream. I did end up accidentally living a bit nomadically during my first year in NYC, but that’s a separate story.
When covid hit in March 2020, I was living in NYC at the time. When the situation started escalating, I moved back home to northern CA because there’s no reason to live in an expensive apartment, eat expensive food (I was living in an apartment with no kitchen at the time), be in a generally expensive place if all I was going to do was stay home, locked down. Staying at home was not my reason for moving to NYC, and staying at home was going to be my life if I stayed there. So I left.
Covid was still very fresh, uncertain what the future would hold. At the end of April 2020, we were told that the work from home policy would last until June 1, 2020. I look back on this and laugh at the comical naiveness because we’re almost at June 1, 2021. How much the world didn’t know back then, how hopeful we were.
But I digress. Because the world was uncertain and I thought I’d have to return back to NYC, I stayed in CA with no thought of leaving. At the end of May 2020, we got an email saying office buildings would start reopening after July 4th (2020) weekend, and September 2020 would be when buildings would start opening to more capacity. This meant to me that I didn’t have to go back to the office until at least September, and as I didn’t want to live at home until then since I was going a bit stir-crazy with life being the same all the time in a place I already knew too well, I made a plan to leave.
I have for a long time had the desire to live in Colorado, Washington state, and Chicago for a short amount of time, desires in that order. Colorado and Washington for the hiking and nature, Chicago for the city fun. So, over the next month, I looked for housing in Colorado and figured out where I wanted to live there. After about three and a half months of living at home, I finally left over July 4th weekend. That was the start of nomadic living, though I didn’t know at the time.
Over the three months I lived at home, I picked up the habit of cooking. The apartment I spent 1.5 years in NYC before the pandemic had no kitchen because I didn’t want a kitchen. As a side story, it had no kitchen because I was living in the basement of a townhouse and the rest of the house had a kitchen. The first time I went to see the place and talk to the landlord, she seemed pretty worried when she told me I wouldn’t have access to a kitchen, but to her surprise, that’s exactly what I was looking for since I knew I wouldn’t cook much.
Anyhow, when I went home, my parents said they’ll cook dinner and everyone make their own lunch (because we eat at different times). I knew how to cook before, I just didn’t do it much. The food I already knew how to make was pretty easy: pancakes, quesadillas, soup or stir-fried udon, pizza using Costco’s thick pita bread as the crust, Indian eggplant or chickpea or mixed vegetable curry, Costco ravioli. I started making food, and because I had more control of my time and wanted to eat food that my parents had never heard of before, I looked up how to make it. I love gnocchi and pierogi so I made all of it (including sauerkraut for pierogi) from scratch, and I also made moussaka, shishito peppers, shakshuka, falafels, and lasagna.
This is all to say that by the time I left home, I was well-equipped with cooking skills, and I had the habit of cooking and eating at home. Surprisingly, I didn’t miss eating in restaurants even though that was mostly every weekend during my NYC life.
When I picked up my life to move to Colorado, I packed some flour, rolling pins, and measuring cups so I could continue making pierogi and gnocchi. I also packed two sets of hiking clothes, my rainjacket, and a thicker sports jacket, along with two normal shirts, a pair of basketball shorts, and a pair of jeans. Toiletries were also thrown into the duffel bag with all of that, and my laptop backpack held my laptop. The biggest items taking up the most space in my car’s trunk were cardboard boxes so I could make a makeshift standing desk wherever I went since I had the long-standing habit of standing during work. As another side story, I started my current job in August of 2018, and we have adjustable standing desks at work. Since the first day, I’ve never lowered my desk, and I’m not sure where my chair is. I was scared that I would lose my ability to stand all day, so I figured out how to continue that. With all my cardboard boxes also came my monitor and a box of electronic wires for laptop chargers, camera chargers, external mouse, and such.
A few days before I left, one of my close friends suggested me to live out of a car. If he had mentioned it earlier, I might have given it more serious of a consideration, but my initial reaction was there’s no time to do that now since everything going forward — mainly housing — is already set up. I think living in a camper van would be super cool, but I also need good wifi and I foresaw needing a stable space.
I ended up taking my parents’ Honda Accord, one that used to be my grandparents’ car during their yearly 6-month summer visits. We got the car almost two decades ago but it had just passed 110k miles when I drove off with it. New but not new.
I set out on July 1, staying a night in Reno, Nevada, and then doing a long drive to Salt Lake City, Utah. I stayed there for two days since it was a long weekend, and I wanted to break up my drive. I went Couchsurfing and hiking, and it was a good time.
After the weekend, I drove many hours over to Colorado, first dropping by Silverthorne where I knew a Couchsurfer I stayed with before just the past winter. Even though it was close to Boulder where I was short-term renting an apartment, I wanted to stop by to say hi. We chatted and caught up, and the next day I headed over to Boulder. I got super lucky in that I was living in a 4-bedroom, 4-bathroom apartment for quite cheap all by myself since all the roommates had moved home. I found this spot in a Facebook group, as I do with many short-term rentals.
Boulder was amazing, so close to hiking. I could literally walk ten minutes to get to real mountains for hiking, and altitude there definitely affected me at first but I became quite accustomed to it.
I wasn’t in Colorado for long when at the end of July 2020, we were told voluntary work from home option was lasting the end of June 2021. My first reaction was I’d get live in Washington state during the summer and how happy I was about that.
My Boulder sublet ended the first week of August, so I moved over to a suburb of Denver, Lone Tree. I lived in the basement of a house, and I did have access to the kitchen. It was an awesome space, basically a one-bedroom apartment that was all mine aside from the shared kitchen. The best part was, I got to live with two dogs and a cat with all the fun and none of the responsibilities! One of the dogs basically hung out with me all day, and that was awesome. The hiking around that area was not though.
I was super busy with work that month, and so I’m glad I had the space I did. It was a good life, and I had friends visit during that time too which was cool!
I knew about a week after living there that I would want to go into the mountains for the rest of my Colorado time. I looked for housing but it proved to be a challenge, so I ended up taking up my Couchsurfing host’s offer of renting a room from him in Silverthorne.
Between leaving Lone Tree and moving to Silverthorne, I took a road trip to New Mexico. I spent some time in Colorado Springs and the Great Sand Dunes, but the majority of my time was spent in Taos, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Los Alamos. I had all of my belongings in my car as I did that road trip, and I went Couchsurfing all that way. It was fun, and I really liked New Mexico! Met some cool people too and ate some good food. This was probably the start of my falling off the “fancier” cooking that I had done at home and the beginning of lazy-but-tasty cooking (read: meals that are easy and fast to make but still tasty, like meal prepping omelette vegetable mix on Sunday and making a tasty omelette in five minutes the rest of the week).
At the end of September, I moved into Silverthorne, and I was indeed way closer to the mountains and at a way higher altitude too. Running was hard. It stayed hard, but hiking wasn’t too bad. I did some 14'ers and I could definitely feel the improvement between when I first got to Colorado versus a few months later.
Fall in Colorado was great, but I knew winter was coming. I never intended to stay in Colorado during winter because although I knew my weekend life would be filled with snowboarding, my weekday life would be staying at home since it’s too cold and snowy to hike (I don’t do winter hiking nor cross-country skiing nor really anything else in winter). I head-ached for a long time about where to go for winter, and Hawaii was a serious consideration for many months. I don’t remember why I didn’t decide on Hawaii, but I think the weather in October and November isn’t super great for it. Transportation was also an issue since I didn’t want to long-term rent a car and also didn’t want to ship my car over.
I eventually settled for Arizona, because it’s warm and has hiking. I thought about New Mexico but it looked too cold and doesn’t have an abundance of hiking. Going south to Texas and east from there crossed my mind because I’ve never really explored the southern USA, but it was super flat without hiking so I didn’t go.
I left Silverthorne at the end of October, and what meant to be three days Couchsurfing in Leadville as a pass-through ended up being two and a half weeks. It was almost as if the universe was conspiring for me to stay longer, because every few days, a new situation would arise. First it was snow that stopped me from leaving, and then a rock cracked my windshield. Lastly, I took a few extra days to seriously consider staying to snowboard because I obtained some new information that I didn’t have before, but in the end I decided to leave because it was too early in the season, amongst other reasons.
I went through New Mexico for a few days to break up the drive, and I ended up Couchsurfing in Arizona because short-term furnished rentals there proved to be tricky. In looking for housing and being indecisive about where to live, I also realized there were many places I wanted to explore, and staying in one city might not be the most effective way to do that. So, I stayed for a week or so each in Scottsdale, Chandler, Glendale, Strawberry, and Tucson with different hosts, and it was a lot of fun. I did a weekend trip to Sedona and loved it so much that I decided to stay there for the month of January.
While in Arizona, work told us in mid-December that the option to work from home would be extended until September 2021. My first reaction was hooray, longer time in Washington state! And my second reaction was yay, I can go back to Colorado and hit up more 14ers! I was so looking forward to summer, but I had to live through winter first.
Housing for Sedona was also super difficult because there’s not a lot of supply and somewhat a big demand. I ended up getting a Vrbo for the month of January with a gal who messaged me through a Facebook group.
I’m so incredibly grateful that the living situation worked out, because Sedona was amazing thanks to the close proximity of hikes and the beauty there. I started thinking about what life would be like after returning to the office, and I realized that I would not be able to go run or hike before and after work every day. I didn’t want to let go of this life, and I was not looking forward to going back to NYC to say the least.
Because I stayed in Sedona for a bit of time, I joined some Facebook hiking groups to find hiking buddies, which worked out surprisingly well! I met up multiple times with a few individuals, and I would say I made friends there. I felt slightly bittersweet leaving because I had made friends, but that’s how being on the road goes, everything is temporary. Temporary but somehow permanent, because our lives would be different if we hadn’t met.
Throughout my time in Sedona, I was thinking about where to go next. Hawaii was still on my mind, but I really didn’t know how to deal with the transportation issue and I was concerned that covid would shut down surfing and diving as I needed equipment and guides.
After Sedona, I spent a week Couchsurfing in Prescott for a change in scenery, and then I finally left Arizona after three months of living there. Arizona was never a place I thought about living, but I’m glad I did as Sedona was great and I learned how to rappel and went canyoneering!
I headed off to Las Vegas for a week and Couchsurfed there, but the hiking there was not great. I was pretty unmotivated to go hiking and running there because the scenery sucked!
I was glad to leave, and I went onward to southern Utah in St George for a month. I picked St George because one day, I was searching online for good places to live during the winter and St George came up multiple times. I subsequently checked AllTrails for the city which came out with a lot of hikes in close proximity, so I decided to go. Every time I mentioned St George to people, they’d ask whether I’m going to Zion, and although that was never my reason for living there, I casually went to Zion a few times with other people who wanted to go because it was so close!
I joined a bunch of Facebook hiking groups again and canyoneering too, and I met a few people multiple times, again making friends. I don’t use the word “friend” lightly, and I know had I stayed, I’d continue going hiking and canyoneering with those people.
Towards the end of my stay in St George, I thought about staying longer because there’s so much canyoneering there, but I had more or less run out of trails for the weekdays and although my weekends would be amazing with canyoneering, I wouldn’t be bored during the weekdays. I considered living in Kanab as well but it looked boring.
It was now April, and I wanted to go to Washington state by May. I would have to go through home at some point just to visit and also because it was on the way. I knew I would be bored at home, so I was looking for ways to be at home for just a week or two max. For the rest of April, I was debating between southern California or just going to the Pacific Northwest sooner, but the latter didn’t seem like too great a plan due to weather and rain. So, I decided on southern California because the alternative of friends and warm weather sounded better than either staying at home for a month or going north to rainy weather.
I went to San Diego first, Couchsurfed there and stayed with a friend as well. I forgot how warm southern California is! I went hiking and running of course and went along the beach a few times, and I also went biking with my friend which was a lot of fun.
After a week there, I went to Riverside where I stayed with a high school friend, and I was glad to not be in Los Angeles proper even though that was my initial intent. The few times I did go into actual LA, traffic sucked and I was happy I didn’t have to deal with that on a daily basis. Hiking around Riverside area was alright, nothing spectacular.
I then drove back home and went home for the first time in ten months, the longest amount of time I haven’t been home! I stayed for two weeks, which I thought was a long time. I was initially going to stay for just one, but a friend invited me to spend some time Santa Cruz so that made staying at home less boring. Home was okay, had lots of home-cooked meals and the comfort of familiarity of landscape and friends.
At the end of April, I set off north to Oregon, Couchsurfing a week each in Bend and Portland. Both places were really pretty and awesome, but many places for hiking in both areas were still closed — Bend due to snow and Portland due to fire damage from last year. It was still a great visit, and the PNW is super pretty!
While in Portland in the beginning of May, we were told at work that we could apply for relocation to another office as well as permanent remote work either at the current office location we’re employed or elsewhere! We were always told that we’ll have to return back to the office whenever the pandemic ended, and this was always at the back of my mind but a future issue to resolve. Since the news is relatively new, there’s not a lot of information about what the application process is or whether I’ll have to stay in a place permanently, as most people will probably be applying to relocate but not exactly move around all the time.
Washington state was next, the place I’ve been looking forward to so much since I left Colorado. Winter is finally over, and I’m finally in a location I have for a long time wanted to be in for a short while. Nature here is beautiful, and I can’t wait to go on all the hikes and explore here!
In a year that had so much turmoil, uncertainty, tragedy, and changes to “normal life”, the opportunity came for nomadic living and may be the spark to change my life forever. I’m not entirely sure what the future will look like given the fresh new information of permanent remote work, but I know I’ll continue to move around. I can’t imagine staying in one place for a long time and I keep thinking I’ll run out of fuel but I haven’t yet.
Constantly moving around makes everything fleeting — friendships, familiarity, my bed — but it gives me more opportunities to meet people, try new activities, and ultimately, squash boredom. A lot of the time, I still can’t believe my life and the opportunities I have, but I’m extremely grateful and thankful that I do.
