28 March 2024

Untethered: Living the digital nomad life in an uncertain world

| Rama Gaind
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book cover

Untethered: Living the digital nomad life in an uncertain world outlines exactly what it takes to engineer a digital nomad lifestyle in a post-pandemic world. Photo: Supplied.

What an amazing life it must be to travel to many countries and have the chance to live and work in places such as China, Spain, Poland, Hungary, Asia, the Caribbean and Europe. Are you interested?

Then here’s your chance to learn exactly what it takes to mastermind a digital nomad lifestyle in a post-pandemic world from someone who has been living the life for more than seven years!

Adventurous 17-year-old Nathan James Thomas from New Zealand purchased a ticket for 20,000 kilometres on the Greyhound bus network in Australia. From there his travel journey began, moving from country to country.

You need to be eager and earnest, willing to learn with goals to see the world, work as you travel and engineer lives of freedom. How does one program oneself into this amazing, promised digital nomad lifestyle? Answers can be hard to find, but Untethered starts with the basics, and you will receive a direct, unvarnished account of what being a digital nomad is actually like in an uncertain world.

Nathan guides you through the process and it will help you decide whether this lifestyle is really for you, giving an insight. With travel stories and case studies interlaced with clear, real-world guidance, you will equip yourself with the tools to create your very own special-location, self-supporting lifestyle.

It presents a vision of travel that is both thought-provoking and humbling, an experience not of finding yourself, but of losing yourself and becoming immersed in the places where you find yourself.

This book contains stories from digital nomads and their subjective experiences of travelling domestically and overseas, and how the internet keeps them connected to jobs, co-workers and clients as well as highlighting how each started out and the obstacles they have faced along the way.

For Nathan, travel has become his obsession; it is not a break from life but a way of life. He founded the Intrepid Times in 2014 as a vehicle for sharing stories from the road. Let a veteran digital nomad lead you through this new territory.

“You will meet various other ‘digital nomads’ who have found their own paths to location-independent living,” Nathan said. “You will learn how entrepreneurs (who did not simply get lucky) deliberately created lifestyle businesses that they could operate remotely, and you’ll learn the steps to take and the skills required to emulate them, if you choose to do so.

“You will also meet remote workers, many of whom were empowered by recent shifts in the workplace driven by the global pandemic, who have found themselves liberated from the office and free to work from wherever they choose.

”You’ll encounter creatives who are not passionate about money but have found a way to make a living from their chosen craft or art form, at least enough to keep the lights on and the suitcase packed.”

Nathan gives an honest take on what the so-called ”digital nomad revolution” has actually led to.

“We’ll talk about both the good (the chance meetings in bars that lead to future clients, the exotic countries, exhilarating freedom and adventure) and the bad (the administration, the anxiety of trying to figure out the logistics of an unconventional life, the constant need to be ‘plugged in’) and the realisation that if you manage to work from anywhere, then you may just end up working from everywhere.”

By the end of Untethered, you will know whether or not the digital nomad life – or some slice of it – is right for you. Should you decide that it is, then you will understand how to go about it based on your unique skills, goals, references and motivations.

“I do believe that we are living in a unique moment where access to the world is more available than most people realise, and that when we separate our concepts of identity from the place where we were born, we can become more interesting, open-minded and thoughtful people.”

Untethered: Living the digital nomad life in an uncertain world, by Nathan James Thomas, Exisle Publishing, $34.99

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