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For a number of years now. I have been obsessed with the idea of being a “Digital Nomad”. I will have to write more on my ideas of what a “Digital Nomad” is elsewhere. But, in short, for me it means being able to engage in location independent work, so that I can travel all over while living my daily life. That is, I could go to work, pay my bills, cook my meals, and etc., just like I do a home, except that one week I might do this in Glacier National Park, and the next I might be somewhere outside of Denver.
More and more our society is facilitating this. Being in I.T. and working for a liberal company, as do all of my work on a computer, I can really work anywhere I have internet and electricity. I purchased a travel trailer a few years back so, whenever I can afford it, I can travel across the country, taking my home with me. This isn’t free, but it does cost less than staying in a motel and eating out every night.
For the most part, I can accomplish my Digital Nomad dreams with what I have now. Where I do struggle a little, is with taking the important things I use at home. Specifically, my workout weights (which I am not going to talk about here), and my books and writings.
Yes, for my books and my writings, we do live in the digital age and there are electronic options here. But I have struggled with this over the years. On the one hand, digital journals and notebooks require you to have an internet connection and electricity (everything can be stored in the cloud these days). And, there are times when you travel, that you may have neither of these things. Paper versions of these items require neither, but they are location bound. If you forget your journal at home, you will have to write your notes elsewhere.
And with books, you have to buy either the physical or the electronic version (or spend more money to buy both). I am in love with the smell of paper books, and they are so easy to curl up with. But paper can deteriorate over time. Pages may be torn, and so on. Electronic books are more difficult to write notes in the margins. And it is much harder to flip through the pages of an electronic book to find a passage you are trying to remember.
I won’t rehash the entire digital versus physical argument here. Perhaps part of my resistance to digital is the pre-computer era I was born in. But, more and more, I am being converted to the digital side of things. Even with all of the advantages of paper books and journals, you can’t take your entire library with you. Yes, I am sold on keeping my intellectual assets in the cloud.
What I still struggle with is traveling light. I can take my laptops (yes, plural, one for work and one for home) with me. But both of them, despite advertising much more, only have about two hours of batter life when they are not plugged in. And they are a bit cumbersome, weighing maybe 10 pounds each and taking a short while to boot up. And neither is great for reading electronic books on. So I have been struggling with finding a more lightweight solution for this tool. And this is what has led to my current use of a tablet and Bluetooth keyboard.
I will hash through the pros and cons of this setup elsewhere. And I had debated on a Chromebook as another possible solution. But, overall, I am mostly happy with my current configuration. My Amazon Fire HD Tablet cannot do everything I can on a laptop (or even a regular Android tablet). But combined with my blue tooth Typecase Touch keyboard, it is a fairly lightweight equivalent of a laptop. Plus the Fire HD was made for reading Kindle books, and it truly excels on that front. And, most importantly, the battery life is excellent. Both the keyboard and the tablet have a rough battery life of 10-12 hours of use. Finally, being light weight, this is an excellent configuration to crawl into bed with, or throw in a backpack as you go off for a hike.
Ultimately, I still work at adopting the Digital Nomad lifestyle. Much of my current impediment is my existing habits and money. But I continue to hone my tools and incorporate the travel into my lifestyle. The Amazon Fire HD tablet and Typecase Touch keyboard are certainly both enablers of this dream.
