AnywhereMan

Sometimes living the Anywhere Lifestyle means that you can live somewhere exotic like a tropical island or beachfront condo. Sometimes it means you can live your life as a digital nomad, constantly moving from place to place and taking your career with you. Sometimes it means you can live in a cabin right next to your favorite lake.

For me, it means I can live in a smaller community, work from home, spend lots of time with my family, have access to awesome outdoor recreation, and run into friends at the grocery store. It doesn’t have to seem exciting. Simply being able to exist in a place where you want is a great thing in itself.

Where do YOU want to be? Are you there now? Where do you see the Anywhere Lifestyle taking you in the next few years?

It’s all fun and games until someone pees their pants.

I like to keep it real here on AnywhereMan. I don’t want you getting any inaccurate ideas about the Anywhere Lifestyle and what it entails for me.

I’ve mentioned in the past that one of the things that has been nice about working from home is the ability for my wife to leave during the day if she needs. Today she had some errands to run including dropping daughter #1 off at pre-school. She asked if I’d be able to keep an eye on daughter #2 for a few hours.

Easy. Piece of cake.

Until five minutes after the departure of my beautiful bride.

I went downstairs to my office to check on something and right way I hear my daughter in the kitchen yelling “Pottie! Pottie!”

Seriously, FIVE MINUTES after her mother left.

Anyways, at least it was just pee. Kudos to my wife who deals with this stuff on a daily basis, but I’m trying to run a business here!

Reminder to myself: It’s a home first. My family’s home. Everything else, including a career, is second to that.

I’m a freelancer. I’m also a husband and a father.  My wife stays at home with our kids and she’s a great mom. Sometimes she needs to get out of the house to get groceries, take pictures, or go for a run. It’s been nice for her that I’m usually at home to keep an eye on the kids so she doesn’t need to load them up and bring them with. 

I know that many of you are parents, and if your kids are pre-school age, this is yet another advantage of the Work Anywhere lifestyle.  While working from home definitely has its negative aspects, being available as a part-time daycare provider has been a good thing.

Obviously my kids agree. I’m like a human jungle gym.

NOTE: Sorry about the crappy audio on this one again. The level meter says I’m okay, but something is distorting the signal. Might be time for a clip on mic.

While I was at BizConf last week, I ended up talking to a guy who was living a similar lifestyle to mine: husband and father of young kids who works from home running his own business. We got onto the topic of how our careers really give us the flexibility to work pretty much wherever we want. He said that his family recently spent a few weeks in the mountains and he was able to work remotely and keep up with his business duties, all while getting some vacation time in as well.  

He then told me about a site called LessCabinFever where you can actually swap houses with other folks who are looking to do the same thing.  Today I checked it out and thought it looked pretty cool even though there aren’t many listings on there at this point. I expect the listing quantity to grow as this is a great idea, especially for us Work Anywhere folks.  

You’ll now see my Grand Rapids home listed among the few listings they’ve got up.  Setting up an account and creating the listing was super easy and I’ll keep you posted on any swaps I make in the future.  After a week in Florida, I’m totally up for escaping to warmer areas in the future (especially in the winter!).