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<\/p>\nIt was May 2012, Boston was becoming extremely boring, and the thought it might be time to expand my horizons began to grow inside my head.\u00a0 Still remaining as a \u201cwork from home\u201d employee and having traveled throughout most of the United States with not so much as a hiccup in missing calls or people asking \u201cHey, where are you working from today?\u201d\u00a0 Most wouldn\u2019t expect any type of a response outside \u201cmy living room\u201d or \u201cthe kitchen table\u201d since that is what everyone was doing and to think an employee was winding up roads in New England on an Italian sport bike or hanging out in Haight Ashbury in a coffee shop while leading a project team call was unthinkable. Now, many will read this and think I wasn\u2019t working and just touring the country while attending a call here and there.\u00a0 While that perspective isn\u2019t totally wrong, it isn\u2019t fully accurate, either. My organization was giving me awards every quarter, to include project manager of the year.\u00a0 While this was all happening, our company was constantly laying people off to the point where morale was extremely low.<\/p>\n
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Even with my newfound freedom I felt myself being dragged into the depths of depression due to the constant threat of layoffs. It was time to take this working from home to the next level.\u00a0 That being the \u201cwhat if I don\u2019t have a home\u201d plan.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t much of a plan, but more of an execution of an idea born over a few beers in a dark Boston bar two years earlier.<\/p>\n
As with everything in life the first step is the scariest, but also the most critical to set the wheels in motion.\u00a0 After thinking this over for a bit the most effective way to ensure I followed through with my plan of setting myself free geographically was to rent out my Boston condo.\u00a0 This was easier than I expected, and had it rented through a management company in under two weeks.\u00a0 June 1st<\/sup> my new tenant would move in.\u00a0 This was it.\u00a0 I was going to not have a home for at least a year. A timeline was now drawn for me to sell everything I owned and find out where my new \u201chome\u201d would be.<\/p>\n Somehow, I knew that returning to Boston wasn\u2019t going to be in the cards.\u00a0 Having a massive fire sale seemed the best way to clear my life of material possessions that were now just clutter, and there was a lot of clutter to be cleared.\u00a0 With time being short it was an emotionless task to sell, donate, and give away almost everything.\u00a0 Paying for a storage unit for an unknown amount of time seemed pointless.<\/p>\n Once everything I owned was condensed into a small box of keepsakes and my travel backpack it was time to decide where to go.\u00a0 As I looked around the condo (which echoed because it was empty), I was left with the question that I probably should have started with before taking all these drastic actions.\u00a0 Where the Hell am I going to go?\u00a0 This is one of those \u201cI may have screwed up\u201d moments.<\/p>\n Originally the semi sorta kinda plan was to just drive around the United States and spend a month or so in each state and see what became of it.\u00a0 As I was looking at a map figuring out a few first stops on my new journey my phone rang.\u00a0 It was a 617 Boston number and instantly thought it was a spam call.\u00a0 Well, this is one call I am glad I didn\u2019t push to voicemail.\u00a0 It was one of my relatives whom I had gifted a Magic Jack plug a year or so ago.\u00a0 He was calling to catch up and let me know he was had just moved to a house in the jungles of Nicaragua and had internet service that was just as fast as in the USA.\u00a0 My jaw dropped and I threw the map of the United States into the trash can that was already overflowing with trinkets and other items that I felt would never be needed again.<\/p>\n Feeling so lost in the United States (on many levels), a new environment would not only be healthy mentally for me but might propel my work motivation (which was currently nonexistent).\u00a0 Right about this time most of my friends and family were sure I had lost my mind.\u00a0 Going to Nicaragua on a one-way flight for an undetermined amount of time seemed reckless and a sure way to lose my job (some even felt my life would be in jeopardy).<\/p>\n Having previously traveled much of Central America, I knew most of these concerns were unfounded or pulled from a news article where one person had a bad experience.\u00a0 The news never really covers the thousands who traveled to this part of the world and had nothing but wonderful things to say about the people, the culture, and the sights that many will never know.\u00a0 Having grown up in Maine (where for many fear to even venture to Boston) it was incomprehensible for them that I would move to Nicaragua.<\/p>\n As I arrived in Maine, I parked the Ducati in the garage, closed the door, and wondered when I would next see that beautiful machine.\u00a0 Little did I know that it would be a year and a half before I would hear the magical dry clutch clacking again. Later that day I boarded a flight out of Logan Airport.\u00a0 With reality setting in I stared out the window.\u00a0 I was really doing this. Nicaragua was going to be my new home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Mike Huber It was May 2012, Boston was becoming extremely boring, and the thought it might be time to expand my horizons began to grow inside my head.\u00a0 Still remaining as a \u201cwork from home\u201d employee and having traveled throughout most of the United States with not so much as a hiccup in missing … Continue reading “Life as a Digital Nomad: Part II (Exiting the Wheel)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":22376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[392,96,89],"tags":[1250,3564,3561,377,3565,3563,3562],"class_list":["post-22374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-back-in-the-day","category-feel-good-stuff","category-motorcycle-adventure-ride","tag-82nd-airborne","tag-boston","tag-digital-nomad","tag-ducati","tag-maine","tag-nicaragua","tag-working-remotely"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Ducati_1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22374"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22382,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22374\/revisions\/22382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Ducati_3.jpg\")
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