[personlurking]

I'm a VA with one long-time client who can only offer me part-time work, plus the occassional small project related to the work. I also sometimes get a few side jobs from previous employers. For the last several years, I've generally worked an hour per day, M-F.

Living abroad on dollars, and staying out of native-English speaking countries and Nordic ones, it's quite easy to live an average lifestyle on around $600/mo. However, to live like this you end up going through a few dry periods where you really are struggling. Three-fourths of the time, I'm living the same lifestyle as I did in the US, except it's more interesting and I'm not working a full-time job I don't like just to make ends meet.

My free time is spent exploring cities, learning languages which I teach myself and then practice in-country, reading and watching documentaries about everything that interests me (I was born curious), volunteering and working on some online side projects (non-monetary) related to growing my knowledge.

If this were a few hundred years ago, I would be the first person to sign up for overseas voyages, but since there are no more unexplored/untouched lands these days (barring the final frontier), I try to do the next best thing - explore subjects and places that are, in the least, not previously explored by me. Another way to look at it is to say I was born (SF in the early 80s) a few decades late, otherwise I would have grown up hippie and probably fit right in (rather than have friends who make amounts I can't even comprehend).

[DashRattlesnake]

> I'm a VA with one long-time client who can only offer me part-time work, plus the occassional small project related to the work.

What's a VA?

[personlurking]

Virtual Assistant, so I basically just do admin type work online (for a small startup).

[nathan_f77]

Let me know if you're ever in Chiang Mai and would like to get a coffee, or maybe watch a documentary.

[ladytron]

Fascinating!

You are living an interesting life. It is fun to read about how different everyone's experiences are.

[personlurking]

Thanks. I've definitely got to live the life that everyone back home can't, but the reverse is true as well. After doing this for several years and realizing what kind of lifestyle I really want, I'm ready to do a trade-in this year. Contrary to a 10-year old car with 200K miles on it, I'm hoping my value has actually appreciated in this time. The thing is, it's not on a resume, it's not in the form of a house. Any value, real or imagined, is invisible to the naked eye, and so by returning to "real life" it can appear that I've got nothing to show for the last decade.

[ladytron]

I understand. You carry your experiences on your back, in your mind.

I wonder if you COULD document that in a physical way though, maybe build a website using a free host like Wix.com loaded with photos from around the world, organized chronologically by country.

That would be amazing. Maybe even organize a speech about "What I have learned by traveling the world" (with cool photos)

Even if you didn't take photos, you could find photos of the places you lived at on Google.

I think many people would be interested by a talk like that.

I appreciate your experience, and I think employers would also.

You have proven you can relate and survive in many different cultures and you are adaptable. I would imagine that would be valuable in an international position in a big company like Pagonia, or a safari travel company, or even a local company with a diverse workforce.