Storing It

So, I know that you've all gone through and thrown out nearly all your worldly possessions, and are now sitting looking at the rest wondering what to do with it! Here's the other half of that first hurdle.

Where to Put It

The first question to ask is - where is it going to go? This could affect what you decide to store. If you will have relatively easy access, you might store more. If it's going to cost money to store it, you might look harder at your pile.

Ideally, find a relative or lifelong friend who is likely to stay put and is willing to pile it in a corner in their loft or garage. If that person happens to be so generous towards you as to be willing to occasionally fish something out and post it, that could be very useful.

Paying for storage is worth investigating, if only to assure yourself it's not the best solution. To my mind, the potential advantage of commercial storage is that you can choose an ideal location - for me, this would be near central London, my travel hub. This means you can regularly drop by to pick things up without going far out of your way. However, even a small volume of storage space in a big city will cost a significant amount - and the staff will surely not post things for you.

It might be that commercial storage is the only option you've got for all your boxes - in which case, perhaps try budgeting for 6 months to see how things work out for you. After that point I'd suggest going back to the "Getting Rid of All Your Stuff" post and looking at it all again!

Packing it Up

Use boxes, not bags: they're stackable and can be posted. If you use plastic boxes, use the heavy-duty ones that won't end up splitting under weight - but they have some weight in themselves and I don't know if they can be posted as-is.

I used strong cardboard boxes. You can buy great parcel-boxes from post offices, but they tend to be quite small. I went to a big DIY / home-improvement store and bought boxes designed for home-removal - around 50x50x100cm. These needed some careful taping to be suitable for postage but they did the job well.

If you do use cardboard boxes, consider lining them with a large sheet of plastic. Long-term, this will help prevent the contents going mouldy if the box gets damp; also if your box actually gets wet, it's likely to fall apart, but if done right the lining will help keep the contents together. Imagine, if you will, the bottom falling out of a wet box in the delivery warehouse and scattering your apparently irreplaceable crap across the floor. (And if that doesn't trouble you - why are you keeping it?)

Don't overload any one box - try to mix a few heavy things with the lighter stuff in each. The things you expect to actually need at some point - professional books for example - try to keep together.

Record what goes into each box and clearly number it on several sides. Record the general themes (books, clothes, letters...) and any individual items that you think you might want to dig out. Maintain the list until you seal the box. Do something idiot-proof with the list - like email it to yourself in Gmail.

All this takes time but means that in 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years when you remember there was that thing or that book that you need, you can quickly find out which box it is in, you can find the box number without restacking them all, and when you open it up it hasn't gone mouldy. If you're leaving these boxes with friends or family, try to make it easy enough that they can fish things out for you - which can be a real lifesaver.

How to Get It There

You will know a bunch of ways to get your stuff where it's needed, but as I've hinted, the main one I want to call out is post - especially if it's overseas.

One big advantage of posting is that you can do it box by box over time, which gets things out of the way. If you have time, don't pack just to get it there - pack them as above, ready for storage. The chances are you won't bother to systematically repack - so just do it right the first time.

I've found that while posting from the UK to elsewhere is prohibitively expensive, posting from Europe to the UK or anywhere else is often quite reasonable. For example, you can send 31,5 kg in a 120x60x60cm box from Germany to the UK, with some insurance and basic tracking for 40 EUR. In the other direction, it seems to be twice as expensive. I would expect that about half of European countries offer a good deal on this and I'd like to know how it is within the US - perhaps readers can tell me their experiences.

If you consider flying it, remember that the cut-price airlines tend to overcharge on extra weight - a more expensive ticket may save you money on baggage costs. Ultimately though, there's only so much you can wheel into an airport.

My Experience

My stuff is all stored at my parents place. Most of it is in the garage, still in the boxes I first packed it in. However, I actually had to do all this in two passes. First, I had to move out from my apartment in Germany, back to my parents place in the UK. Then, they were moving to a smaller house just a couple of months later! That meant they absolutely did not want dozens of new boxes - and I had to go through all stuff I'd piled up there since my childhood as well!

I ended up re-packing some of the first set of boxes, which damaged them and I didn't maintain the lists I've made. As a result, some boxes are in a poor state and there are a few books and so on that I'd like to find but aren't worth the search. I only labelled one or two sides of each box and that makes it a pain trying to find them in the stack.

After that, I really did get all my worldly possessions down to about a dozen boxes in a garage, and a travel bag.

I did post everything back, travelling fairly light on the flight home. I sent six boxes and it was nearly 8 weeks from posting the first box to posting the last. I believe I spent around 180 Euros on postage.

Although I didn't expect to be travelling quite so much over the following years, I did fully expect to leave a lot of it there for a long time. Around two-thirds is still in the garage, with the other third having migrated indoors to cupboards and shelves as I needed it.

The garage roof for their new house leaks a little, so I'm glad I lined the boxes - I mostly used some really thick plastic we had around from a sofa delivery and so far I haven't found that anything has deteriorated. The longer it stays there, the more glad I am of the efforts I put into packing it up.

My mum helps out in various ways you might hear about in future posts, but a common thing is to post me things. As long as I know roughly were something is, she's happy to find it and get it to me, which has been really, really useful over and over again. My parents place is not quite a home-base, but it is a way-station and a depot.

I recently found a photo of my bedroom, just before I'd moved out, and sure there are things that I miss, but I know they're in those boxes and frankly that's still the best place for them!

Finally, I'd like to admit that my final box from Germany was less well organised. With time ticking away before my flight and after a late night (those last-minute social connections!), I placed a final box in the middle of my flat and ran around throwing into it all the random bits and pieces I still had. No list, no lining, no careful packing, just a cardboard box full of random crap rattling around. The streets were covered in melting snow and the box got wet on the way to the post office, dropped off immediately before I left for the airport. I did fear a sorting-office explosion, but it survived the trip.

So, with that done... we're portable!

YMMV

January 2010: Social Networking

The first events on my return were Christmas in England with my family and then New Year in Scotland with friends. That's a great time of year to be starting afresh and reconnecting.

After that I settled back into my parents place - my home since childhood. It was a welcoming, familiar environment to start working in, with a few friends in the area, but I quickly felt the difference from the large and lively office and ex-pat community I'd had around me in Germany. I was a little surprised to find I enjoyed the quiet and freedom from distraction. I'd been very social before so I had expected to find it quite lonely. This is a pretty common problem for the self-employed and it can be reason enough to go back to a regular office. For me, social as I as before, that feeling took a couple of years to really be felt, by which time there were some new options opening for me.

What I did find was that I should get out of there, go on a trip and visit some friends every second weekend, or I would go stir-crazy. In fact it's an old habit to join up the dots available for any journey like the travelling salesman of proverb, visiting as many friends as possible - and when you can work on the move on a laptop, it opens up a lot more possibilities.

While I was meeting up in person with lots of old UK friends, I was still keeping my other networks going. I found I had friends (mostly through work) scattered across the globe, and the number has gone up dramatically since. Occasional emails go a long way, and whenever I'm travelling somewhere I try to think of who I know in the area and get in touch. You can only keep travelling while you keep enjoying it, and visiting friends is one of the best perks.

Facebook was a lifesaver. I think it would have been incredibly hard to go from having so many friends around me to so few, if it weren't for those status updates - hearing what they were up to, chiming in, posting about my adventures and getting responses to tell me they still cared. Months later, I realised I came to depend on it too much.

But I've always kept in touch with people. I've rarely distinguished between friends and colleagues and keeping in touch with old friends turns out to have served me well. Suddenly I realised I'd been building a wide professional network all these years, and when I asked around, there were people keen to put in a good word for me from the US to Japan. Turning those into suitable paid contracts doesn't just happen, but it's a great start.

First Diggs

I was lucky to be able to stay with family. I wanted to spend more time with them, it was where all my stuff was, it was cheap and I could leave whenever I wanted. It was a good jumping-off point.

When you don't have anything lined up, it's tempting to go somewhere cheap or free - but my advice is not to ignore how productive an environment it is and the distractions that come with it. If you're focussing on just your budget, maybe you're not being ambitious enough. I paid my parents for food and bills, as I didn't want to be a freeloader. However, after a few weeks it seemed my Dad feared it would become permanent - and I thought the best way to reassure him was to get travelling.

If you're able to move back in with family and use their home as a base, that's great. Perhaps you could stay with friends in the same way. However, if it's not a clear paid arrangement, it's likely to get awkward after a while. On top of that, you're not your own master and, above all, that should be one of the goals of portability. So, unless you really find it's an ideal environment for you, don't take the easy option and stop there.

Building a Name

I had some ideas for software projects and I planned to start developing one. However, though a contact, I had got a professional online presentation lined up that would potentially put me in from of a lot of customers. I had never given a presentation to an external audience before, so this was quite a big deal. In fact it was the perfect first step for a growing series of professional presentations I would be giving in the next couple of years. I put a lot of time into it. I'll talk more about presentations in future, but the time I've put into them has perhaps remained fairly constant - my experience has ramped up, but so has the perceived value of the events. Such presentations are key to establishing value and reputation in your field. They can be a big source of stress, but my advice is to spend as much time as you need to feel fully prepared and if people tell you've already done enough - ignore them.

In this case, I spent a few days preparing a software demo of the technique I was going to talk about, integrating it with a real and familiar application; and also going through slides as a dry-run. Insomnia has been a big problem for me, so it wasn't too surprising that I got very little sleep the night before, and it affected me worse than you might expect. I felt a wreck - running on coffee and adrenaline - and my performance suffered, causing a lot of umming and arring (which can ruin a presentation). However,  all the preparation I'd put in meant I didn't get totally stuck. I felt I'd done a poor job and was very nervous to review the results! But it seems it was good enough - I've had a couple of clients since talk about that presentation, and I was accepted for a conference presentation later by the same team. It was indeed a good first step.

In presenting yourself as a professional, there are a few things that you need if you're going to be taken seriously. In the old days, my understanding is that this included a good business card and a phone number with an answering machine. Now, you primarily need a simple professional website.

People will occasionally find your website and contact you from nowhere. So far I have still had very few people contact be from nowhere because of my website, and most of those went nowhere - the real business all came through word of mouth. The reason for having one is mainly to provide existing contacts with basic information about you and a professional impression. Most of you will know the feeling of following a random link and deciding in half a second that the page is a waste of your time. You need to pass that test.

I'd already got hold of appropriate domain names. I'm a programmer, I could certainly have built a website myself. However, I knew very little web technology  and I knew I was going to be very busy with all this moving and the presentation. And, in practice. anything takes a long time when you have no experience of it. I asked my brother to do it, who had done a little web contracting before. This helped me get something up and running.

Business cards are a nice-to-have, for occasions when you're meeting new contacts offline. Get some if you're going to conferences - simple and professional, with just your name, email and web address.

Setting Up

I also started looking for an accountant. This was something that everyone told me would be easy and I didn't believe them. Three years later, I still don't think it is easy. The problem is that everyone sees you as a very small business and so assumes you can't be much trouble. Then when you're earning dollars and euros and you're doing it in different places and people are asking for the right form to be filled out and you do not have time to figure it all out yourself… then you might find that a small local firm doesn't have the experience. I'll be discussing this in detail in a future post.

I went to some local business seminars. Actually, that's an exaggeration. I intended to go to several, made it to one - very late - and when I left I was still unconvinced that I needed a "business plan", since I didn't know what I was going to do and I wanted to take advantage of whatever opportunities came why way - so how could I possibly plan? Again, the seminars included some wise words from experienced people, but their idea of a small business seemed worlds apart from my attitude to it.

I needed a simple computer to work on and I didn't actually have anything suitable. I threw something cheap from component parts at a minimum spec. At this time, I didn't have a laptop at all and I expected to need to upgrade to something quite powerful later.

Rounding up

This was a period of great optimism and motivation, with endless possibilities and wonderful opportunities ready for the taking.

I was not actively looking for work, as I already had some work lined up with my old company - you'll hear more about that.

My advice is: enjoy this time. If you've been in a job for a while, or tied down some other way, take advantage of this independence, the energy of change, and the blank slate. Whatever plans you have, they can probably wait a little while, and right now you've got fewer ties, fewer concrete plans, fewer habits and commitments than you've probably had in quite a while.

It won't always be like that: you will start building them all up again and that's natural and good. But savour it while you can.

Get Rid of All of Your Stuff

If you're going to be truly portable, you need to get rid of all your stuff.

This isn't the same as moving house, or even moving country as I was, because you're preparing to keep moving for an extended period of time. You are dividing your stuff into: get rid of it, store it, or carry it.

Getting rid of it is great. There is a certain lightness of existence realised when you can go from "I live here" to "my life is in this suitcase" in a couple of hours. In the last century, the cynics told us this was a world obsessed with material things. This century, it's the digital things we're hung up on. You can do without the rest for a while.

Storing it is where we admit we are attached to some of our possessions and we don't plan to travel forever. It's also a handy get-out clause for all of us without the guts to throw away everything we should.

Carrying it is the category you shouldn't bother to think about much at this stage. These are the things you can fit in a bag or two and walk with unaided to the airport and it will take time to refine. For now, just think about the things you'll need while you're moving out and the things you'll need access to in the following days.

I have enough to say about these that I'm going to split it into a couple of posts. Here's the leader.

Get rid of it

Most people find this hard to do (myself included) and end up hanging onto more stuff than they need. Here are questions that may help you whittle it down.

Do I use this?

If it seems useful but you haven't actually used it in 6 months, chances are you don't need it. Try to be brutal. If you use it all the time, then it's no use in storage: are you prepared to actually cart it around with you all the time?

Is it replaceable?

Yes, you are sure you will need it. However, you're not sure when and therefore you are not sure where. Is it something generic, easily replaced? If that seems like a waste of money then consider: what it will cost to transport and to store it properly; how much could you get by selling it; how much it will cost to get it where you need it. If Amazon can just sell you a brand new one and deliver it wherever you need it for free, isn't that worth something?

If I store it, will it still work when I need it?

A lot of things become less useful over time when they're stored away. Some physically deteriorate (especially if not prepared properly) or some things - especially technological things - date badly. Or it may simply be that when you need it, you'll need it quickly and you won't want to travel to dig it out of storage. These things - whatever they're worth, there's just no point keeping.

But it's of great sentimental value!

Those little nicknacks you don't really need but can't bear to throw away - the present from your grandmother, the rug you bought on holiday, the special postcard, that painting your friend made for you. That's fine - just try to keep it to the small things! Store them all away where they won't clutter up your life - until you give up your travelling ways (in about 40 posts' time?) and you can take them all out and help you form a home.

And remember - you will have just a few things that are quite unique and remind you of people, places and times that you may never see again. Discard your stuff, but not your life.


And there are a couple of special cases...

Books, CDs, DVDs

CDs are already on the way out as I write this and (unlike vinyl) as a physical object they just feel cheap and can't claim to be a definitive reproduction in any way. Sell or give them all away. Sign up to Spotify (though I have moral qualms) or if you really must and have time, rip them all to MP3.

DVDs will surely be dead in a couple of years time and they won't be replaced by Blu-Ray, you'll just be streaming them. Chances are you already have loads of movies and TV series on your hard drive. By the time you want these again, they'll look like beta-max. Get rid of them and get them from iTunes, LoveFilm, Netflix or simply BitTorrent when you want them.

Books - these are different. In some sense they're already obsolete but the design has barely changed in hundreds of years and people still think a physical book is special. Buy a Kindle or the like, because you really cannot carry many books any other way. The pulp, ditch. Any expensive, work-related books, put them somewhere easily accessible if you can. Store the rest and, like me, dream of a beautiful library in your future.

Paper

You will have various official bits of paper, receipts, manuals and - if you're anything like me - hundreds of bits of paper with possibly-incredibly-important scrawlings on them. Bear in mind that manuals can usually be found as PDFs on the Internet. Also, consider getting a scanner and reducing papers to a JPEG.

How do I get rid of it?

As hinted above, there are loads of ways to get rid of your stuff when you've decided to do so, some of them even without losing it: you can sell it, give it away, bin it, recycle it, scan it, rip it, summarise it... Like compressing a data file or a video, how far you can compress it partly depends on how much time you have available.

I was lucky enough to have a popular office mailing list where people often posted things they wanted to sell. I sold everything from electronics to furniture that way. Also, if you are in contact with whoever will move into your place when you are gone, ask them if they want anything. Give them a discount rate, since the very easiest thing to do with your stuff is to leave it exactly where it is.

My experience

I can honestly say, a couple of years later, that there's nothing I got rid of that I regret. That means I didn't throw enough stuff away!

I have not yet set up a new home, so in theory I might one day be glad of... the huge old projector I never used, the amplifier and speakers that I liked so much, the whisky cabinet that was my favourite piece of furniture, the expensive mattress. But I doubt I'm going to much care. The projector was already very old. The amp and speakers were pretty standard items really, which I would probably enjoy shopping to replace. The whisky cabinet was from IKEA. A mattress is a real pain to transport or store.

What I can say I should have gotten rid of: all my computers. This was obviously a weakness for me at the time, based on the idea of lots of small, low-power computers set up around a house doing useful or cool things. So I boxed up and sent back a couple of old laptops, two mini-PCs, one or two flat-screen monitors... Then this was added to the similar stuff I'd already had stored away in the UK. When I finally came to go through these boxes some months later, it became a running joke for me, as to how many computers the next box would contain.

None of those mini-PCs, laptops or screens have been any use to me since and they'll soon be museum pieces - I would have been better to simply strip out the hard drives and give the rest away. To be fair, I did not expect to be without a house to use them for so long, when I was packing. But, after all, the Raspberry Pi has been invented since then!

Also, I kept far too many books that I did not really care about, just because I thought they'd help complete my dream library. Turns out, after being portable for so long, I hate the idea of owning any book (or anything else physical) that I don't really think is useful or awesome.

The things I'm reminded of are the reindeer-skin rug I bought in Stockholm, the posters and paintings, the statuette, the books. These things I look forward to unpacking one day.

YMMV


Read on to find out what to do with the stuff you're left with!

[Updates]
1/09/12: Expanded "My experience" section
20/01/13: Added re books

Leaving Your Home, Leaving Your Job

A home will hold you back

The chances are that you're living in a house or apartment where you have a long-term rental contract. If by some chance you're actually already footloose - well done, you can skip ahead! If not - it's got to go...

Having a base can be very useful, but when you add up all the maintenance costs it is a big financial burden. You will find yourself working to pay for something you're not using - and discouraged from travelling for that reason. Relying on temporary accommodation can be surprisingly cost effective and opens up a lot of possibilities. (Future post: Accommodation)

If you actually own your home already, that's fantastic: rent it out. I have no experience here but my understanding is that it should pay for any mortgage. Do it through an agent - otherwise you never know when you'll be required to turn up as a landlord. Consider setting aside a locked cupboard or some loft space or a shed for your own long-term storage that you can visit when you need to.

In my case everything to do with the apartment in Germany had to be taken care of - contracts for the place itself, utilities and so on - and in a language I still hadn't mastered. It was a shared apartment which helped a lot: only a few things were in my name, the whole flat did not have to be cleared, the contract needed amending but could continue, most of the furniture were joint purchases and many things I could sell or pass on to my flatmates. However, it still took a huge amount of time and the admin wasn't complete until weeks after I left. Some of this was because I was leaving a foreign country, and one where I was not fluent in the language - if that's you, don't underestimate how much trouble this can be.

I have never taken a formal rental or arranged utilities since, even in my home country of the UK - they make no sense on my timescales. If you go abroad with work, even for months at a time, look for alternatives.

Most jobs are not portable

This blog is about being a technology professional on the move and if you're the target audience, you probably already have a good, permanent employment contract that you're thinking of leaving, or you've recently left. If you're just starting out and you want to do it portably, that's a different road and perhaps a harder one.

Assuming you've decided to leave a long-term job for whatever reasons, there is some useful preparation you can do to lay groundwork for a portable career. I have to admit, I didn't do this out of a clear plan. Rather, it was just important to me to leave on good terms, to keep doors open where possible, to make the most of my experience to date and to start finding new opportunities.

As I've discussed in an introductory post, I am a technology specialist. I realised that my employer would really miss my experience. I talked to them about being available for occasional contract work soon after i gave my notice, and I signed a contract the day I left.

If this might apply to you then make very sure you explore it because there are a lot of benefits to such an arrangement. It instills a great deal of confidence in prospective employers if they know that you were valued enough to be offered part-time work. It's a great basis for keeping future contacts and networking. And if that work comes through, it will give you some confidence and a little security while you're finding your feet - it certainly did for me. If you're fed up with your work or your employer, try to see beyond that and keep the door open without concrete commitment.

If it's not something you can do - and I know of cases where employers simply won't consider it regardless of value - then still make a point of firming up your contacts in your company. Most of my best clients to date have come from word of mouth based on those initial contacts and I think that's a common experience.

I got in touch with a good jobs agency for my field and made sure they knew I was available. I wasn't looking for contracts of even 6 months in length so I didn't expect anything to come of it, but in fact I did take a contract in the end. If you just might take something then call them - but be very honest about what you're looking for. (Future post: Finding Clients)

If you're a technology specialist, you've probably got a wealth of accumulated notes, emails and reference material at work. If you continue to work in a related field, you are likely to really miss these. Take the time to go through these and take whatever you can with you in some form. That might simply be forwarding yourself a list of Internet links or might be making notes on some ideas you had. Don't be tempted to take anything confidential or that violates your contract - especially as an independent, trust is everything.

View your current job as a launch pad for a new, portable career.

YMMV

December 2009: Leaving

Some of the posts in this blog are a retrospective account of my own experience.  Each post will be about one month and I'll post every fortnight when I can. This is the first post in the series.

I've been told that I set a new record for the number of leaving parties. I find that hard to believe - I had stiff competition - but certainly I knew there were a lot of people I was going to miss and I wanted to say goodbye properly to them all. I had moved to Germany to join a company dominated by ex-pats, which had always been very social and I'd been very active in that. It did strike me that I might find working alone very hard for that reason (Future post: Working Alone).

Deciding to leave Germany and go it alone - that's a big topic all of it's own that I'll not go into here, or I'll never get started (Future post: Is It For Me?) Suffice to say that life had thrown me a couple of months to think, travel and put things in perspective and this was the conclusion I reached. There had been a building feeling for a long time that I was tired of talking about the things I believed I could do, without doing them and the experiences I wanted to have that weren't happening. If you can do what you want to do part-time, around a permanent job, I've heard a lot of people recommend that and more power to you. I'd found that wasn't working.

I felt my life had been "on hold" for a long time and I needed to get it on the move again because I had a lot of catching up to do. That was pretty much the single driving motivation behind the next two years!

I sent the first of my stuff home on the 3rd of November and I flew home about 6 weeks later, just before Christmas. Going from all the collected possessions of a settled existence to the few essentials of a peripatetic lifestyle takes some work (Future Posts: Getting Rid Of Your Stuff and Storing It).

But apart from packing, what else did I do in that time?

For a start, I made some great new friends! The thing is, when you're about to leave is when life gets exciting. At least, that's the case for me, I can't help thinking it should apply to everyone and I don't think there's anything remarkable about it either. You want to make the most of your time and suddenly you know that if you don't do it now - chances are you never will. I went to the parties I had turned down, I saw the sights I hadn't visited, I stayed to chat with the neighbours I'd never talked to, and this somewhat reserved soul got a lot bolder with women. (Yes - as I expect you've assumed by now, I was single. Future Post: Relationships)

In short, in those weeks I did more living than I'd done there in the previous year. It was a good way to finish - and a good start.

But what about all the boring stuff? And indeed, the important stuff.

There was a lot to be taken care of, in packing up and leaving my apartment but also in preparing for my new life and work. The next few posts describe my experience of that and give a few tips.

One final bit of preparation: organising my plans for Christmas and New Year. It's the best time of year to catch up with friends and family in the UK and I made the most of it.

I didn't make any New Year resolutions - everything I had been doing up to that point was putting in motion a whole new chapter in my life. And - I should make it clear now! - I had a lot of ideas about what I was going to do with it, but I didn't plan to spend all this time as an itinerant programmer. But that's what happened. I hope you'll enjoy my account - and maybe learn something useful to you along the way.

YMMV

Portable Code: About Me

So, who am I to talk about this anyway and what experience do I have?

I'm a computing professional, a specialist programmer in a particularly dynamic industry, with a good degree and a decade of quite varied experience behind me. I think that in my case, the key words there are "computing", "professional" and "specialist" - but I'll talk about that in future posts.

I've been pretty footloose since I left university. My first job saw me bounce back and forth between Australia and the UK - which I didn't set out to do, it just happened that way. Then I had my "settled" period of living in continental Europe in the same flat for 4 years. My working life there was intense at times, but steady and included very little travel. I jumped on a train or plane as often as I could for long weekends in European cities.

I'd always found travelling to be beneficial for my state of mind: relaxing, stimulating, refreshing. Whatever my worries at work or at home, once I set off with a bag I left it all behind me. That was something I lost over time as an itinerant and that I've been slowly recovering of late. If you find travel stressful this blog might help you, but I wouldn't recommend going all the way. For me, travel can or should be calm - time out from the world.

This blog begins when I left my regular job and moved back to the UK, to set up as an independent. Why did I do that and did I plan to become an itinerant? I left because I felt life was passing me by: I had too many dreams that I wasn't able to realise, both at work and in life. What I planned was to give a few of those my best shot until my savings ran out and I had to return to a regular job.

What actually happened? Well, read this blog and you'll find out. But here's the summary:

• I worked from around a dozen cities on three continents, visited many more
• Contracted with a couple of very big firms in my industry
• Earned mostly euros and dollars, even while based in the UK
• Gained a lot of new experience, contacts, CV points
• Kept no accommodation longer than 5 months

My friends and family have long since got used to it. They tend to start conversations by asking where I am. And a few of them, I doubt I could have done it without.

It's often been intense, there's been moments of real elation and lows as well. I feel like I've been lucky, but also that I've been much more able to take advantage of the opportunities that have come my way. There've been worries and stresses and difficulties. It's never been boring.

And what about now?

Well, I think that one reason I'm writing this blog now is because I think it's time to slow down, to settle a little.  I've found new goals in work and life and I think I can achieve more by staying put. I think my days as a true itinerant are numbered.

Having said that: in 6 weeks time I'll be visiting Europe, then probably the US and in October I don't know where I'll be - but I'm looking forward to staying there a while.

YMMV.

Portable Code: Intention

I've wanted to write a blog about my travels as an independent programmer for more than a year, but I wanted to be really sure about why I wanted to write about it. (You know, I think a few more bloggers could ask themselves that.) The answer is that I think people will find it useful. More and more of us are living highly mobile lives, while becoming ever more dependant on technology. If you already travel a lot, you might find some ways to do so more effectively and more freely. If you're feeling tied-down, this blog might just be the inspiration to cut yourself free.

It's definately not for everyone, not for every time in your life and it comes with risks, drawbacks and compromises. But ultimately I think the world would be a better, more interesting place if a few more people tried it.

What this blog is:

• Food for thought for any tech professional with itchy feet
• Practical tips for anyone technical who travels a lot
• Advice for those who are thinking about taking the leap

This blog is not:

• A travel blog
• In any way about my work itself
• Any help whatsoever in writing platform-independant code

You can find out a little about me in my next post.

YMMV.