From Whoa to Go

A girlfriend, Kym, and I were skyping on Monday, discussing goals and life’s directions; more specifically her own. I mentioned in passing that I was proud of myself for having achieved mine but it wasn’t until later that I realised that I am only half way there.

The goal I created as a naive, nine year old was to ‘travel, write and get paid to do it.’ Well, I’ve got the travel ball rolling; on June 13th I’ll have been away from Australia for 2 years, I’m now living in Harbin, in China’s far north, and working as an ESL Teacher while also studying Chinese language and my Masters of TESOL. I’m busy and passionate about what I do but it’s not what I want to be doing with the rest of my life; teaching English was never going to be challenging enough for me.

It wasn’t until I was reading my RSS feeds that I came across a link, several in fact (details in a later post), about a new ‘category’ of traveler, being Location Independent. The more I read, the more I came to realise that this is my category, this is where I belong.

I have always considered myself the professional traveller but I never considered myself along the same lines of a backpacker, a nomad, someone constantly on the move, someone who is passionate about seeing every inch of the Earth. I’m happiest living in foreign countries, staying a while, learning the language, and being a part of something greater and then moving on.

Being Location Independent is exactly who I am. Now to just get there…

Here is who I am now:

1. I’m using WordPress on Firefox with a firewall proxy running (China has blocked WordPress- freedom of speech isn’t free here). It’s driving me insane because the functionality of WordPress is greatly reduced, expect typo’s until I can find an outside-China editor, but I do love WordPress, especially as I can host a number of sites simultaneously. See my other creative writing site: Moments to Remember, which is my story written in third- person.

2. My ESL Teaching role consumes 25-30hours per week, my Masters of TESOL only 5 hours per week (for now), my Chinese lessons are 6 hours a week, RSS feed reading 1 hour a day, I’m sleeping 6-8 hours a day. The point to this; scheduling. I need to make sure I’m using my time effectively.

3. I’m broke. Okay so I’ve got a few thousand RMB saved and no debt but I’m far from being financially secure. I want the security to know I’m making two incomes; one here and one online. I want to create investments that build on each other and I won’t get that on an ESL salary.

4. I’m goal driven and I will post both my short term and long term goals in an additional page in due course, noting throughout this process how I’m going with it all. I want this site to be a candid demonstration of exactly what it will take me to achieve my goal of being Location Independent. I will define later what being Location Independent means exactly and how I fit into this mold.

5. Initial writing plans include: writing for my own sites and building their networks, writing for Matador in the aim to become their Harbin Location Expert, sourcing other freelance work through the Monster List of Freelance Job Sites, and querying writing for a Harbin local website, The Haerbinger Magazine.

6. And lastly, I want to create Continuous Momentum, something I’ll define in a later post.

Ciao,
Caron.