Recently LocationIndependentProfessionals.com asked why we want to be location independent. “Whatever you’re looking for you can find where you are.” It’s simply not true.
We can get what we want and need where we are — but not with a local solution. Try a psychic one.
Take this week’s short and balmy trip to Manhattan. I acted as a technology mule, bringing iPads to poor, under-served early adopters here in Istanbul, and reconnected with friends doing work I admire on scales and with methods I aspire to. My peers.
- Popped in for dinner at Babbo, one of America’s best restaurants, where a pal worked his way up to general manager.
- Barbecued (veggie burgers, of course) with a television personality looking to demystify America’s health through an East-West approach, and a longtime colleague whose fifth appearance on the New York Times bestseller list comes with her solo effort on the importance of strong relationships.
- Cocktailed with a fellow Berkeleyan and writing buddy who just sold her haunted-by-a-Beat-writer THE GHOST OF GREENWICH VILLAGE.
- Strolled the hipster hoods of Brooklyn with international designers energized by new iPhone and iPad apps.
- Lunched with a former roomie now French radio producer at the United Nations who’s branching into multimedia, like her video with my favorite Beninese singer and human rights activist Angelique Kidjo to demand rape be prosecuted as a war crime.
Right up my alley. But I may never live there again. Most of us cannot (always) go somewhere on the ground where all our people and our perfect lifestyle exist. We must find that psychically — our “global niche“.
The meaning and purpose of location independence and digital nomadism is to live and work autonomously. Although it evokes mobility, it’s especially crucial for long term living situations: to find a way to get what you want and need despite the limitations of your location. Much like the cross-national quandary posed at expat+HAREM — “are you a global citizen by choice, or necessity?” — out of necessity to live and work to my abilities I aim to be independent of my specific location.
Are you location independent by choice, or necessity? Where and why?
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Anastasia M. Ashman
2010 Capital of Culture monthly feature of best Istanbul links
Well, I consider myself location independent by half-conscious choice. I just wanted to get out of my home country. Although Taiwan was practically the only solution presented when I made the leap, there was a reason why I chose Taiwan, and more importantly, why I stuck with this small island and will do so for the foreseeable future. (Of course I found it out in hindsight.) Isn’t it more important to understand why we are at where we are now (or not now), than merely listing the potential next destination? I am saying this to myself, 10 years ago…
Aside from the few who choose mobility over settling down, most of us are looking for a place, or state, that makes us comfortable being ourselves. Naval-gazing over our choice of location makes us feel better at being ourselves, or – at choosing an even better place?
Thanks Isao. Yes, psychic location independence is a state of being…a lifestyle and an outlook that allows us to feel good where we happen to be. It’s our “better place”.
In being a proudly independent woman, my first choice (aha! there it is!) would be to say “by choice”. I made a conscious decision to move to Norway to fulfill a dream of my then-fiance’s and to satisfy a curiosity I had about one of the few countries refusing to become part of the EU. But if I reexamine that choice more closely, I have to admit it may have been a “choice” borne out of necessity. As a lifelong expat, I’ve never tried or even wanted to live somewhere “forever”. I don’t know anything else. If being an expat is part of my identity, can I really say it’s a choice? These boots are made for walkin’ and Norway may just be another stop on the trail.
[...] …a sense of ourselves that is both unique and as big as we can be. Call it psychic location independence. [...]