Lessons Learned: A Reflection on 2021

2021 was my first full calendar year as a nomad. I spent time in 28 cities in 11 different countries on 3 separate continents, and you can see exactly where I’ve been and when with this interactive Google map.

In that time of traveling and working as a digital nomad during a global pandemic, I’ve learned a lot – both about the world and about myself. 

The following are six stories about the lessons I’ve learned:

Enjoy! Please subscribe to my blog for future updates on my writing. 

1. A Little Story About How Big Yet How Tiny the World Is

The world is incredibly huge… but also, somehow, impressively tiny. A quick story… Phil and I were traveling with an old friend of his from college at the end of October last year into January of this year. Long story short; this travel buddy didn’t work out. I’ll spare you the details, but this person did not communicate as well as she claimed she did, which led to a breakdown in communication and hurt feelings. By the time we parted ways from Malta in mid-January, things were very awkward. (Lesson learned: If you’re traveling with someone you’ve never traveled with before, ALWAYS set an end date so you don’t get stuck in an uncomfortable situation). 

Fast forward 7 months to August. Phil and I had spent 6 months in Mexico, a few weeks in the US, and had just left LA to arrive in Guatemala City. We were in the Uber from the airport to our Airbnb. Just one single block from our Airbnb, who did we see standing on the street corner? Our old travel buddy. We hadn’t seen or heard from her in 7 months, and there she was, 6,424 miles (10,338 km) away from Malta where we last saw her. We had no idea she was there, she had no idea we were there. It was an improbable coincidence. 

If you’re wondering, we did not reconnect with her after that. I do not see passing someone you know in one of the most random and unlikely ways possible as some sign from the universe to reconnect. Poor communication is not resolved by happenstance, it requires intentionality from all parties. 

But damn, was that one crazy-ass coincidence. Small world, eh?

2. Travel Doesn’t Necessarily Expand Your Mind

TL;DR: Not everyone grows from traveling because not everyone is open to learning.

I used to think that the number of countries a person has traveled to was indicative of how cultured, knowledgeable, thoughtful, and courteous of a person they would be. One of the things I’ve learned from traveling and connecting with other travelers is that this is not true. Travel doesn’t necessarily expand your mind. 

There are plenty of people who travel in vain.

These folks make little effort to learn from the cultures they’re interacting with because they are focused instead on good-time-having. Or “collecting countries” so they can brag about it on their social media and dating profiles. 

As a result, I’ve ended up meeting travelers who I really, really do not like. 

Some travelers are anti-vax, which I think is one of the most immoral and misaligned decisions in modern human existence. It’s mega Christopher Columbus vibes. We came across a lot of them in the bigger tourist cities in Mexico. Many of these folks are convinced they are entitled to travel and owe nothing to the communities they visit. In other words: they are assholes. 

The point is that travel is not necessarily a precursor for growth.

Curiosity and a willingness to learn are ultimately what expand your mind. If you can’t get out of your own head when you travel, you’re not going to gain much personal growth.

3. The Importance of Feeling Like You Belong to the World Community

TL;DR: Globalism is so important, and the lack of feeling like you belong to the global community leads to narrow-minded thinking and toxic individualism. The most obvious example of this is how this pandemic has played out. Those who stand firmly on top of the “it’s my decision to get vaccinated and wear a mask, therefore, I don’t have to” hill and are willing to die up there do not feel any sense of belonging to the global community. I find this sad and destructive, and I think it’s important to change that.

One of the 12 Core Values that I grew up learning at the Ethical Society of St. Louis has been echoing in my thoughts a lot this year. It’s the longest one of the 12 and the one I committed to memory as a child because of that. 

I am part of the world community which depends on the cooperation of all people for peace and justice.

As I learn more about the atrocities the US has historically and repeatedly committed beyond its borders, I struggle to feel pride for the place I was born. Moreover, I never felt like I really belonged in St. Louis. 

But I really like the idea of feeling like I belong in multiple places all over the world. 

By traveling full-time, always being new and unfamiliar with a place is humbling. It challenges one to adapt. I learn to leave behind behaviors that don’t serve me in the location I came from and to pick up new behaviors that serve me in the new location. 

This could be anything. In some countries I’ve been to this year, you must throw toilet paper in the trashcan rather than flushing it. In some cities, you should be more aware of your surroundings than others due to pickpocketers. In some countries, a tip is expected, and in others, it’s not. In some towns, people don’t give a damn about giving you distance in public spaces. In others, distance is expected and sometimes even strictly enforced.

My ability to quickly learn new customs and adapt has improved dramatically since I began traveling full-time. It makes me feel like it’s easier to connect with people. It makes me feel more like a citizen of the world. I love that. 

Feeling authentically connected to people around the world gives me a sense of belonging strong enough to give my depression and anxiety a real run for their money. 

But there’s always a darker side to expanding yourself, and that darkness is much more obvious during a global pandemic. 

Before I left in August 2020 to finally start living nomadically, I wrote about feeling trapped and suffocated in St. Louis. At that time of year, it was hot and so humid, like it is every summer in St. Louis. There’s a two-faced Midwestern nature of people in St. Louis where people will say one thing and do something completely different. It was something I could hardly tolerate before, but the pandemic made it so much worse. 

In St. Louis, I was surrounded by people who said they cared about others, but their actions did not align with their claims. The lack of mask-wearing, the denial of the pandemic, and the general lack of consideration paired with the hot and humid summer made me feel like I was drowning in a hot bowl of soup. I needed to get out. Bad. It was wrecking my mental health. I don’t think I would have survived if I stayed. 

I was relieved to make arrangements with Phil to leave St. Louis and go to Croatia. 

“Why Croatia?”

There were (and still are) a number of factors we consider when choosing a place to travel to. I’ve written about those factors here. But what it came down to was this:

• There were only about a dozen countries that were open to US passport holders at the time, Croatia was one of them, and we could stay up to 90 days

• Croatia had a low COVID case count and a national mask mandate; something we did not have in the US

• It was still very warm in southern Croatia

• The cost of living in Croatia is relatively low

But we quickly learned after arriving that adherence to mask mandates and other restrictions is much dependent on the cultural attitude. 

Many Croatians in the south of the country did not wear masks despite a national mandate, largely because they didn’t trust the government. As a young country with a history of corruption, it’s not hard to understand why Croatians would conclude that COVID is a government attempt to manipulate the public. Though there is plenty of corruption in the Croatian government, the Croatian people were wrong about this one. And they suffered for it. Case counts began to spike as we made plans to leave in October 2020.

But it wasn’t just Croatia that suffered from a lack of community care. We witnessed this cultural apathy toward the spread of the virus in a number of places. Some of the worst offenders, though, are tourists. I can’t tell you how many tourists in Mexico and Guatemala we saw – mostly from North America – who would flout the local mask laws and recklessly move about while endangering the locals who lived there. 

As we’ve traveled throughout this pandemic, Phil and I have gotten pretty good at predicting the signs that a COVID spike is likely imminent in a community. If a significant portion of the community feels apathy for public health and they have stopped wearing masks in enclosed spaces and started gathering in large groups again, a rise in COVID cases almost certainly follows. We have witnessed this IRL in multiple cities and countries.

There’s something oddly comforting about knowing that this pandemic is impossible to escape because it’s something we all have to deal with – everyone, everywhere in the world. It’s the most global crisis of my lifetime. No one is alone in this. But seeing the way in which many people have chosen to respond to the COVID crisis has caused my faith in humanity to slide. I’ve witnessed an abandonment of basic community care. The second half of that Ethical Core Value – ”...which depends on the cooperation of all people for peace and justice…” is simply not a value enough people around the world share.

Traveling during a global pandemic has thrust me into the realization that many people don’t feel like they are part of a world community. Their worlds are very tiny and they struggle beyond the confines of their small world. And when one does not feel like they are part of a larger community, they become more apathetic about how their actions affect others. They don’t see the bigger picture, so they don’t take steps to care for other members of the global community.

The mere suggestion of an inconvenience to keep other people healthy and safe drives these people into indignation. There is a disproportionate gut reaction to defend one’s right to take up space in society without the proportionate understanding of where that space stops and where others’ space begins. These people feel an urge to take from the shared benefits of society without feeling accountable for contributing to the shared benefits.

How can there be justice in society when so many people around the world refuse personal accountability? How can there be peace when we allow wars on our public health system to be waged because it’s too inconvenient to alter our way of living to keep one another safe? We don’t have cooperation from the world community. Not with COVID. Not with democracy. Not with human rights.

But that has only further convinced me that globalism and helping people feel like they are part of humanity is something that we should be striving towards.

4. Get Paid First, Then Work

TL;DR: I’ve been screwed over by too many clients not paying me. I’ve finally learned better and now I will not begin work with a client until a payment is made. 

This year I have become a far better advocate for myself.

The catalyst event for starting my business back in 2017 was when my former full-time, remote boss continuously lied to me about where my paycheck was until I had no choice but to quit. I never saw the money he owed me, which amounted to over $4,000. 

This year, I finally reached my breaking point when it comes to clients not paying me with these three instances:  

1. I had a client sign an agreement with me to do close to $2,000 worth of work. I thought signing an agreement would be enough to ensure payment. Hah, I was so wrong. She sabotaged the working relationship early on by not communicating her expectations or feedback about my work. She violated our agreement months later and decided not to pay me because “I wasn’t working out and didn’t get her any results.” (I never structure work agreements so that payment is contingent on results). After some back and forth, I finally got her to pay a portion of what was owed for the work I completed. All told, she only paid me about $700 out of $2,000. 

2. I had another client that I was working with to develop a new resume. She was trying to change careers in Brussels. I spent hours working on her resume because she kept changing her mind about what she wanted. Then, she decided she was leaving Brussels to go back home to Romania and didn’t need a resume in English anymore. She, therefore, reasoned she didn’t need to pay me, despite all the work I’d already done for her. I disagreed and she ghosted me without payment. 

3. I finally decided to end a relationship with a client with whom I had been working for nearly 3 years. Not only did this client hardly ever pay me on time and allow multiple invoices to stack up, but he would talk down to me condescendingly, even after I explained that he was speaking to me in an unacceptable manner and asked him to change the way he speaks to me. He caused me emotional stress that I would not allow any other client to cause me. Phil helped me draft out responses to this client. I told him I would finish out the calendar year and then he would have to find someone else to manage his social media because I’m done taking the abuse. So there’s my small contribution to The Great Resignation. 

My new rules for working with clients in 2022: I do not begin work with a client until they pay me, if they are on a monthly contract, they must be set up an account with me on Stripe so I can withdraw payment directly rather than twiddling my thumbs and waiting for them to pay the invoice when they find it convenient to do so.

5. My Proud Personal Improvement: Much Better at Coping with Stress & Uncertainty

TL;DR: Living as a nomad during a pandemic has made me much more capable of dealing with stress. Instead of descending into an emotional spiral every time a difficult problem arises, I have become more conditioned to shift into a problem-solving mode.

In that same vein of becoming a better advocate for myself, I’ve improved greatly at dealing with stressful situations – particularly situations caused by uncertainty. Plans change. And since this pandemic, plans change sometimes very quickly. I’ve become much better at dealing with uncertainty and pivoting when need be.

With the frequently changing COVID restrictions in countries around the world, Phil and I have had to work hard at staying up to date about where we can go, what we need to get into a country, what the COVID situation is like there, etc. 

We became interested in sailboats this year. We became enamored with the idea of being water nomads. We took some courses and got some practice (Phil WAY more than me), and we ended up putting a deposit down on a sailboat in La Paz, Mexico in January of this year while we were in Malta. We flew there halfway through January (holy shit, that was a long journey – Malta to Istanbul to Miami to Mexico City to La Paz), we checked out the boat and…. It just wasn’t right. We pulled the deposit and decided not to buy. Then, there we were in Mexico. We decided to pivot, and we ended up staying in the country for 6 months. We felt safer in Mexico than we did in the US or Croatia despite the high COVID case count because the local adherence to precautionary measures was much better there.

I’ve become way better overall at dealing with crises. For example, I was notified of fraudulent activity on my credit card earlier this month, the DAY we arrived in Bogotá from LA, and I needed to freeze the card and arrange to get a new one shipped to me internationally. If this had happened to me a year ago, I would have collapsed into an anxiety attack. Instead, I did what I needed to do and came up with other solutions for paying for things while I don’t have that credit card. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely complained about how annoying it was to deal with that issue while out of the US. But I didn’t panic. I didn’t fall apart. I wasn’t crippled by it. And for me, that’s a huge improvement. 

Last , trying to get for the was hellish. I had multiple breakdowns over the ridiculous of getting from St. Louis to me, a moving target, in Croatia. I did end up voting , but not without a great deal of struggle.

My problem-solving has improved.

6. Pivoting My Mental Health Care

TL;DR: I still struggle with anxiety and depression even though I’m living the life of my dreams. The pandemic has taken its toll, but I have started on a new medication that now makes me a participant in Mexican medical tourism.

While I am now living the life of my dreams* (*during a global pandemic), I have learned that that does not absolve me of my mental health struggles.

I wrote about this in a blog for World Mental Health Day this year. 

While leaving the US has certainly helped me move forward with healing from certain things, I still struggle with mental health illness. 

The pandemic certainly exacerbated my depression and anxiety. It can be frustrating sometimes to repeatedly receive the message that “I’m so lucky” and “I’m living the life of everyone’s dreams.” While that definitely has some truth to it, it’s hard to hear when I struggle so hard. It makes me feel lonely. 

For reference, I have struggled with depression and anxiety since I was a teenager. I have been seeing a therapist on and off since 2014. I have been taking at least one medication for my mental health since 2015. 

While in Mexico, I ended up seeing a Mexican psychiatrist who prescribed me a new medication. He told me that the medication is not as often prescribed in the US and the one that I was taking previously is considered over-prescribed and under-effective. I could get the new medication without a prescription at basically any pharmacy in Mexico for far cheaper than I could in the US. (To be fair, the psychiatrist did say he thought it should require a prescription but, in his words, “it’s México.”)

That change in medication and the more accessible healthcare system in Mexico saved me. My depression and anxiety improved within a couple of weeks of taking the medication. I feel more present and in better control. 

Breaking away from on the US healthcare system to care for my has saved me a lot of and a lot of suffering.

Here’s to good wishes for 2022!

-Anya