profile : The Art of Non-Conformity

Profiles

“You Just Have to Grab the Next Trapeze”: A Former Lawyer Reinvents Himself After Escaping to France

It doesn’t matter how old you are, or how far along you are in your career—there's still time for change. Bill Crow felt like he was living someone else’s life. Even though it was a very successful lawyer's life, he still wasn’t happy. So he took a year off and moved his family to France. Disconnecting from his everyday world allowed him to discover what he really wanted to do next.

I went to law school because it led to the professional career expected of me by my engineer father. I had a lawyer’s dream job in my home office in Vancouver, Canada: I had my own law practice, negotiating contracts on the phone for international clients. Best of all, there was no overhead, and I was able to pocket every dollar I billed.
I loved almost everything about my job: the low hours, the freedom, the money, being able to spend time with my kids, the praise of my clients, the work-from-home dress code (PJs).
The only thing I didn't like about my job was the actual doing of it. Practicing law was like sticking needles in my eyes.

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“Freedom is the ability to travel”: Creating Multiple Sources of Income as a Millennial

Evan Tarver is a location-independent entrepreneur who, through multiple income streams and careful business growth, has the freedom to travel nationally and internationally. Right now he’s in Austin, but who knows where he’ll be next month!

Fresh out of college, I tossed aside a degree in Finance and Economics to take a retail management job with Target because it paid well (mistake!). Well, you guessed it, my happiness quickly waned and I decided to pull up roots, quit my job, and travel Europe until my bank account ran dry. And so I did, traveling to more than 7 countries and maxing out my last credit card to change flights from Geneva to Paris to make it home in one piece.
These days I'm a San Francisco-based millennial-entrepreneur who faces constant success and failure. I’m passionate about both writing and entrepreneurship for the collective freedom they afford. While a lot of my contemporaries in Silicon Valley are caught up in the "scale or die mentality," I focus on building my businesses very carefully so that they give me the freedom I covet. For me, freedom is the ability to travel.

Profiles

How 2 People Traveled for a Year on $20,000

At first glance Evo Terra and Sheila Dee’s story might seem a lot like many other empty nesters who sold everything to travel around the world. But most weren’t kicked out of their home state by a doctor—and most eventually return. These two are still going!

After 17 years of living in Arizona, Sheila's doctor told us to leave—the quicker, the better. The dry, dusty atmosphere was quite literally killing her. So two months later, we found ourselves on a plane bound for Europe, chasing high-humidity environments and seeing what living as travelers and expats is like around the world.
Prior to this trip, we hadn't done all that much traveling, except for the standard up-to-Canada and down-to-Mexico trips most people from the U.S. make every year or so. Because there's something extra motivating when a doctor orders you to get out, we decided to really go for it and try out a few other continents!

Profiles

Will Travel For Food: One Man’s Journey to Rediscover a Lost Love

After ten years in the restaurant industry, Drew Seaman had lost his passion for food. With the long hours, he also barely saw his wife. When the opportunity to move to London presented itself, they both jumped at the chance to remake their lives.

When Julie called me about the offer to move to London (yes, she called, because we so rarely had time for conversations in person), I was immediately on board. For someone who is risk averse, that was a big step. But I understood that without a major ‘reason to leave,’ inertia and fear of the unknown would carry me towards a future I knew I didn’t want.
Walking into the office and resigning without an idea of my next move was terrifying. But, resigning because I was literally moving out of the country, well, that seemed easy.

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“Getting rejected led to starting my own business”: One Man’s Journey to Year-Round Summer Camp

Blake Boles is one of the lucky ones: at a young age he knew exactly what made him happy. With that clarity of vision, he created Unschool Adventures, a company that designs and runs multi-week experiences for teens and young adults—and created his own dream job in the process.

When I was 11 I went away to summer camp for the first time: two weeks of total bliss in the High Sierras of California. The instructors I met there were mythical, almost god-like figures with hard skills (like how to roll a kayak), soft skills (like comforting a homesick camper), and an exuberance I'd never encountered before in my young life.
I decided immediately that I wanted to become like them.

Profiles

Woman Finds Her Dream Job in the Land of Milk and Honey

After 10 years, multiple career moves, and dozens of job titles, Nicole Buergers has finally found her dream job as an entrepreneurial beekeeper and cheesemonger. Have you ever heard of such a combination? Here's how she tells the story:

While I have my dream job now, it’s taken quite a peculiar journey to get here. Throughout my life I've juggled multiple jobs at once and been "the queen of the side hustle." Normally, I would have a 9-5 job to pay the bills and at least one part-time passion job on the side.

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How to See the World as a Full-Time House Sitter

After experiencing the loss of both a marriage and a business, Vanessa Anderson left the UK in June 2013 to visit Ian Usher in Panama... and never returned! Through house-sitting and teaching English online, they’ve been able to fund their nomadic lifestyle and become part of a larger sharing economy.

It actually begins with Ian's side of things back in 2006. Blindsided by the breakup of his own marriage, he devised a genius marketing idea to sell ALL his stuff on eBay—house and job (subject to acceptance) included! He then set off on a two-year journey to complete 100 bucket list goals in 100 weeks.
His unique method of dealing with a life crisis sparked the interest of Disney and before long he found himself with a Hollywood agent, resulting in a lucrative movie deal for his book, "A Life Sold". This funded his next noteworthy project: to buy a small mangrove island and build an off-the-grid property in Bocas del Toro, Panama.

Profiles

“It Felt Impossible, Until I Did It”: One Year in South Korea

Lauren Meeks believes that there is immense value in learning other people’s stories. It all started with an unlikely year of teaching English in South Korea.

I'm a writer currently living in Atlanta, although I'm reluctant to call any place "home." I spent several years abroad as a child, and over the past 7 years I've traveled to every continent except Antarctica (it's on the list!) and over two dozen countries. I travel to experience new cultures and to hear new stories. I firmly believe that everyone has a story worth sharing, and I want to hear as many of them as possible.
I stumbled across my love of traveling almost by accident. I traveled some in college, but I still hadn’t been bitten by the wanderlust bug yet. I was perfectly happy to stick to the tourist trails and then go home to my safe bubble after the trip was over. But at the beginning of my senior year in college, my advisor encouraged me to apply for a Fulbright grant teaching English. Being the good little student that I was, I acquiesced. Since Fulbright only allows you to apply to the program in a single country, I had a decision to make.
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Awareness, Empathy, and Action: Turning a Decade Old Lesson into Reality

How do you translate your travel experiences into something tangible and meaningful, for those that aren’t on the road with you? Stormy Sweitzer drew on two powerful experiences to write an inspiring adventure book for young adults.

It was 1988 and I was mortified. I was on a tour of Soviet Eastern Europe and I had just seen my grandmother sneak food from a hotel buffet, wrap it in a cloth napkin and tuck it into her purse. But I will never forget the moment when I later looked to where she had just been “checking something out” and saw a man in a worn suit pick the familiar-looking napkin up off a ledge, open it, and eat the food she’d purloined.
She hadn’t been saving it to eat later; she was using the resources available to her to help a stranger in need. This was the greatest lesson I have ever had in the importance of awareness, empathy and action. This one experience had such an impact on me, that it lead me to study abroad in both high school and college, and then join the Peace Corps after. This philosophy of awareness leading to empathy, leading to action, was slowly permeating every aspect of my life.

Profiles

The Anti-Nomad: How one Woman Created a Home Base while Opening Up to Life on the Road

How do you preserve that special feeling you get from travel? For Sofie Couwenbergh, keeping the magic alive meant not turning traveling into a full-time pursuit. Learn how she forges her own path.

I was born and raised in Belgium. I’ve always known that I wanted to do "something with writing,” so I studied literature and got a job as a copywriter and marketing coordinator. I’d even picked up an amazing boyfriend along the way, and together we'd found an affordable apartment we loved. But wait, I'm not that boring!
Whenever things seem perfect, they usually aren’t.
I was miserable at my first job and later I was miserable at my second. At the same time, the more I saw of the world, the more I wanted to see. I used up all of my vacation days (and we have many in Belgium!) and even took unpaid leave — but it wasn't enough. Not only was traveling not enough, there was something missing in general. I thought I just needed a creative outlet, so I started a blog. Through blogging, a whole new world of freelancers and digital nomads opened up to me.
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Woman Completes Mission to SCUBA Dive in All 50 States

Congratulations to Jennifer Idol, who just accomplished a huge mission: becoming the first woman to SCUBA dive in all 50 states.

Jen spoke briefly in the lightning round at WDS 2014 and we profiled her back when she was well on her way to accomplishing her quest.

"I did it! It's a relief, and I am tired. In a way, the journey is ongoing with articles, the book, news, and social media. I won't be diving all 7 continents, the U.S. territories, or all countries as a new quest. Instead, I'll be undertaking assignments, still working on sharing the meaning behind this current journey, and working on something new.
As I suspect you also know, journeys are long, cost more than we plan in more ways than we can anticipate, and yet help us define who we want to be, where we want to go, and what we want to do. They can be platforms from which we launch our true aspirations, or just end when they're completed."

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Travel Hacking Graduate Earns 2.5 Million Miles: On the Road with Hao Tran

This is a travel hacking case study. (Read others or nominate yourself.) When I put out the call for travel hacking stories, I received a flood of responses. One of the first to cross my desk was from 21-year-old Hao Tran, a recent graduate. Introduce yourself. I didn’t travel internationally growing up. During the summer…

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Profiles

The Eight-Year Escape Plan: Interview with Tsilli Pines

It's a new month, and time for a new profile. My friend Tsilli Pines recently quit her job to go full-time with the side business she's been building for the past three years.

Yay! Congratulations to her. And when we were talking, she told me how she had worked at the job for eight years, and has spent the past three years carefully building her business to the point where she could take a big leap ...

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Profiles

“It’s Only Life or Death”: Disaster and Opportunity Interview with John Unger

This is the story of John T. Unger, a working artist who actually makes a good living. Despite the recession, each month in 2009 he’s made more money than in the same month last year, in addition to more than he did in every corporate job held long ago.