The bad part was that I ended up in my early 30's with no money, no job, and a very unattractive CV/Resume. The good part is that I was socially transformed. I'm way more confident now, especially around groups of strangers.

I never wrote about this before nor have I ever written a blog, but I met plenty of people living similar lives. Anyway I guess my point is that there are plenty of people out there doing things without blogging about it. But you're not going to meet them online.

"I spent a lot of money on booze, birds [women] and fast cars – the rest I just squandered" -- George Best

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Best#cite_note-10

I am curious to know what kind of profession has the option to be a digital nomad. They only one I figured is being a journalist or a writer.

What types of business do you do being a nomad?

Roles that are what is now called "developer relations" or similar effectively force you into an adjacent lifestyle.

Freelance development can often support this kind of thing.

Basically, any sort of remote job.

What's kind of amusing/terrible is that while doing this I was almost always living in very high COL areas, while a digital nomad would be off somewhere extremely inexpensive. Oh well, money isn't everything.

When I was doing it for my friend, it was never that big a deal. But stuff did come up every now and then that needed to be handled.

Having said that, you'll need a home base where you "officially" live and can legally work from--and, if you're an employee of a company (i.e. not an independent consultant), you probably need to be up-front about what you're doing and many companies may have issues with the legal ramifications.

That said, in practice, before the pandemic I traveled about a third of the time so having some sort of nominal home base in the US and otherwise being on the road really wouldn't have been that much of a stretch compared to my usual. I do marketing-related stuff for a computer software company.

Becoming a digital nomad isn't about making money... in fact if you do it properly it's at best break-even or slightly cheaper than just renting a place to live in the US and staying put, but could be vastly more expensive. It's about exploring the world, expanding your viewpoint, and inspiring you to think differently. Going abroad helped my engineering work immensely, and also gave me a chance use time zones to my advantage to improve my health by adapting my sleep cycle to my body's needs rather than the whims of an employer. It also got me moving much more despite working on a computer all day, which greatly improved my health as well. Being able to leave work and actually go do something new, interesting, and exciting each day had a positive effect on work/life balance and was the perfect way to combat the burnout I was experiencing as a senior engineer before I stepped on the plane.

I don't advocate being a digital nomad, because I think it's something that's not for everybody and it had its own set of challenges and stressors. But I don't think it's some sort of MLM get-rich quick scheme by people either. You are only seeing the aspect of it shown by social media which is dominated by "influencers" using their skill at marketing and manipulation to enrich themselves. But if you talk to most people who lived the lifestyle, they were normal joes doing normal jobs, just in a location-independent fashion. Not everyone who is a digital nomad is a white 20-something from New York or LA that decided to take their affiliate blog on the road and write a book to be self-published by Amazon, probably less than 10% of the digital nomads I met along the way were like that. I met a lot of people during my time due to using coworking facilities in so many places.

I don't understand how you could be skeptical of the idea, it's pretty simple. Step 1, have remote job or contract work. Step 2, choose not to stay in one location. The end.

What I've learned is it's way better to just do stuff and improve things as you go (be that the optimal way to be a digital nomad or whatever ;)

Instead of opposites, I would consider both Workaholism and Procrastination as forms of experiential avoidance coping strategies. Instead of a golden-mean between the two, the ideal point is off the line, where you have the psychological flexibility to live a valued life despite difficult feelings and avoid both traps i.e. Acceptance and Commitment theory.

n.b. I see you are using ideas from Tim Urban, I would suggest referencing him properly rather than just copying.

"Instant Gratification Monkey...Panic Monster" -https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrasti...

Thanks for pointing this out, a human error. I've updated the post to point to the original idea from Tim post

Where do people get that energy?

To me, rather the conceptualization(s) proposed, the words of John Carmack are immensely more powerful: when asked about what's the difference that being rich made to him, he replied "not much, I wake up in the morning, I go to work, and I do my best"¹.

¹=I can't find the reference. I don't think it comes from Masters of Doom.

I think that this quote, while well meaning, misses what being lower class is. It's about the constance worry and anxiety over being able to provide. It's being terrified of every accident or potential set back. It's about constantly sacrificing wants for needs. Being even upper middle class alleviates many of these, and being rich alleviates almost all of them entirely.

I can take that he may not have founded his aerospace company without plenty of money, but that's not what he's mostly known for, or even better, what he represents (one of the greatest software engineers).

I'm not sure how to find this kind of work. Some have advised that I should seek contract work. But contract work is hell, no thanks.

It's actually almost certainly easier to consult part-time (whether you intend it to be part-time or not!) than it is to go 120% for 6 months and then rapidly ratchet it to zero for another 6.

I think the only person I know who has done something like this was a lawyer who worked as a contract lawyer for some big finance company (I think) for about half the year. Which doesn't sound like a bad gig. But it's hard for most white collar jobs.

A weird blog post becomes an ad for a book?

Whatever this example should demonstrate, it doesn't make me curious about the book.

also appreciate your honest feedback. Any personal thoughts on how to deal with procrastination without turning to a workaholic

You also assume your worldview. When i hear your digital nomade lifestyle i'm not envy it and i'm not connecting to your worldview.

Procrastination doesn't mean 'not working'. Workaholic doesn't mean 'unhappy'.