co-leaving

I’ve been living in a co-living space for almost 2 weeks now, experimenting a bit with the digital nomad lifestyle. The place is a guesthouse, recently turned over to people who want to come and co-work during the day and take advantage of the surf.

Today, one longterm resident left the building.

I’ve always lived a fairly nomadic existence. The life of a sportsperson, particularly one at the less than rarefied level that I competed at, means that you have to keep a lean mindset. Your contracts are typically for one year at a time making it nonsensical to put down roots in any one place as injury, a change in fortunes or just another opportunity mean that you could have to up and go pretty quickly.

It behoves you to remain agile, not own too many things and to make friends quickly.

I feel like I have made some friends already in the short period that I was here and I’ve already seen a couple of the pitfalls of the nomad lifestyle.

There have been two English guys staying in the same place as me and we’ve been good for each other, sharing the odd meal and all knuckling down to work at similar times. I’ve been working on my own a lot prior to coming here and it’s motivating to have other people sat next to you, even if they’re working on something else. You lack distractions and can get on with what you’re doing.

Equally though, I have to submit to their rhythms slightly. They’ve actually got full time roles that mean they have to clock on and clock off as if they were going in to a place of work. I like to work through until a late lunch, spend the late afternoon doing jobs, exercising or catching up over coffee, before doing some more work later in the evening. This also works for my American clients.

Here, I feel a little like I’m intruding on their relaxation time when I crack the laptop back out.

The real joy of these guys has been the sense of community, something I’ve definitely lacked somewhat since leaving sport. I doubt that finding a similar environment will ever happen again for me, unless I find a creative way to engender it (get in touch with bright ideas although I do have a couple) and it’s certainly part of the reason I engage in various online forums.

These guys need the community too. One of them has been living the #vanlife for a few months, working as a software developer by day, surfing and sleeping near the beach. He likes to duck into the guesthouse to meet other people, wash his clothes and cook a meal in an oven. The nomad life is good to him but it also has some extreme drawbacks that would be insurmountable for many.

The other is less itinerant, staying in houses, hostels and Airbnbs, but he also returns to this same place to recharge his batteries every now and again. It must be down to the location, near great waves, and the hosts, Swedish siblings Jonathan and Moa, but primarily to plug into a sense of something permanent.

It’s tiring to be constantly on the lookout, constantly planning and constantly moving. I don’t think we’re built for it.

I’ve recently completed an online course and one of the other participants spoke about his pipedream to create a kind of non-hippie commune, where people would come and live in smaller dwellings based around some shared resources and facilities, pooling their expertise and living the good life. It’s an idea I’ve had too and it speaks to something that’s in almost all of us, the need for deeper, comforting connection with people near us, our tribe.

There have been plenty of nomadic tribes and most of human existence was experienced in this manner but the fact was, the tribe was relatively consistent. The same people moved around together, experienced different places together, suffered or prospered together. Maybe that’s what this lifestyle misses and that’s why my new friends regularly come back to the same place to recalibrate. It’s how we are.

We’re all different though and it’s not quite been two weeks for me on my own little journey. I’m reserving judgement until down the road. The guys will be back here though. Maybe I will be too.