Digital Nomad Dream Sequence

February 2, 2019

As is mentioned numerous times throughout my numerous posts, articles, and vlogs the benkbrady.com project is both deeply linked to the larger Amanda Hugandkiss, @ExtremeChillGuy twitter project and also not linked at all. The goal of all of these projects, without a doubt, though, is to raise money for the ultimate project: My Life.

In talking to friends (all of my friends work in IT, I work in IT), the idea of a Digital Nomad, as a profession, comes up frequently. What is a Digital Nomad? The Digital Nomad is the IT worker who is not bound by the walls of a cubicle, (aside, funny idea: a cubicle designed with four enclosed walls (different from the standard three-wall cubicle. The one non-wall is your means of entering and exiting the cubicle if you can envision it), wherein the only way to enter and exit the cubicle is by scaling the felt walls. No windows. (“Hey, Ben, are you working in there?” “Uh yea boss… I can assure you that I am working heh heh heh”) Is that just an office without a door? A cubicle with one extra wall. Damn.), who is able to bring his laptop around the world and do the, ideally minimal, work that he is required to do to earn his, ideally massive, paycheck.

As the Digital Nomad works in Tech, the internet is his office, his laptop his telephone, and his cellphone is his telegraph. He is able to update the client’s banner on their homepage from coral blue to mossy teal from the comfort of a café in Paris (“Pair-EE”), or from the comfort of a café at the top of the Himalayas (may need a hotspot for that one, buddy).

Here is my own Digital Nomad fantasy:

It’s 6 AM in Cambodia, and the sun is just starting to rise as I take my dirt bike off-road through the forests and waterways surrounding Angkor Wat. I check my watch, located on the inside of my left forearm with the face facing towards my body in the way that people who are into traveling wear their watches, and see that back on client-time it is only 5:30PM and I smile a big shit-eatin’ grin, because I know those wage-slaves over stateside are probably jerking off in their cars from the boredom of sitting in end-of-the-day rush hour traffic. I smile once again, bigger this time, my face hurts from it, as I look at my second watch, also located on the inside of my left forearm, and remember that is only 6AM Cambodia-time (local-time for me in this fantasy). Perfect. I know that I have to finish adjusting the padding on several of my client’s website’s pages by 11:59PM their time (“Yea so because the padding is an issue on every page it could take me several weeks to adjust the setting on every single page.” “Oh OK, take you’re [sic] time, that sounds really tough.”). This task will take me, oh I don’t know, maybe 2 minutes tops.

I turn off the road fast as hell and kick up a shit ton of mud and branches and shit and the mud gets me all dirty and stinky and the branches cut me up real bad so that I have bloody cuts on my exposed forearms and face. I don’t care even a little bit, though. I am so fucking high from the beautiful sunset coming up over Angkor Wat.

I ride around on my dirt bike for several hours and go over leaps and impress both rural and urban locals who can tell that my soul is pure and that I mean no one any harm. I retire from the bike to my hostel after grabbing Fish Amok, Lap Khmer, and tea at this trill little hole-in-the-wall café located near where I am staying. I adjust the padding. It is 2PM in Angkor Wat and I am the king.

I bring up the idea (and dream) of being a Digital Nomad, because to be one the nomad-to-be has to have, I think, ideally, a stream of income outside of whatever developer job they may have. Adjusting padding is nice and all, but if you’re trying to see the rare blue snow leopard in the Himalayas on Monday and then try the world’s best mint tea in Morocco’s Marrakech market on Wednesday you are going to need a secondary source of income. There are three options to creating a secondary source of income in the year 2020:

• Famous YouTube star

Being a famous YouTuber in 2020 is basically luck-based (it seems to me). Famous YouTubers just talk about things and do stuff and smile and laugh, and if they’re really good at smiling and laughing they make mega-millions. It’s like if, assuming everyone drives and everyone makes YouTube videos, you were driving one day and you hit a large cow in the middle of the road and you run outside to see if the cow is alright but then you see that its innards are actually made out of pure gold. That is what it is like to be a famous YouTuber. The non-famous YouTuber in this allegory hits the cow, runs outside to see its innards giving their last few pumps of blood, smells the shit smell of the literal shit that was pushed out of the side of the cow’s body in the crash, and is too much of a pussy to smash the cow’s head in with the shovel in their car’s trunk to end its suffering, so they just stand by as it moans and lows and then eventually dies, and this non-famous YouTuber gets back into their car and they are now 20 years older and still all alone and poor to top it all off!

Of course this is the best case scenario (that is, being paid by sponsors and be given free high-end clothing — the best case scenario is not to be a 15-year old girl who is famous on YouTube. That is the best BEST scenario. Ah ha ha.)

• Foodie

My friend’s dad always used to me that the best thing that you could be reincarnated as is a suburban house dog. You are pampered, loved ,and fed, with the added benefit of being able to lick your balls whenever you please. I think similarly, that a Foodie is the best possible profession that someone can hope to attain (though, Professional Gamer is probably not too far from the top of that list too). The job of a Foodie is to eat food!

    The job of the foodie totally spins the basic principles of economics on its head (sort of). For years we assumed that work earned you food (a good), but never was it ever conceived for thousands of years that your job could be to eat (a service that is also a good). Along with the pleasure of getting to eat, you also get the pleasure of being paid in money (which one is more pleasurable? Eating or money? We’ll let the philosophers figure that one out!)  

[ASIDE:]

As someone who lives in a major metropolitan area, there is a large number of homeless in my neighborhood. Rather than give them money, I give them, daily, something worth more than money: Words (a service and a good again, I guess). I tell them Gather Around Fellas I’ve Got Something That Will Change Your Life. Why don’t you all just become Foodies??? Grovel no more! Being a foodie will provide you with food aaand money. It’s like working at a high-end bakery: you get paid to bake (review food, whatever else foodies do), but you also get the free crusts that fall around the baking sheets (the food in foodie). MmmMMM. Interestingly enough the number of homeless has decreased sharply, while the number of foodies has increased sharply.[1]

Of course to be a foodie you have to have a palette (supposedly) and write reviews and have some sort of influence or something I don’t actually know, but you can probably just trick people to believe you’re a foodie so easily. Uh yea I am a foodie oh don’t believe me well this is going to be a scathing review that I will quite relish I can tell you that much good day.

The more I read through this, though, the more, I believe, that I have no idea what a foodie is. BUT! if this is actually what a foodie is then it is really crazy, huh?

• Famous Social Media presence

This is me. This is what this article is all about. I did it. In 2019 I raised over 20 followers for my Twitter account @ExtremeChillGuy. I am now in the perfect position to have willing sponsors reach out to me about having me represent their product on my feed.

Soon I hope to be raking a steady stream of $100/month from Twitter sponsors — the first step in becoming a true digital nomad. After that I believe that my consistent schedule of comedy tweets and informative blog posts can slow down, as I will only need to post or tweet when the Ad guys over at Nike tell me that they need me to tweet a picture of myself wearing the new Nike Boosted FlyBoys while attending a Human Rights protest (my choice of which protest).

So enjoy the non-sponsored content while it lasts. Thank you to all 20 of my followers for being the first stone in the castle, and here’s to 40 followers in 2020.

[1] No citable sources