My story
Early days
Born in 1985, I lived a fairly normal live up until highschool where everything started to come off the rails. The education system tried to force me into a mold I didn't fit into which clashed with everything I am. I frustrated more than a few teachers and employers just for 'thinking differently'. As a result left early from school to pursue my own goals. I've worked for several companies in various tech related jobs before starting out on my own and doing webdevelopment fulltime in 2012 - I turned my long time hobby into my job. So far it's working out pretty well.
Doing the minimalist thing
After the 2010s I became increasingly dissatisfied with the European Union and their nonsense and finally figured out I wasn't going to be happy if I stayed for much longer. Worn out by rising costs, poor weather, peoples ignorance, illegal immigrants and many more frustrations I felt that I had to make some drastic changes to my life. After nearly bankrupting myself with a brick and mortar business in 2014 I suddenly had enough.
I spent almost a year preparing for something more enjoyable. Starting with cutting ties with anything I didn't care for. This included selling pretty much all of my belongings. Now being 'free' I have turned into a bit of a minimalist. The few things I owned pretty much fitted in a large backpack and a messenger bag. I quickly discovered that this worked very well for me. The few things I owned were much more valuable to me and are more carefully weighed if I should have them at all. On top of that, I found new things to do and learned to leave behind a lot of other things and habits. As a result, my life tends to be simpler, but at the same time my nomadic lifestyle brings a whole new set of challenges.
Moving to Southeast Asia and back
In late 2015 having prepared everything there is to prepare for I moved to the Philippines. I flew to Manila on October 1st, arriving the next morning. For the first few months I stayed in a touristic town called Puerto Galera to get my bearings and get over the first culture shock and then moved south to Iloilo City and later on Bacolod to sort of end up in Dumaguete City on Negros Island. Where I have lived for almost 3 years. Meanwhile I have explored a lot of the country and have been on most larger islands and even some small ones.
In late 2018 I went to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. There I discovered, much to my frustration, what a underdeveloped country the Philippines really is. Seeing a more developed country for the first time in years I suddenly realized how low I sunk in my living standards and the daily frustrations I had to deal with. Malaysia was a huge eye-opener in that regard. After returning to the Philippines it quickly became apparent that something had to change yet again. After some contemplating I left the Philippines for Southern Europe with the idea to roam around there for a bit and finally to secure a visa for Mexico.
To Mexico and...
The plan was to stay in Spain for a few months to recharge and plan the next move, unfortunately the reverse culture-shock of Europe was so great I skipped Spain completely. As planned I spent a few weeks in Italy where I visited Rome, Venice, Pisa and finally ended up in Milan where I got on a train to the Netherlands. Back 'home' I applied for my Mexican Visa and in early 2019 I moved to Mexico. From the Mexican embassy I did manage to get a permit to apply for a Temporary Resident visa. While waiting for the residency status the world kind of ended...
In times of social disfunction and the Chinese Flu spreading like wildfire everything goes slow, including the Mexican government. After a year of 'processing' I finally got my resident card and in January 2021 bought a motorcycle to finally explore more of the country. A plan was made to go cross-country to La Paz in Baja California Sur, and spend almost 4 months doing it.
After having explored Quintana Roo for the last 2 years I couldn't wait to get out of there and finally see Mexico. I've since visited most states in Mexico twice and visited a lof of cities and towns, riding more than 40000km on my motorcycle. Against all advises I rarely use the 'safe' toll roads. And prefer the country-side.
Will code for Tacos
Since 2012 I have been a fulltime freelance webdeveloper. During the first few months I spent most of my time on making a more professional website and turning some plugins I maintain into paid products. Usually I'm working on something WordPress or WooCommerce related.
Working online and occasionally traveling, I guess that makes me something of a Digital Nomad. But I'm not all that Digital. Just being a Nomad is enough for me. I don't follow the hype and never visited a co-working space like those hipster types you see on YouTube. I rather focus on doing my own thing.
I maintain a growing library of plugins for WordPress, WooCommerce and ClassicPress such as AdRotate and AdRotate Pro. And I sell a bunch of smaller plugins for WooCommerce and bbPress. Currently I am available as a freelance developer. I know PHP/MySQL/HTML/CSS and a bit of JavaScript. Among other things.
I've been making WordPress plugins since about 2005, back when WordPress 1.5.2 was hip and cool. Before that I attempted to make my own Content Management System. And did odd jobs for local businesses. At the time I wasn't sure where I wanted to be with web-development... In 2012 I turned my hobby into a fulltime job. And I have been lucky with it so far.
On the side I've been doing on-demand network administator work for a few people. I've maintained Soekris hardware with pfSense and made sure routing, VPN, load balancing, Wifi and firewalls would work as intended. File sharing services and home streaming servers often were part of the action.
Adventure on wheels
I love exploring on a motorcycle. All my possessions on the back, and just go. Following the road, or path or trail. And just ride to the next interesting looking place. Where I'll then probably stay for a while. I like to explore everything I want to see and discover. There is no plan other than a general direction and some cities or areas I want to check out. Most of the time planning doesn't go much further than about 1 to 2 months ahead while traveling.
In January 2021 I bought a brand new BMW F850GS Adventure motorcycle. And in July 2021 I made a 9500+ Kilomters long adventure through Mexico from Cancun in Quintana Roo. I've spent about 4 months on the road before finally finishing in La Paz in Baja California Sur. I sort of sat out the Chinese Flu pandemic there while seeing all there is to see in the area. In 2023 I drove the other way to Merida in Yucatan.
And that's where I currently am. Planning a trip to central Mexico for 2025 or so.
