At Palma Coliving we aim to empower and help our guests to accomplish their dreams and take their projects to the next level. Surrounding yourself with other digital entrepreneurs and having new points of view will help you to develop more creative ideas. This is why it is so important for us to spread the word and share with the world how Palma colivers are! Today we present Agustina to you and in this space, she will tell her story. Leaving a country in Latin America, finding a job she could charge in US dollars or Euros, traveling around the world, and meeting a second family in every destination... Today Agustina shares her journey in becoming a digital nomad.
Hi there!! My name is Agustina, but while traveling I present myself as Tina, since it’s an easier pronunciation (It’s actually a nickname that a coliver gave to me after trying to pronounce my original name). I’m 30 years old and I’m originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina. I’m a Front End Developer and apart from finding me in front of the computed coding, you can also find me in the water doing snorkel and scuba diving or also in bachata and salsa lessons and socials.
I started traveling as a digital nomad in May 2023, but I always would use my vacations to escape from the city and visit a new place or even country. I think this comes from my childhood where every summer my parents would take my sister and me to a different destination from Argentina. By the time I finished school, I had already traveled all around the country!
My Beginning As a Digital Nomad
When I started traveling as a digital nomad, I thought I was going to last only two months even though my original plan was to travel for 6 months (Spoiler alert, it ended up being 10 months until I came back to visit Argentina). It was a mix of feelings since I was excited about what was coming but also a bit scared since it was going to be a different experience. I never shared a house (only with my family and then moved on my own as shared houses are not common where I’m from) and suddenly I was sharing a house with another 14 digital nomads. I also never worked from another place apart from my home, so I wasn’t sure how comfortable I was going to feel with this new lifestyle.
The first time I heard about coliving was through an influencer who went to study for a postgraduate degree in Spain and shared her experience staying in a coliving in Barcelona. It was more like a master's/postgraduate degree focused on coliving, not fully focused on digital nomads. Her experience was different than mine, she stayed in a smaller place (they were apartments with 4 rooms, not big houses like the ones I like going to), but she helped me see that there were other ways of living and how the coliving world functions. This was just the beginning, then the algorithm did its work, and coliving spaces like Palma Coliving started to appear in my Instagram searches all the time!
That was just a dream at that time, but when I got my first one-way flight ticket I felt for the first time that I was a digital nomad.
Solo travel and remote working
This lifestyle gives me a lot of joy and incredible memories. I learned to value more the time spent in places and with people, since you know you may be somewhere else soon. The constant change of routine makes it more entertaining since, actually your routine may depend on the place where you are staying and the easier it gets to get to know like-minded people, which was difficult after becoming a full home office worker after the pandemic.
I consider myself a solo traveler, I prefer it this way since it gives me the freedom to do what I want when I want and to build a new version of myself. Once you start traveling on your own, you learn there are many ways to find groups in a new city, you learn how to share activities and meet other digital nomads. In the end, on a solo trip, you would only be solo as long as you want. But this doesn’t mean that I don’t like sharing trips with other people: I just booked an entire house with other 5 ex-colivers I’ve lived within Egipt for a full month.
How I Managed To Make It Work
My process to achieve this lifestyle started with the pandemic. I’ve always been someone who enjoys going to the office and sharing the day with my teammates. However, when COVID-19 arrived I decided that it was time to change and take a risk.
So my first step was to look for a job that needed me to speak in English, this would give me the practice to feel more comfortable working for a foreign company. I got my job for an Argentina company with a client in the USA, and literally, the first meeting I had I understood 15% of what they said. Two months later, and with 2 hours of meetings per day, I could finally say that I understood 85% of the content in the meetings.
Half a year later, and already feeling comfortable with my English level, I decided that my next step was to get a job as a contractor. This would give me the economic freedom I needed to be able to work around the world (Since traveling with an Argentinian salary wasn’t an option at all due to the high inflation we have in the country). I went through a lot of technical interviews until I entered the company I’m still working for now. They were looking for a contractor and they hired me. One year after this moment, I bought my first flight ticket with no return.
I use the American time zone for work so it's normal for me to have meetings at 9 pm or 10 pm. This is something that a lot of people may think is bothering me, but in reality, this also allows me to enjoy the day before starting working. I consider it an advantage, especially if you are not a morning person like me. So maybe I start my work day at 1 pm or 2 pm and I could have a great morning on the beach before.
I think that the only obstacles I had to overcome in the journey were the economic ones, since actually becoming a digital nomad was a solution for me. I always wanted to have the experience of living in a new country, a different culture to mine, starting from zero somewhere else, but I struggled with the idea of leaving my country. So becoming a digital nomad let me live that experience while still having my base in Argentina. Also, colivings would make it much easier, to “start from scratch” in another country is weight easier this way! I don’t think I would have stayed that long and felt that comfortable if I stayed in an apartment on my own.
Long stays make the best experience out of coliving
I’m more like a longer-stay person, now it’s called slowmad. I stayed 10 months in my first Coliving in Malta. I was lucky to have a big group of around 8 people who lived with me in the coliving for 6 to 10 months together (We just kept extending and extending our stay). You can imagine we became very close friends, as we kept organizing trips in different countries, I even have shared tattoos with two of them. So I can consider having my family in Argentina but also a safe place here in Europe with them.
Apart from this specific experience, I like staying at least 2 months, but I think that 3 months is ideal, this gives you the opportunity to get to truly know the people with whom you live (Because you really do everything with your housemates and in 3 months you may get to know them better than in years in a normal life). It also gives you the opportunity to know the city/town where you are staying and creating your own routine which will end with you having connections even from outside of the coliving, and once you go back to the city, even though people from the coliving may be different, those you get to know from outside will still be there.
I don’t care anymore about Sundays and Mondays, since even though I have a Monday to Friday work, I know there will be different plans every day. That’s good about the diversity in the colivings, you will never get bored since you will start sharing a lot with people with different tastes. I’ve never done so many things for the first time in the last two years since I started my digital nomad lifestyle.
My experience at Palma Coliving Mallorca
After 2 and a half months of staying at Palma Coliving, I can say that my experience has been very good! I have to say that my expectations were high due to my last coliving experience in Malta, but Palma Coliving did a great job. I will definitely recommend it! It’s located close to the old town and close to the beach and allows you to have a good work-life balance. The most interesting part is that I found each month I stayed there was a different group of people. Since the group of people changes from one to another, routines would be different, which is something I think is super valuable. It’s a very cozy place, and very well organized. I would suggest staying longer than only 1 month. Mallorca, even though it is an island, is still big. As remote workers, who continue working normally, may need more time to get to know the island. We had shared activities organized by the Happiness Officer like tapas night, shared lunch, and a weekly session on Mondays which would make the integration with the group easier.
Are you looking to become a digital nomad? This is my advice for you:
- Be open to changing your plans: I think it’s good to have an idea of where you want to go and what to do in a new city, but you will meet people in the middle of the way which will end up making your plans change, and the outcome could be even better than what you thought.
- Get a remote job: Along my trips, I met lots of different digital nomads with different jobs. So if you are looking for a job that allows you to travel, do not stick to the typical ones. I’ve lived with colivers whose jobs went from translators to even writers.
- It’s okay to stop for a while: Sometimes we just need a few weeks or even months back home to recharge some energy with our people to continue traveling.
You never know what the future holds. For now, I think I would like to spend the next year 6 months traveling, and 6 months back home enjoying myself with my family while continuing to grow professionally. However I’m open to do whatever I want to do at the moment, that’s good about being a digital nomad!
Tina, thank you for joining us this year and becoming part of Palma coliving big family. We wish you the best of luck!!
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