Do you want to get inspired by some of our member's life stories? Today Saskia tells us all about her transition to digital nomadism and the challenges she had to overcome to make this lifestyle work. Can you relate to her? After all, if Saskia could do it, you can too!
Tell us about yourself...
My name is Saskia, I am 29 years old and I'm from Germany (Cologne). I am currently self-employed, basically working for my own company which is called Flourished You. I work as a positive psychologist, coach, and trainer, offering different services, such as coaching training, and retreats or events like offsites for well-being (from a positive psychology perspective). I also teach positive psychology at the university, and I do a couple of other things as well. On top of that, I offer training about "releasing exercise", which is something I did here in Palma Coliving villa as well.
When did you start your journey as a digital nomad?
I’ve been a digital nomad for two years now, starting in June 2022. I love traveling in general, in fact I used to love it even more. After two years of traveling full-time, I feel like I need a bit of a base for a moment to just maybe sit a little bit down.
Palma Coliving was that place for me. A place to relax and travel more slowly. But now that I'm leaving I think I would have loved to stay longer. Two months passed by so quickly, especially if you have so many nice people and cool things to do around this beautiful island.
What are your passions?
I actually love travel but for now, I feel like this passion that I used to have is gone just for the moment but for now I feel like I need a bit of a home base. A part of that I love hiking and being in nature, I love yoga and meditation and I love like just spending time with friends and nice social company, having dinner together or going out to dance.
Why did you start the journey of a digital nomad?
I love travel in general and I always wanted to do this world trip that has no end to it. My favorite book (or one of my favorite books) is called Abgefahren. That’s a german title and it’s about this couple that went on the world trip for 16 years or so. Their only planned to go for one year trip but they just never returned. This book was very inspiring to me. That was always my dream just leaving without having any plan or any return ticket and that’s basically what brought me into this whole living the digital lifestyle. My profession also lead me to this beautiful lifestyle. Being a positive psychologist working in the field of meaning and purpose, and living a fulfilled life that you end on good terms, you know... in a way that you do not regret anything or just really live the full life. I feel that is very connected to this lifestyle.
My goal was definitely and still was to explore as many places as I possibly could and just get to know different people and cultures and places and foods and geographies and climates. I think that is why I became digital normal and then obviously COVID really accelerated the process of the passion or the idea of traveling, because we were all locked up for long months on end, but I still prepared a lot for the lifestyle of being a digital nomad.
What challenges did you have to overcome to become a digital nomad?
First of all, like lots of administration. It is really confusing and there should be way more clarity on those things. Such as finding the right health insurance or Do I stay resident in Germany? or Do I become residence somewhere else? and How do I do the visa thing? So those where very big challenges at the beginning, but now that I have more experience I would add something else to the list: figuring out how I want to live. When I used to travel for vacation or like in longer period as well I am a very fast traveler, so I usually went to a place just for one or two days. After that I was good with leaving again and try somewhere new. So at the beginning I had a very fast pace but if you really make this your lifestyle, then things have to shift a bit.
I'm now travelling with my partner and we are both working remotely through the day and then having the evening for dinner and recreational activities. This could be something difficult to manage at the beginning. Our travel style had to change a bit and in the beginning we approached this whole thing differently. We traveled very fast, so stayed only for two or three nights in each location and continued the traveling. For example when we stayed in Thailand, we stayed for six weeks in the same island, but we only agreed to stay in the hotel for four nights on end and then we always went up to the registration desk and said we want to extend by four days more. I guess we could never commit to this long period of time.
In fact our experience at Palma Coliving was the first trial of just staying for two months in the same place. We thought Palma Coliving was very well located, in a good spot on the island of Majorca. From here we could explore different places, either by car or we could just get the buses, and still have all the amenities us. We loved the location of Villa Armadans, we didn't feel isolated in the middle of the island. We still have the place where we can go and have a nice brunch or anything and we can still explore the island on the weekends, which is exactly what we did and it was great!
What advice would you give to someone who wants to become a digital nomad?
It guess that depend on which type of location-independent person do you imagine yourself being. In general, I would say that not everything is perfect in this lifestyle. It's great if you want to travel and see a lot of countries BUT then you have to do it and you need to be aware that this takes TIME. Time and resources that yo can put into your work.
Sometimes this can be a challenging thing if you have a full-time job. If you are working remotely from 9 to 5, then you just don’t have that much time to explore. This means that you will have to stay longer and locations. You can’t really experience the full traveling or to have the full travel experience while working. We’ve tried this in a couple of places and basically what you end up doing is working in places where people are on holiday (which sometimes feels very bad because you’re sitting in this beach bar that’s beautiful and everyone’s having the best time and you’re sitting there on your laptop not having the best time).
How to make it happen?
I started self-employment right after university so I’ve had many "job-jobs" before that but no corporate jobs. I studied positive psychology and coaching psychology in my master's degree and then I went right into self employment. Of course, it took me a while because first I tried to only build my company (which ended up not working out). I also wanted to take on other jobs, I always wanted to teach lectures at university and I always wanted to work with corporate clients as well. I guess that at the beginning I just tried a few of those things until understanding how I could make it work for me. In the end, everything lined up for me and now I have multiple income sources and I think this helps a lot in terms of income but also in terms of freedom and time organization.
How was your Palma Coliving experience?
So what makes Palma Coliving special is Agnieszka. She is the Happiness Officer at Villa Armadans. She is so kind, she brings the sunshine into the group and she’s very caring. She creates a home and she’s always attentive to everyone’s needs so whenever you need anything, she will be there to respond.
On top of that, I think the house is really nice. I enjoy the way everyone has more or less their own space just by the architecture of the house. The garden is nice and all the activities given in the coliving were very interesting. It is good that everyone has their own space and freedom, if you don't want to go to any activity you just opt out and it's absolutely fine.
My favorite events during my stay were definitely the Friday family dinners. It’s just the community that makes the experience, and we were so blessed to find so beautiful people here. I would even say I found some lifelong friends and we had very fun dinner nights with lots of wine and long werewolf games. I am really looking forward to seeing some of them again throughout this year.
I would recommend Palma Coliving to anyone who wants to try this digital nomad /slow travel lifestyle. The location in Palma is amazing having the forest nearby and also the sea... it's really good and you can walk to Santa Catalina and really good stuff so overall I think I might come back.
Thank you!
