The Perfect Idea For No Fixed Office

Posted on October 18, 2012 by No Office Needed

When it comes to having No Fixed Office, there are of course some businesses or jobs that are a little more conducive to the idea then others. Although that also depends on just what you want to be doing whether there is a way that you can work around to get the ideal No Fixed Office solution working for you.

At this stage I have really developed what I do and what I hope to build into my sole source of income around the idea of having No Fixed Office. These two areas that I am working in at not entirely businesses in their own right, however with the right development that is the potential that they have. The first is my photography, while it does not make me any income at the moment, it is something that for me is not location dependant. The second is writing, again not making a much money here, if any, however it is something that I am working to develop, and again is not location dependant.

Photography

One of my passion’s is photography, specifically, nature, landscapes and travel destinations. Which is very much something that you can see in my blog at www.joelbrown.com.au.

There are many reasons that the sort of photography that I do is in no way location dependant at all. In fact the more that I can move around the better. Being in the one location is fine if you have a studio and you are actually photographing people in a studio environment, but if you are looking for landscapes and travel destinations it really does help to be able to move around.

Essentially what makes this so ideal is that even though photography can be a rather equipment heavy area to be working in, it can also be a rather light one as well if you have the right equipment and don’t go to far overboard. In fact I believe that I would be able to get by in most situations with 1 camera, 1 lens and 1 flash unit, with a tripod as a maybe (probably essential in some cases, especially at night).

When it comes to editing for my photography I have a laptop which handles this quite well. It is kind of tough to get any more portable then a laptop, so this pretty much rounds out that for me photography is an ideal location independent business that I just need to get started on generating the income.

Writing

The other area that I love to spend time is on writing. For the most part this is between blogs, such as this one, my travel blog, personal development blog and one or two other sites that I operate. However the more that I write the more I feel that I want to be writing books or at least something with a little more detail or depth then these shorter blog posts.

When it comes to writing, this is even more portable then photography, it can be as easy as having a notebook (a real paper one that is), iPad or Laptop, and you can essentially write anywhere.

The biggest challenge with writing is giving it the time that I need to create what I want to create. Writing a blog post for me is easy because I can do this in an hour or less. I start and finish the project in one sitting because it is small and easy. On the other hand if I was to write a book, it is going to take me much longer, multiple days, weeks or months and a lot more planning. It is just not something I am use to doing and need to get the right work process into my mind to be able to run with it.

Having The Time

At the moment time is my biggest enemy, work is taking more time then it used to and I still really need the income to provide for me basic needs, maybe not for a few months but for the long term. Until I can be sure that I can secure some form of income from my two area’s above I need to keep at the work.

With any luck I can find ways to get things back to a normal balance, working around 40-45 hours a week instead of the 50-60 that I am doing at the moment. It just really comes down to looking how I can improve the processes so that I am working less. I guess the results will only be something that time will tell, however the way that I see it, I have to improve the processes because otherwise things cannot get better.

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Buying an iPhone

Posted on October 4, 2012 by No Office Needed

A little while back I wrote a post about my decision to buy an iPad. I had another very long term decision making process when it came to buying my iPhone. It would seem that  the same can be said for all of the Apple products that I have purchased, it takes me an awfully long time to decide to take a chance and then it seems I always realise just how good the decision is later.

The Decision

For a long time my opinion was that why would I want to buy an iPhone, all I need is a phone that I can use for calls and text messages. Why would I need everything else that an iPhone has to offer. I mean I have an MP3 player, I have a watch to tell the time, and a calendar on the wall.

I slowly though managed to make the move to a decision that buying an iPhone would be beneficial for me. However there was still one big step that I had to jump across before I would actually buy an iPhone and that was to justify the price. Which when I really sat down and thought about it, I could easily do that especially over a two year period.

So in the end it just came down to the fact that I was happy to spend the money to get something that I expected would in the long run save me money.

What are the benefits

I have really found that the benefits are pretty good. If I have to have a phone anyway this is the sort of phone I may as well have. The fact is that I have found myself buying phones every 12 months or so anyway that cost $100-$200 and they only barely do what I want them to do. Even if the price is higher I feel that I may as well make the little extra spend to just get something that will do what I want and do it very well.

  • Phone Calls just seem clearer. I do not know if it is really a fact or any different, it just seems that with the ear piece on the iPhone calls seem to be clearer and better quality. This is a big thing for me, as I really hate speaking on the phone and having to ask someone to repeat what they are saying.
  • Text Massaging is Easy. This is the biggest thing that I have found with almost all of my previous phones, the text massaging works, but it is so hard to look back over a conversation. The iPhone by default keeps everything in a conversation format, you can look back over the whole history of a conversation with another person, which is great.
  • Browse the Web anywhere. On almost every other phone I have had, internet access is not possible. The occasional phone has had some form of internet access, however it is well far from great. usually only a handful of pages would work, and the ones that did the access with either very limited or very difficult. On the other hand the iPhone really is only limited by the ability to view flash, and that to be honest is not a great limit anyway, I have been able to access 98% of what I wanted to when I tried.
  • Contacts, Calendars, and other little things just work and integrate between my laptop and my iPhone so easily. I kind of wish I had not been a hold out sometimes with this part of it. But I guess that is the thing we live and we learn.

At the end of the day buying an iPhone for me was a really good decision. It has made things so much easier, especially when it comes to photography and choosing a location. Where I would have had to check a website before i left home before, now I can be on the internet anywhere and 30 seconds later I have that information I need.

What are your thoughts on buying an iPhone, do you agree that it is a good choice, maybe you had a similar experience, feel free to share a little below in the comments.

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Not So Connected

Posted on September 18, 2012 by No Office Needed

Over the past year I have purchased a number of different Apple products. First there was the iPad, followed quite a bit later on by the MacBook Pro which was followed very closely by an iPhone. One of the things that really caught my attention and pushed my decisions was how they could be so connected, and to be honest they are. However this is something that I am starting to realise I am not using to anywhere near its full capability.

Deciding To Buy Takes Time

In all cases my decision to buy Apple products took quite a long time. The iPad took over a year since the first release before I actually made the decision to buy one. The MacBook Pro took a similar period of time to make the decision to buy, in fact it was probably closer to two years. The iPhone though was the longest from first release to actually buying one was probably 4 years.

Ease Of Connection

My favourite feature of the three devices though is that they are really very easy to work between, they can remotely update between each other especially calendars, contacts and a few other things.

A the time that I first had all three devices this was the feature that I liked the best, I loved being able to actually enter something to the calendar on my computer and it was updated to my phone. It really is a feature that made things so much easier and more productive.

You get Lazy

Well it seems that I have found out the hard way that having such things you tend to get a little lazy. While I like the feature at the end of the day it seems to have come out to a fairly similar result, to the more regular paper based and other electronic methods I have tried.

Diaries and calendars just are not something that I find I am able to continue with over the long term. Every now and then I find that I want to attempt to stick with it, but in the long run it is something that I put to side and don’t keep up with.

If You Love Organisation

While I have found my own problems if keeping everything connected and up to date is a big part of your life, then I would not hesitate to suggest that you go with Apple. The integration between devices and the ease of use that I have found it quite amazing.

While at times I have found solutions that claim to be simple with a PC to keep information organised between multiple devices, in most cases the results are far from what is promised. There often tends to be so much time spent trying to make sure things synchronise and keeping everything organised.

Where on the other hand the Apple system seems to just work. For the times when I do feel the need to be a little more organised it seems that even though I have not been thinking about it the organisation is still just there doing it’s thing in the background.

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Buying An iPad

Posted on September 15, 2012 by No Office Needed

When the iPad was first released, there were many people who thought that it was the thing that they had to have. It seemed every day that someone came out with some new cool app or tool or game that made the iPad seem amazing and revolutionary. The thing was I could not see myself owning one and actually getting the full use out of it.

A Decision Is Made

It was a long time coming but eventually I made a decision to buy an iPad, it came at a point when I was about to head overseas and I really was thinking could it replace my laptop. In the end it turned out that I took both. However the decision really was not driven by a need for another device, but because I had really just got to the point where there was a couple of games I really wanted to play, and the iPad was the only way to play them.

As it turns out the decision to purchase an iPad to play games became a decision that led to a realisation just what potential this simple device has in other areas. Maybe the first thing I download was a game, however in the end I have download over a hundred apps that do so many different things, with such an ease of access I just hadn’t believe would be possible.

Games

I suppose this would be the last thing you would expect to find on a blog about having No Fixed Office, however the reality is that at times you need to disconnect a little and have some fun.

Now sometimes when you are using the same device for a number of different things this can get a little counterproductive, so there is some level of self discipline needed.

I have found that games are probably the most common App download I have made, some are a whole lot better then others, so it can be very much up to reading the description. But maybe enough about games, since this is the reason why I bought an iPad in the beginning, but managed to find that it was so much more.

Finding Other Apps

It did not take me long to start finding some other useful Apps in the App Store, and starting to realise just how much more useful an iPad could then a fun distraction for games.

The first use beyond games was for the internet, I had just come to accept that if I wanted to go on the internet I had to get my laptop out and wait for it to load. On the other hand with an iPad I could have instant on access to the internet. Instead of having to try and remember the different things I wanted to look up and do on google the next time that I was on the computer, I could quickly pick up my iPad and do it right away.

Beyond this I am not 100% on which order I got apps, however there are a number that I found to be very, very useful.

  • Skype – Using a computer to get in touch with someone via Skype seems to be well cumbersome, it just makes it so much easier to have this as an App on my iPad.
  • WordPress  - While the interface to craft a blog post on WordPress is pretty impressive, you are not always at the right place to be able to get your laptop out to write your post, I have found it so much easier to just write the post on my iPad and finish the little details later on.
  • Books – iBooks & Kindle Apps make it easy to take many books with you anywhere, the last thing that I want to be doing at any point in time is taking a paper or hard back book with me, especially when travelling this just adds weight to my carry on, since I will have my iPad anyway keeping the books there is a no brainer.
  • The Other things – I have apps for many of the little things that often you would have another device, or just do with out, all within reach on my iPad, there is a world clock, calendar, weather updates, translation, timer, photos, email and I am sure there is some that I have missed.

All About Productivity

At the end of the day, I bought a device to play games and it has become one of the best tools to help me with my productivity. Where on a tour bus I would have struggled to work on my laptop due to space constraints, now I can write, or read or relax without a second thought, and to some extent gaming has actually for the most part become secondary. 

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Smart Phone. Smart Choice

Posted on August 26, 2012 by No Office Needed

Since the first phone I got in 2000, I have for some reason tended to avoid smart phones. This is a choice that I have found maybe was not the best idea of late because really smart phones are just a smart choice.

When you are working within the scope of a portable office, having a smart phone can really just make things a lot easier for you. Due to the ease of use and the number of features that they have available for you.

While at this point my experience is very limited, and mostly focused on using my iPhone you may have had a different experience, however I think more and more smart phones are going to become an integral part of a portable office, and at some point may be the entire office.

Features I Like

One of the features that I have come to like on the iPhone and that I have seen on some other smart phones is the messaging functionality. In many phones I have owned messages come in order of when you received them and have no way to tell what they are about other then who sent them to you. So you might have 50 messages from the same person and there may be 10 conversations in there, knowing where one begins and the other ends, let alone knowing what your responses were. While on my iPhone it is more like instant messaging on a computer. Each person has one entry in messages and you can see both sides of a conversation in order. Straight away making things easier to find.

For a long time the ability to access the internet through your mobile phone has been available, unfortunately for a long time this was also something that was very slow and very hard to use. I mean some phones I have owned I am sure the feature has been put there purely to say that they had the feature, irrelevant of whether it worked or not. On a smart phone I can type in a web address and pretty much get the same website I would get on a computer, or a mobile site that is quicker to load then the regular site. This really makes accessing information when I need it, just that bit easier.

Another one of my favourite features especially on the iPhone is no longer having to press a button dozens of times to find a contact or a message. Being able to swipe my thumb across the screen, makes things so much easier to scroll through a long list of contacts or to find a place on a website, or to find anything really on the phone.

Of course these are almost all functions you would like to find in a phone. However there are the more extensive features that have been available in some phones I have owned, that are all just that much better now.

  • Maps was one thing I always wanted in a phone, and I did own a phone at one point that promised this. The only problem was that it was a price per month for the maps, plus a data charge from the network provider to actually download maps. This was however when mobile data cost a few cents a kb. I end up buying a GPS because it would work out to be the cheaper option after two months. Maps on the iPhone may still require mobile data to download the maps, however this is not a part of having a phone plan with a smart phone.
  • A world clock was also a feature I choose my last phone for, which was good if you wanted to look up what time zone a city was in first to set it up. Of course the iPhone has an App for it, put in the city and the time is available within a tap.

Just Easier

But at the end of the day the whole smart phone vs other phone thing comes down to one simple point. A smart phone is actually easier to use (Well an iPhone is). Once you know where things are they are easier to find, there is no skipping through menu’s trying to figure out where the calendar is, if there is a calculator in the phone or how to check your email. These are things that are almost basic essentials, and for the most part smart phones make them easier to setup, and find when you need them.

For a long time I avoided a smart phone because it would include all this extra stuff that I thought I did not need. While I may not need it when it comes to a portable office it sure does make it easier.

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Portable Office = Portable Organization

Posted on July 4, 2012 by No Office Needed

If there is one thing that I have come to learn from working with a portable office, it is that you tend to get a lot more organised a lot quicker, or face the problems of disorganisation many times greater then in a fixed office.

WHERE IS IT???

When you are working with a fixed office space and you spend 90% of your time in the same room at the same desk, although disorganisation can be a problem, everything you are looking for tends to be within that room.

On the other hand when you are working with a portable office, suddenly all of this changes. You no longer have a fixed room that you will eventually find the paperwork or order that you are looking for. You don’t have a single desk that you may have left it on. Or sometimes even a single place you may have left it.

Would you stop to do some work in a coffee shop and leave your order book there. I don’t think so. Maybe if you were a little forgetful you may leave it by accident, but in general it is in your bag with you.

How Much Time Do You Waste?

When you work in a fixed office being disorganised is easy, because it has to be in the office somewhere. Time is wasted looking for things, but you never leave the office, and as such it really doesn’t seem that bad.

When you work with a portable office on the other hand this all changes. If you left things where you last worked on them, you would never get anything done. Can you even imagine this sort of scenario being a part of your daily plan.

You are at Client A, and take an order. Put down your order book and head off to see Client B, realise when they want to take an order that you left your order book at client A, so have to go back and get it. After the back tracking and getting the order at client B. you go for lunch at a coffee shop and go over a couple of contracts while there. You leave to stop and see your accountant on the way home, only when you arrive at the account you realise the contracts you had gone over were left at the coffee shop. Which means more back tracking and time wasted.

Now this might be a little bit extreme, however this is really how disorganisation in an office could eventuate with a portable office.

The Alternative With a Portable Office

When you have a portable office all of this really does become something that you tend to focus on improving. Not only is this an area that you can improve on, it can be an area that has some massive improvements.  If you are starting from scratch with a mobile office you may not even realise the difference, however if you are moving from having a fixed office to having a portable office the difference can be huge.

A good example is the sales person, with an office there may never be enough space. Binders full of product information, sales reports, old order books, product samples that are never used or out of date, plus any number of other bits and pieces. An office that may be used for maybe an hour a day, when not out visiting clients.

On the other hand the sales person with a portable office, has none of this, at least not these days. Of everything that you might find in a sales person’s office 90% of it can now in most cases be found on a computer or a tablet device. Most suppliers will favour a digital product guide to a physical hard copy. Electronic order books tend to be easier and save time, and sales reports are more up to date and frequently available in electronic format. So the contents of dozens of binders could easily be found on a table smaller and not much heavier then an order book.

Portable Is The Future

A portable office is the future, there is no question about it. The only thing holding it back in many cases is the acceptance by the employer of the potential improvements. The biggest factor holding it back, though is a fear by employers of the employees mis using the time.

More and more people will eventually make this move to portable freedom, as employers can be convinced it will work in their favour. It does require a leap of faith in some cases though and an up hill battle, if you think you can handle it and your boss thinks differently.

Be Portable, Be Organised

Anyway back to the topic we started with. When you work with a portable office, it is almost certain that you will become more organised, there is ultimately less paperwork you will carry and generate, there is less you will need to carry. It may take time and energy to be conscious of the change, and work everything to come together, however it is a change that I have been able to make, even if it has taken a time.

The Changes I Made

At one point when I was running my business, I used to keep binders, one for supplier invoices, one for customer invoices, another for bills, there was an order book, and a whole bunch of supplier catalogues.

The more that I worked through this business the more I found some of this stuff was irrelevant or could be handled a different way.

  • Supplier Invoices can be scanned to the computer and originals destroyed, in some cases an electronic invoice may be the original.
  • Customer invoices don’t need to be printed, unless for shipping with goods. Often an electronic invoice is just as good as a printed one. More importantly there is little need to maintain your own printed copy.
  • Other bills you receive are the same, there is no need to maintain the physical copy over the long term if you can reliably maintain an electronic copy. More and more bills are being sent electronically now anyway.
  • I can just as easily take an order directly into my laptop or onto a tablet device, why would I need a physical order book.
  • Supplier catalogues are definitely better in electronic form, updates are much more frequent, and really a catalogue is almost no longer needed, with the ease of access that you can have to the internet.

So take a look at your office and see just how much stuff you have in there that really needs to be in there. You may just find that when you are finished you do not need an office at all, and everything can be at your finger tips right there on your laptop.

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Goal: Portable Freedom

Posted on June 12, 2012 by No Office Needed

This has been the goal that I have been working on ever since I started this blog. To be free of the limitations of a desktop computer. For anyone new to using a computer in past 2 or 3 years this has been an easy step to accomplish, because really it may still be possible to buy a desktop computer, there are almost no benfits to owning a desktop.

My Desktop

While I still own a desktop computer, it has been close to six months since I have turned it on to actually do anything serious with it. In fact last time I turned it on was for two reasons, the first was to download the emails from an old email account, just in case there was anything I needed. The second reason was to move awhole lot of the files from the computer to a portable hard drive.

One of my biggest challenges two years ago when I was using my desktop computer on a more daily basis, is that I would have multiple projects that would end up spread between the desktop and laptop computers. This was not just annoying but often times left me doing things twice because i would need one part and was not going to be in the right place to get home to grab the other half. Of course there are ways around these sort of problems both in physical products such as external harddrives or USB drives. However I never did get around to setting up a good system.

Where I Am Now

In the past year I have made some drastic changes to the way that I use more portable devices. The first step in this was purchasing a laptop that had a reasonable battery life. Now days unless I am actually going to be away from home overnight I do not even take the charger for my laptop, and depending how I use my laptop I can expect anywhere from 6-10 hours battery life.

Having such good battery life also encourages me to use my laptop more at home because I do not have to go digging for the charger and plug it in as soon as I get home. As long as I plug it in when going to work or when not using it for a couple of hours it will be fully charged and ready to go whenever I need it. Without haveing to pull the charger out from behind the desk.

The other aspect of the new laptop which I purchased was more processing power. While there was a lot of tasks such as graphics work and the like I would try to undertake on my laptop it just was not capabale for the most part of taking on these tasks. As such this was part of the reason that I would return to my desktop to do a lot of work.

The other purchase that I made was a tablet, or to be precise an Apple Ipad. This has in many ways made the way that I work portable smarter and easier. Firstly it makes it easier to take just one item that is small and light, that I am able to access the internet thorugh and also use for writing when a laptop is not so easy to use, for example on a tour bus.

Having an Ipad also makes things much easier at home as well. In the past I would often turn my desktop computer on in and morning and leave it running all day just in case i needed to use it. Becuase turning it on and off everytime I needed to use it was not really time effective. So of course my computer would sit turned on all day and getting used only a small portion of that time, wasting power.

The final addition to my portable office is a 3G wifi modem. This gives me access to reasonably good speed internet on both my Laptop and Ipad pretty much whereever I am. Compared to the USB option I was using before this works out to be a cheaper option for me, and actually provides a better service.

Portable Freedom

Really as things stand now for me, I would say that I am pretty 100% portable freedom. All I need is a power point maybe once a day and I can operate from anywhere. When travelling the portable freedom does drop a little bit as the internet access is not as flexible, however this is dependant on how I travel. If I was to be in the one country for an extended period it would really be a different story.

What does your portable freedom look like? I would love to hear from you in the comments below.

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Inspiration Might Be Working

Posted on November 27, 2011 by No Office Needed

It seems that after my post yesterday, about not really know what to do with this blog, I may have had a little inspiration. Not sure if it will turn into anything yet, but it will be hopefully a project that will get me back into the swing of working on this blog more regularly.

While I have not fully formed the idea yet in my mind, I can tell you that it will be moving away from the currant topic, and into a more observations of topics or something along those lines. Even though it is sort of working in my mind I am still not entirely sure what is going on and what it might turn into.

I just was excited to see that I was getting inspiration from just opening up about the situation with the blog, and I think this has helped me to see that there is potential for this blog in another topic or way.

Anyway stay posted I suspect that I will get on top of this idea and maybe get something moving by mid week. That is if the topics come to me, I know the general idea it is just hard to put in words tonight, being late, and also being quite warm, that i am sweating even at almost midnight.

Anwyay cheers to future plans.

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Rethinking The Blog

Posted on November 26, 2011 by No Office Needed

When I first thought of the idea for this blog, it did seem like a pretty good idea. While it certainly was not new, it was something that I really felt was a great idea and something that I wanted to be doing.

You maybe will notice that there has been, even though my keen interest in the topic, quite a gap since I last posted here. This is a resultof a number of different factors, but ultimately it is the direction I was going with this blog was not really what I felt it should be.

The more I read back over some of the posts that I have shared since I started this blog the more it reads like a sales pitch for getting rid of your office. It hardly seems like I have been giving the greatest of examples for how to make the most use of having No Fixed Office. It seems like I have been to a large degree just force the idea on anyone that wants to read.

So this is really not what I wanted, I wanted something that highlighted my experience and such with not having an office. But it turned into something different, which in some cases is what you want to do, just go with the flow and see how things work out. However this is maybe not one of these cases.

I am still not sure if it is something that at this point I want to change in the blog or just drop the idea of being focused on no fixed office, or just use the name for something a little more light hearted and fun. I do have some ideas, but I guess it is something that I have been thinking about for a while and do not really want t just jump into to quickly.

Option 1 – This is basically to leave the blog as is and add more information when I get inspiration. Which to be honest I have not had inspiraton for this topic in months, if not over a year. I did start to put together one or two posts about my equipment again, however this did not really pan out to much.

Option 2 – Change up the whole concept behind the site. There is a few ideas that I have had for a more comical site that may include pictures of strange places to have an office, or just random places I choose to get my laptop out and do some work. Or then it could be something altogeher different just random writings from me or maybe a whole other topic specific that may just fit with the name or be totally unfitting with the name.

Option 3 – I could also consider selling the domain name and maybe even the whole website. There is quite likely someone else or many other people out there that could take the topic and run with it. If you are interested in the potential of purchasing this website please use the contact page and I will get back to you.

Anyway it is something I am going to have to think over and see what the outcome will be. It is something that only time will tell, and while I think option one is the best most inline idea with the original idea, I am thinking that option two may end up being the way that things go.

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Writing on the Road

Posted on March 14, 2011 by No Office Needed

Well since my last post about having No Fixed Office, there have been a number of things which have changed. Nothing has really changed much if at all in the way that I will  be working with No Fixed Office. Although some changes may be coming. But it is more in just what I will be doing and how often my Portable Office will be getting used.

Potential changes to the Office Equipment

One thing that I have worked with but not really been that fond of is the netbook that I tend to use as my only computer while traveling. To be honest while it has served well and does get the job done, I would like something with a little more power that can get things done and multitask without so much of an issue.

The biggest issue with the computer is that by virtue a netbook uses an underpowered processor. This of course is not good for doing more then one thing at a time and will often lead to graphic work taking a lot longer then it should. So as a result I am looking at really two options.

Option 1 – Buy another Laptop, which runs on windows. This option is kind of difficult in the range that I am looking at as there are not as many 13″ laptop’s around. There is one or two, however most of them are not really as powerful as when you step up to 14″. While most people would say get the bigger one, I am trying to avoid this as I do carry this laptop around ALOT.

Option 2 – Buy an Apply Macbook PRO. This is sitting slightly ahead as my preferred option, however there are a couple of reasons I am hesitating. The first one is that from the time I have spent playing with one in the store, I am still struggling to ensure that it will do what I want it to do out of the box like the PC versions I am looking at. Spending extra on the laptop to begin with to get an Apple is one thing but then to have spent more money to get software that will do what I want it to do is another thing. The other point is that I really do not think it the wisest move to be making such a big change (from PC to MAC) with so little time between purchase and travel.

Anyway the Laptop problem, will probably end up getting left until my return from my next trip anyway.

Work Changes

After my last trip which really tested the idea of a Portable office for me while traveling, I come to the realization that travel is something I want to do more of. As such I actually resigned from my job. Which became effective in the second week of January. However I have continued working part time for the same company, which has definitely allowed to continue adding a bit of money to the savings, but has also hampered some of my efforts I was wanting to make to get an income coming in and clear out a lot of my stuff.

What this means

Ultimately this means that I will be looking to make a better use of my portable office, to the extent that I will be using it for more then just my blogging while I am traveling. In fact in the last few weeks I have started a course, which will help me to work through my writing and photography styles and ultimately enable me to be a better writer. The end goal here is to become a Freelance travel journalist. Which should hopefully help to start that income stream, as well as give me another purpose for my travel as well.

This was not really the direction I was seeing things going 6 months ago, however it is a direction that I am fairly happy to work with at the moment and just see how things pan out really.

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