Returning home to Massachusetts has been an odd experience.
I’d forgotten that guacamole turns gray after you leave it overnight. I’ve returned to yelling at the TV during Dancing with the Stars. And I’m freezing. Boston had one of its worst winters in recent memory this year, and though it’s mid-May, the trees are only beginning to bud.
Coming home has reinforced what I already knew: while I will always be a proud Bostonian, I do not want to live here long-term. At least not at this point in my life.
My original plan was to spend the summer working at home, then move abroad during the fall — probably between September and November, and definitely before it started snowing again. I wouldn’t make any big decisions about the location until August or so.
But I have to be realistic about one fact:
There’s a fairly decent chance that I’ll end up in a country as expensive as the US.
I need to be prepared for that.
Which means that I need to be financially self-sufficient by the fall.
Now that I’m not traveling full-time, I have the time to work on the income-generating projects I’ve been planning for months. And there are a lot of them. I also have time to ramp up considerably on the work I’m doing now.
I have two choices of what to do next.
Option One: Work full-time and do online work part-time.
By doing this, I’ll likely be able to save more money. I’ll be able to start the new phase of my life with a decent amount of savings, which would ease the pressure once I move.
However, I don’t think I can commit to a full-time job. I will be in Mexico with Nourish Retreats from May 28 until June 4, I have wedding activities for my friend Alexa the following week, and I have a special guest visiting me in Boston from June 26 through July 9.
The only job to which I could ethically commit would be temp work. Which I’ve done before, and which is all right, but it’s really low-paying work. I’m not sure it would be worth putting my car back on the road or commuting to Boston by train for $9-12 per hour, then coming home and working all night.
It would give me more of a financial cushion for the fall, but I’m not sure that I would have the time to develop my new projects. And that’s what it comes down to.
Option Two: Do my online work full-time.
It will most likely mean less money in the short term. But since I’m living at home at the moment, I don’t need much, especially if I decide to keep my car off the road.
Doing my online work full-time would give me the time to develop several different business ideas, including two time-intensive writing projects. And by the late fall, I hope that at least a few could become viable income streams.
It’s a risk — a big one. But ad sales on wordpress.com and my other sites have been going quite well lately, and I know I can make much more than I’m making now.
I should also mention that as a Massachusetts resident, health insurance is thankfully not an issue.
There’s a lot to decide. And I will be thinking a lot over the next few weeks.
In the meantime, there will be lots of great new material on the site. Many, many more posts on Asia, posts on my three weeks in the UK, posts on my upcoming trip to Mexico with Nourish Retreats , posts on my upcoming trips this summer.
But you’ll hear a lot about my journey into entrepreneurship as well.
No matter what happens, I assure you that there are exciting times ahead!
But for now — what do you think I should do?
