Few Thoughts on Traveling & Working—It's Fun, But Sometimes Difficult To Balance Everything!
I've been travelling for a while now for meetups and for personal reasons. The past 3 months have been crazy. I have one last short travel left to go before I get back to regular work. It has been exhaustive and yet rewarding to take a break and enjoy life as it happens.
We take life too seriously sometimes and forget that the time we spend on issues we think are serious is just a waste of a precious resource at the end of the day. I have a ton of comments I need to respond to and I can now slowly get to them one by one.
For me, Steemit life=Work life and that's all very important but it has been hard to keep a balance off late.
Due to the locations I've been visiting in the past few weeks I've been missing out on Steemit. I just got home yesterday, feeling a bit unwell and exhausted. The fatigue has set in and I don't feel doing much. This is normal and happens to the best of us. Hopefully as April closes in, I hope to get back to regular work.
I'm also trying to streamline my curation, and community building efforts largely centred around India. In the next couple of weeks that should get sorted out as I build out a small database of active users from my country.
But it sucks to be behind schedule owing to continuous travel. But in the past few months I've been spending time with my friends and meeting people who matter. I've travelled around various locations meeting a TON of Steemians and people whom I think should be using Steemit. Meeting and speaking to these amazing people has given me many ideas and also highlighted several issues of this platform-we'll discuss those later.
But then this is the real life! Our virtual life is just our online presence, we cannot let it rule our life or else we'll end up old (if we're lucky to get that far) and sad having missed out on living out our life to its fullest potential.
I know many who can use their phone for blogging or social media on the go. They have their keys on their phone so they can do everything on the go. Somehow I can't seem to want to do that. Even if it means that I miss out on voting as much as I want to, commenting in great detail, and replying to everyone on my threads, trading regularly to earn a profit and whatnot.
Life is constantly evolving and you have to adapt to its changing ways.
My Steemit income drives my community projects. Hence I have to keep on posting. But it's hard to do everything when you are constantly on the road. Hence I focus on the task at hand instead of juggling everything. You can't have everything all the time. So it's better to enjoy what you have at hand.
My idea of travelling is about experiencing the world around me in as much detail as possible. I make new, real connections everywhere I go. I try to observe everything around me and take it all in. These are very valuable to me! I talk to people about Steemit and Steem and it's all very exciting. I love sharing my ideas and thoughts with my travel partners and learning about theirs. This makes it hard to remain glued to my phone and computer.
Maybe that's just how I'm wired-a bit old school perhaps! Thing is, I started travelling in my teenage years and in those days, we had no mobile phones. There was no way to stay connected 24/7 with your friends or family. I also rode thousands of kms based on directions from people. I would just stop and ask for help.
Life's too short to not to see the world around us and enjoy all that it offers. Don't you think so?
Recently, I've constantly been in areas with poor connectivity and that made it that much harder to focus beyond basic things like publishing a post kept ready in a google drive file, checking my witness server to ensure its working fine and using steepshot to upload some images.
My productivity is best when I'm bound to my desk, either at home or in a hotel room. Personally I'm not comfortable working on the phone when I'm in a taxi, it's nearly impossible for me, yet so easy for some.
Usually, I used to work on my flights. But, off-late my body desires rest and I have been trying to catch up on some sleep on all my recent flights. I've also realised that I don't like being driven around in a taxi. That's just not my idea of travel and yet I had to do it over a period of a week to figure it out for myself. It left me exhausted AF and drained!
How do you manage your social media activity when you are travelling constantly? Do you let your life on Steemit rule everything else in your life?
If you like my work kindly resteem it to your friends. You may also continue reading my recent posts which might interest you:
- Building A List Of Users From India—Please Fill This Form ASAP!
- Why You Should Vote For @firepower As Witness—Witness Campaign Post From India!
- India Steem Meetup #4—An AWESOME Meetup In New Delhi—India's Capital and 40+ Attended!
@firepower, I know some people who just operate from a mobile phone. The main reason I don't like using a smartphone is that it is not so smart. Also, thanks to immensely slow networks we have in India. I hate going to mountains when I know I will not be connected with my work. I live and feed on the internet. It's my bread and butter. It also limits me to go to places where I know connectivity is limited. Hence, I plan to go such places where I know I can find a cafe all around with kickass wifi.
Also, I plan holidays where I do not take out my phone at all for 4-5 days. Just keep it the bag for any kind of emergency. Also, I never take out my phone when I am with friends or in a business meeting.
I think you need a PA who can write and do stuff for you when you are on the go. You just make a call or maybe write your post on paper and send the picture to them. They will post it for you. :-D Cheers!
Dude, I love the mountains but when you're up there, there's hardly any connectivity in India. Before Steemit I used to head to the hills regularly but now everything needs greater planning and I just hate that. I lived by the coast most of my life and then I moved closed to the mountains and fell in love with them. I have so many trips that I plan in my head and can hardly execute them without leaving Steemit for good for weeks or months on end.
This is great dude! Plenty of people should learn from this!
I've been recommended this quite a bit off late. I'm looking for solutions for the same.
Mountains are definitely love @firepower. And even I also turn down many plans because of the same reason! Just can't spend so much time with no connectivity. :-(
I always hire a VA for a short period of time when my availability is questionable. But the problem with them is that they come and go. Never found a reliable one. I would suggest you to go for a person who is local to your city or at least the country. :-) All the best! And hope you solve this problem very soon so that you travel frequently to wherever you want to go and also come to Delhi please. Once again. :-P I know I am asking for too much but still. Haha!
Nearly 90% of all the posts I have written here on steemit are on my mobile phone simply because my typing speed is way faster on my phone.
So using my phone for steemit is not much of a problem for me. I even wrote this comment from my phone now :p
As for travelling, that is a different story. I have a serious case of motion sickness and can't travel without medication most of the time. And the medication causes sleepiness, so after I've reached my destination I can't do shit lol.
So i can't even imagine the amount of travelling you do.
I get motion sickness if I stare at my phone when I'm being driven around in a car. This prevents me from using my phone for anything substantial or longer than a few seconds. Also, one of the reason we rented a car to come to Tezpur. I also don't trust Taxi drivers to drive safely. I had like a dozen near misses in the past few days.
Listening to music on headphones on full blast and either staring outside the window or completely shutting my eyes reduces the nausea and sometimes I don't need to take medication. You could try that.
As for the near misses, take care dude. It is better to be safe than sorry. Most of the cab drivers I have encountered till now were rash drivers but fortunately nothing has happened so far. Almost all of my cab rides end up with me being annoyed or them getting a 1 star rating and sometimes both.
I know bro that when we do work with full energy and concentrate we get experience but outside our world there is also a world. We missed it.
You are putting so effort on your work and crowing this community.
Your Hard work pays. Your are write lot of people missing you also because you did't get time to reply.
Now it time to concentrate here and guide new users and even share your experiences.
I'm going to be home for a bit so that should allow me to post and comment more frequently. :)
Yes bro, everyone waiting for you.
Work, blog, travel simultaneously. Been there, done that!
It is tiring though and after a point you say enough.
True that! I'm exhausted and pretty much feel like: I don't want get out of bed, and the world will take care of itself!
And surprisingly the world does take care of itself (or not considering current world leaders! )
100℅ of my steemit works starting from the account creation have been done by me in my mobile phone..The longest among them is This Science Post I wrote in this week. It took me more than 15hrs to type and compile all this. It exhausts us as we have to bend on our phone always!
Yes I can live without phone for years..I had quit using mobile phones completely for two years; That too after being a heavy user. But now I have returned to it as it is necessary even to apply for a job!
I hope you will be here around in the coming days..All the best from India.
It's inspiring knowing the time you dedicate to steemit. You get various people's lives involved in your steemit activities.. teaching people about the platform and creating more awareness. We feel honored having you on steemit.
I do steemit during every activity of my life. While at work, having meals, watching screen where I check on different content written by users. Though i give it a break while travelling. I tried doing it, but it would always result into a headache... Still looking for an explanation for that.
Travel safe @firepower.
so true. always take the time to enjoy the moments that matter and especially the ones that take your breath away. been there and can honestly say that as tiring as it's been, it's been well worth the rollercoaster from place to place. take time for your projects, take time for your loved ones but more than anything, make time for you!
I appreciate the honesty in your post plenty of people on social media like to make work travel out to be the most glamorous thing on earth, i for one am not a fan. I'd fight for a skype call and make sure we can do things remotely as far as possible, travelling is the last resort to me
I'm also not one to be able to work and travel and at the same time, it's just not for me if I leave the country don't expect my best work. I work best when im tied to my pc for hours with my headphones on and left undisturbed
We all have to find out own work-life balance that works for them and its something a lot of people struggle with including myself in the first few years of work but now im starting to see what works best for me. How long i can be constructive for without burning out and becoming useless and brain dead.
I ask this before I burn out and chill out.
I am Pricasso most wonderful artist. Not only have you inspired me, you have rewarded me for my most perfect masterpieces and for this and in your honour. With my donkey hair paintbrush and silk canvas in thanks created you a most wonderful art work and blog... @firepower
https://steemit.com/funny/@pricasso/my-ode-to-firepower
Yours Always
Pricasso
lmaoooooooooooooooooo good game now I have to check you out
I am Pricasso I may have to do an artwork in your honour ;)
Yours Always
Pricasso
I was just thinking I hadn't seen you much lately! And I totally get the difficulty of travelling and working--both Steemit stuff and music work, for me. It's really amazing to be able to do it, but I find nearly impossible to really get much done, especially if you're staying with people. Even without the connectivity issues, I'm with you in the challenge of it! When I went to San Diego for 10 days, I pre-recorded all of my material lol.