My dream
Is to fly
Over de rainbow
So high
No, actually that’s Yves La Rock’s dream (and my bloody nightmare as, in Egypt, they still think that this trick is new and interesting when everyone else stopped playing it six months ago).
My dream is that, one day, I will be able to find a way of making an income that will allow me to make my living purely from the Internet, meaning that I am as free as a bird to travel from one place to another at a moment’s notice, changing locations as often as I change underwear.
Wherever I lay my laptop, that’s my home.
However, like most dreams (and kinky sex fantasies) the reality is often not nearly as good as one imagines it should be.
The main problem is that I really don’t like laptops at all. Their nasty little keyboards just aren’t designed for people with jumbo-sausage-like fingers like me and those silly little touchpad things are simply a pain in the arse (or more accurately, a pain in the fingers). So whenever I use a laptop, I need to plug in a ‘proper’ keyboard plus a ‘proper’ mouse.
But this doesn’t solve the main problems. Normally I use a desktop with twin 19″ flatscreen monitors side by side, giving me a monster 38″ of vision. Going back to a teeny 15″ of single monitor is just a real step down. Also desktops are really cheap and so I was able to have lots of RAM, processor speed and storage on mine. Getting anything close to that on a laptop would cost me an arm and a leg.
But the real, real difference is that. at home, my PC is online 24/7. I just need to stumble out of bed to my desk and, because I never turn off my PC, I’m ready to start work as soon as my bleary eyes are ready to focus on what’s come in while I’ve been sleeping.
When I’m travelling, however, it’s a whole different ballgame. Now I have to wander around some strange city attempting to find some wifi cafe before I can connect. And half the time my laptop refuses to connect to the wifi system and so it’s on to the next one before I can get my external keyboard and mouse and external hard drive, etc. set up.
Now, if I was on my own, this wouldn’t be so bad, because I have a basic problem with travelling. I love to travel, to go someplace new but, to be honest, I don’t really know what the fuck to do when I get there. I don’t like sight-seeing at all, I loathe sun and beaches, I don’t like shopping – so what else is left? I like to eat in different restaurants, to see different people and to generally ‘feel the vibe’. But these are all rather passive rather than active pursuits.
I remember first realizing this when visiting The Hague in about 1982. I remember thinking “I’d love to work here”, but I was bored shitless just wandering around the place. And, to be honest, I’ve thought the same thing about most other places I’ve visited. I’d love to live there, to mingle with the locals, to go off the beaten track, but I’d need something to do to keep me amused during the process.
Spending eight plus hours a day on my emails or fiddling around with web-itey things would suit me fine, as would doing some research for a new book. No problem at all.
But the problem comes from the fact that I very rarely travel alone. I have my bay-bee with me. And there’s no way that she is going to sit around with me for eight hours while I do all of my Internety type things. Like most rational people who travel, she wants to do stuff when she gets there. Normally she’s not quite sure what stuff she wants to do, but sitting around in a wifi cafe watching me work is definitely not one of them. And I can’t really fault her logic for this.
When there’s a beach for her to sit on, that’s not such a problem as she can stay on the beach while I do my business. For a while at least. Not for eight hours.
Which means that I am usually rushing to get eight hours worth of work done in a couple of hours maximum. And I hate rushing, which means I am usually stressed out. I’m stressed out if I am rushing through my emails, and I’m stressed out if I’m not doing my emails at all.
I’ve noticed that my mood depends totally on how long it’s been since I checked my email and answered it all. When it’s all up-to-date, I am exceedingly mellow – all is well with the world. After a couple of hours, I’m curious as to what might have come in. After four, I’m a little concerned that someone might be needing something urgent from me. After eight, I’m getting rather worried. By 16 I’m starting to panic a bit until, by 24, I’m just a panic-stricken maniac who absolutely must get to his email or else it will be the end of the World as we know it.
My hands are shaking as my email starts to download. ‘Dowloading message 1 of 367′.
FUUUUCCCKKKKKK!!!!!!!! I hope it’s mostly spam.
But Sod’s Law says it isn’t all spam.
No, Sod’s Law says that I can sit in front of my desktop at home and there’s not a lot going on. But as soon as I go travelling, everyone in the world and his dog needs something from me urgently.
I am only writing this now because I am trying to move all of my thousands of archived emails from my desktop to my laptop – and of course it’s not going very well.
Packing is easy as I am male. I know that packing for a woman is an exercise that can takes days of preparation. For me (and most other males, I’m sure) it’s very simple – throw every item of clothing in my wardrobe that isn’t dirty into a suitcase and close it. Done. Five minute job maximum.
But getting all my technological gear ready for the stressful journey – now that’s an exercise that will take most of the night to arrange.
So I am going to be away for nine stressful, panic-inducing days, on a bizarre journey to Latvia and Bulgaria and then back to Egypt that will involve six different flights using four different airlines with connections in Germany, Greece and Cairo. During which, I will have plenty of time to fret over all those unanswered emails just screaming to be answered.
So don’t expect much blogging from me until I am back and have caught up with the non-urgent backlog.
