Why the hybrid life works for me

I talk about living a nomadic life quite often.

But I think that doesn’t fully cover it.

Recently, I realised (mainly because it was pointed out to me) I am hybrid person in almost every part of my life.

I’ll zoom into a few key aspects in my life to explain how and why that works for me.

Living situation

It’s funny how things always kind of make sense in hindsight.

You gotta love the hindsight 🙂

So, what’s the hindsight then?

Well…

I sort of half-lived with my boyfriend for a couple of years when I was 16/17 years old.

I moved out of my parents place right after I turned 17. Not for a sad reason or anything. My parents are great, and I loved living at home, but I also started studying in a town over an hour by bus from my hometown and I didn’t want to be in transit for over 3 hours a day.

So, what started out as a joke, became reality soon after. Right before my 17th birthday, when I decided to enrol in a creative course over an hour away from home my mom jokingly said: “Well, we’ll just find you a place close to your school, so you don’t have to take the bus every day!”. I moved into that place 2 months later.

The place 😄

I didn’t really think it through back then either. It just felt kind of normal to me to go and live on my own. Growing up with a strong and stubborn mind and an almost annoying “I can do it on my own” attitude, meant that taking care of myself always felt quite natural. At least to me.

And it’s not like I just lived on my own and never circled back home. I spent every weekend either at my parent’s place or at my boyfriend’s. So, the hybrid living really took off there, I suppose. Juggling three living spaces at the same time. It worked.

And I guess that’s when the floating around lifestyle really took off.

The funny thing is, I’ve suffered from severe homesickness as a kid every time I spent the night somewhere other than my own home. I can’t even remember how often my parents had to come and pick me up from a sleepover, my mum had to join a school or scouts’ trip, or arrangements had to be made beforehand so I could spend time with my friends without having to spend the night somewhere else than home.

Well, that took a turn, didn’t it.

Anyways, like I said before, in hindsight it’s quite easy to recognise a pattern and to make sense of it. Once I got over my homesickness, I have never felt more comfortable relocating and living at several places at once.

The hybrid living situation was the only way to go for me.

Social life

And then there’s the social aspect of a hybrid life.

I never really fit in with one specific crowd.

I’ve talked about this in dept before in a previous blog which you can read here.

I’ve always kind of had one foot in a group of friends and the other elsewhere. In this metaphor I am also a centipede with a thousand feet and a thousand different groups I was part of.

Well maybe not a thousand, but you know.

Aside from the fact that I could never find 100% connection in one group or one person, I also enjoyed being alone too much to fully commit to other people. Individually or in groups.

A wanderer with a curious mind. That’s what I turned out to be.

I could never stay in one place or social situation for too long without feeling the need to retreat or to simply move on.

I’m still trying to figure out why that is.

And I don’t even need to be able to formulate an exact answer for it, because I can feel the reason why I am the way I am very clearly. I just can’t always translate those feelings it into words.

And whenever I find someone along the way who can even remotely understand what I’m talking about, I connect with them instantaneously. And when a connection has been created, it rarely disconnects. At least, on my end.

Because it feels so rare to me to connect to someone, I always try to stay invested in the ones who I have connected to and now live in my heart.

And with connections like these and everything in life, time and space are relative. If it feels right, it just feels right. No matter the distance, no matter the time that has passed.

Love has no limits.

But it’s not always easy to find people who share the same values and trust in human kindness and the fact that meaningful interactions, however brief they might be, can be so strong they result in lifelong friendships or at least an amazing insight on life which might help you along the way at a very unexpected moment in life.

Professional life

Never have I ever aspired a permanent contract.

This subject has always been confusing for me.

Getting a permanent contract was a goal for almost everyone in almost every workplace I’ve ever worked at.

And I never aspired it.

I could always kind of sense whether I was valued at work or not and my gut was my guide when it came to making career path decisions from the moment I graduated from uni. But I’ve never felt that need of validation in the shape of a permanent contract so I could stay in one workplace forever.

I know that’s not the reason why people aspire this, I know it’s for the sense of security going onwards in life trying to get a mortgage or starting a family. I’m aware.

But that’s something I’ve never aspired myself.

I’ve always lived my life going from one experience to the other. And I’m good at integrating in workplaces and I really like the feeling of a nice work family to go to every day. But I’d just rather have multiple things going at once, like working a parttime job and doing some flex hours on the side, than going into the same workplace 40 hours a week in a fixed structure.

It gives me anxiety.

Knowing I can be of value in a workplace but I can also leave because of improvements I made and passed on to my replacement, gives me a sense of freedom.

A permanent contract does not.

So, I just float around and go from job to job.

And the funny thing is, in my twenties (the years I was in touch with my authentic self the least) I always thought I was a career woman. I would shoot for the moon, get on boards of big corporate companies, and would go to work in my Louboutins in New York City and loving it.

Honestly.

It’s pretty hilarious when I think about it now as I’m sitting on the couch (which is also my bed) of my caravan wearing a mint green tracksuit which have turned a bit greyish from all the sand flying around. I don’t even own a pair of heels anymore. I own 3 pairs of shoes and one pair of slippers and that’s it.

It’s nice to think about how out of touch I was with myself for a decade before getting back to my true authentic self.

And now I just take life as it comes and work wherever I want to work and move on to the next place whenever.

Love life

I know this is an interesting one and people generally get the most curious about this part. And I hate to say it, but my love life has been a bit of a wild ride over the past 15 years.

And by ride, I mean it has had its ups and downs and I didn’t understand myself well enough to make any relationship work. Or to even know what I was looking for.

I always kind of knew what I wanted, but I mostly knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t aspire a “suburban life” at all. A husband, a house, a kid, a dog, a permanent job, one holiday every year, all of that. But that only made it more confusing because my life didn’t align with my own values throughout the years. I dated a lot, but it never had potential to grow into something meaningful. And this usually resulted in plenty of bruised egos. A brused ego is my definition for that unsettling feeling of a “situationship” ending or just fizzling out.

There was one guy once who told me the honest truth about why he didn’t see a serious potential for us. He said: you mentioned on the first date you were planning on moving to another continent within the next 5 years. I just didn’t think that would be a good foundation for a relationship.

And that’s fair enough!

And also, the confirmation I needed that I wasn’t going to find “my guy” or you know someone who would meet my values in that part of the world. The mindset was just completely different to mine.

People who know me a little know that I feel most attracted to men who are not attached to a specific location or situation. Just like me.

And as complicated as that might get, it is the only way to go for me. Because I am the same. I need that freedom too. And if that means I’ll end up in a relationship with someone who I don’t get to see for stretches of times due to alternating travel schedules, that’s fine for me. It’s even a pretty great scenario. I would love to be in a relationship where I can still be my own person with my own life alongside someone who values that as much as I do. I can only imagine how great it would be to try to meet up in the middle and go on adventures together whenever we want. A deep connection doesn’t seize to exist when you put distance in between it. At least, not to me. It has the opposite effect on me. It only makes a connection grow stronger. As long as there is trust, loyalty, and communication on both ends.

Anyways. We’ll see where I end up on this part of the journey!

A solo journey, it's all I know 💁🏻‍♀️

A few tips and thoughts for whoever’s considering or living a hybrid lifestyle:

1. Make sure there is stability in your life and you have routines that are not bound to a specific place or timeframe.

2. For example: I always make sure I don’t have to rely on a car wherever I go, and the best scenario includes a train/bus station, supermarket, ang yoga school within walking/biking distance.

3. Another one: I always pack or buy the essentials for my morning routine as soon as I move into a new place. This includes:

4. Breakfast items (oats, bananas, eggs, spices)

5. CCF tea (coriander, cumin, and fennel seeds)

6. Jar of coconut oil for a daily morning massage.

7. Jar of ghee to put in my glass of warm water in the morning.

8. Travel size diffuser for essential oils to support my mood and health.

9. Try to just live with the essentials you need. No extras. Just make sure to not become too restrictive when it comes to the amount of stuff you own. It’s still important to be able to make every space you live in personal and homy. It just also needs to be practical and easy to pack up. “No doubles” a good guideline that has helped me heaps. I’ll publish a blog on how I sized down on my personal belongings soon!

10. Always think the next step(s) through and/or have a backup plan in place. Even if the backup plan is a temporary hostel or Airbnb stay.

11. And finally: there’s no need to rush in this lifestyle. Enjoying and living in the moment is the whole point of it. It’s not supposed to be an escapism but an amazing way to live a free life.

And that’s it.

All I want to add is: if this way of living is something that resonates with you, just try it out! You’ll realise how many opportunities there are once you start exploring different ways of living.

And you know, you can always go back. You just probably choose not to.

Anyways.

That’s it for now.

Sending you love and joy! ☀️🙏💛

Xoxo, Domi

#Lifestyle #love #life #mentalhealth #family