Life is either a daring adventure or nothing

Hi, I am Octavian and below wrote my story of becoming a Digital Nomad. It wasn’t an easy one, but if I had to go back, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I hope you enjoy the read.

Building an iron mindset

I grew up in a very peculiar family. Since I was a little kid, my parents enrolled me in many extracurricular activities. At 6 years old, I was in the 1st grade, having piano, violin, English and French classes after school. It took me a few years to realise that I didn’t live a normal life when I asked my schoolmates what are they doing after school. I was almost furious when I went back to my parents and asked them “Why are all the kids from school allowed to play video games after school and I have to work so hard”. My parents' answer will stay with me for the rest of my life. “Because you are an Ungureanu” (my surname) they said “and you will succeed where others fail”

No dream is lost if there is but one fool left to fight for it

Growing up in post-communist Romania in the late 90’s and early 2000’s wasn’t a walk in the park. I had this dream about travelling around the world and moving from city to city, country to country every other month, but due to the cultural limitations, I got laughed out of the park every time I shared this dream with people because the concept didn’t exist at the time.  Nevertheless, I told myself over and over again that if nobody had done it before, I would invent it myself. I have no limitations. 

I started looking for skills which are cross-culturally relevant and I figured out that a few professions are valued and useful in any country in the world. That was the reason why I applied to study medicine. 

Never thought to myself if I liked it or not, for me the only thing that mattered was the objective and I was not going to allow anything to stand in my way. That being said, after the first year, I got close to a resident and he saw something in me. He told me “This is not a profession for you, but you are stubborn, so you won’t listen to me”. The resident offered to give me a real inside of the profession and he asked me to shadow him for a while. I was very excited about this opportunity and for the next 6 months, I was in the hospital on 24-hour shifts about 2 times a week. I learned very rapidly that when you are a doctor, you are surrounded at all times by pain and misery and to be good at your job, you’ll need to decrease considerably your sense of compassion. I saw the person I need become to do that job well and I didn’t like it. It was the time again to look at my life through different lenses.

Life can lead you in mysterious ways

A passion I’ve explored since my early years of high school was photography. It wasn’t the traditional way of capturing nice shots, but I wanted to create photos that would tell a story. That passion pushed me towards learning Photoshop very well and I started an Instagram account to post my work out. 

A few months later I was applying for a job as a web developer at a small marketing firm and thought it could be useful to share my Instagram as well. “Throw everything at the kitchen sink, right? You never know what is going to stick”… at least that’s what I thought at the time. The interview went well, but eventually, I didn’t get the job. 

However, 2 weeks later, I received a call from the Director saying that he was considering me for a Graphic designer role and invited me to another interview. This time I got the job and I was once again back on track with my dream.

An experience can completely change the way you see the world

Growing up in a lower-middle-class family in Romania keeps the bill collectors away from your door, but sure as hell won’t allow you too many leisure activities. By the time I was 18, I only left the country twice, only by car so my experience with the outside world was very limited. For me travelling around the world was a far-away concept. 

My sister decided to move to the US when I was 18 and due to the strict regulation in terms of immigration, she couldn’t leave the country anymore. Six months after that, I decided to pay her a visit for 3 weeks which was, at the time, the boldest thing I’ve done to date. Never been on a plane before, or travelled on my own. At the time I could barely speak English. It’s funny how one could be so confident to do something when they plan it, but when the day comes to actually do it, it starts to feel real. It was my first time on a plane, let alone flying for 10 hours across the Atlantic. 

The experience I had in the US was life-changing. I discovered that struggling isn’t the default or should be for the human condition and I could find better opportunities in a different country. 

Soon after my return to Romania, I knew that I needed to go somewhere so given the strategic advantages, I moved to London. And here is where my nomad story begins.

Sometimes a bad motivation is better than no motivation at all

From an early age, I didn’t have a good relationship with my parents. Due to our different life models, we couldn’t find a communal ground for a long time. I found them to be overprotective and controlling so my rebellious nature kicked in. 

I recently did the Big 5 personality test and it turns out that I’m the most disagreeable person in a thousand people. Disagreeable people are very competitive and blunt. They also tend to be very aggressive in certain situations. It’s not predatory aggression, and certainly not personal. They see obstacles on the way and attack them, regardless of what kind of obstacles are there. 

Going back to the story, you can imagine now that I had a very rough relationship with my parents. Moving to London was a new beginning for me, but more than anything else I had a very strong motivation. I had to make it work, it wasn’t a matter of “it would be nice” or “I should”. I knew for a fact that this cannot not work and I would jump from a building before going back to live with my parents. “Come back with your shield, or on it*” 

London made it difficult for me to kick-start my career, but I’m not the one to shy away from a challenge. I got to a point where I was delivering my CV in a box of doughnuts to make myself seen, but I was going nowhere.  I had to  (almost literally) knock on every door in the city until someone gave me a job. 

When I got my first job in London I was almost crying. Thought that was the beginning of a long journey into the corporate world, but I was about to be proven wrong.

*The general meaning was “victory or death,” the significance being victorious warriors returned home carrying their shields; the dead were borne home on them. Only those who fled the battle, shedding themselves of weapons and equipment to hasten their flight, came home without their shields.

Turn every challenge into an opportunity

 I was always a very social person. Even though as a kid I was a bit timid, there was a necessity for me to be around people. 

The first few months of my new job went great. I was progressing rapidly and got a decent promotion by the end of the year. Things were looking very optimistic when the lockdown started. I was the person who could not wait for the offices to reopen but every week we kept hearing that our work-from-home phase had been prolonged for another 2 weeks. 

Things got better during the summer, but from September onwards there was strong evidence for a second wave and everything gradually started to close again. 

I had had it. I was at the end of my rope and thought that there was no way out of this hell. There was a saying I used to have which goes “If you must fail, might as well do it with style”, which translated into “If the end is near and I need to go, might as well pull up one last stunt before going” 

I brainstormed the biggest stunt I could pull, which is eccentric, but technically possible. Not long into my process, I came up with the idea to move to Mauritius. 

I had to leave the place in London cuz I couldn’t afford to keep paying rent, didn’t have a laptop so I had to carry my PC with me (including a screen) and didn’t tell the people from my job what I was doing. I was moving to a country halfway around the world, with no contacts and no idea what I was going to do there.

The night is darkest just before the dawn

What I originally thought that is a one-time thing, turned into a lifestyle. When I moved to Mauritius, I didn’t think it through in the long run but took it one step at a time.

Living free, in paradise, two minutes away from the beach while all my friends were in a very restrained lockdown in London. I was living the dream and thought this was the best I could ever do when life threw a new challenge at me. 

I initially thought that happiness is a place and when you reach that place, you will just be comfortable and feeling great for the rest of your life. The truth is that as human beings, we are bound to grow, so there is nothing worse than being stuck in a really great place. 

The challenge that came my way was that the company I was working for went into recession and they were starting to make redundancies. That scared the hell out of me because I was in a foreign country, with limited access to job opportunities. However, that was the push that I needed to look for other opportunities and start building an online presence with the purpose of getting new clients. I managed finally to look at every challenge as an opportunity to grow and get to better places. 

You can’t return to your normal life after an extraordinary experience

The time has come to return to London as the lockdown was lifted and we had to return to our office. I was excited about the idea of going back home so I packed my things with a lot of enthusiasm. 

When I arrived in London, I submitted a request to be allowed to come to the office every day as I wanted to return to my “normal” life. In my vision, I wanted to put all this behind me in my photo album, mark the achievement and go back to reality. Little did I know that there was no way for me to return to an average life. 

There was an idea stuck inside of my mind and at times, bothering me that I do not live the life I could. 

In a few months, my sister moved to Miami and invited me to spend some time together. I put in a request at work and they allowed me to work remotely for about 3 months. What I wanted to see is what exactly attracts me, and if I truly enjoy moving places, or just the idea of it. 

I had a good time in Miami, but when I returned, I had a similar realisation. I cannot go back to a normal life anymore. 

How skydiving changed my life

I know what you’re thinking: “Skydivers are them crazy people who throw themselves out of a perfectly good airplane for the adrenaline rush”. I thought the exact same thing before getting in touch with the community. 

After returning from Miami, I was keen to experience new things in my quest to discover what my ideal life looked like. Skydiving was on my list, but I never wanted to do a tandem. I always felt like it was too common and too commercial. You don’t have any control over the situation so it’s very much like riding a rollercoaster. It’s fun, but everyone can do it so that’s the thing that keeps putting me off. 

I’ve reached out to a Facebook group to find out that there is a way you can get a licence and start on your own. It started to sound more like an activity I wanted to partake in. I’m not after the adrenaline rush (although that is really fun), I am more interested in learning how to control my emotions in a scary situation. 

One of the things I liked the most about the skydiving experience, was the community. I spent about 10 days in Portugal training and at the end of each day, we will get together and share our experiences. I got to meet a lot of interesting people and for the first time in my life I was introduced to the concept of a “Digital Nomad” 

After that, I realised that there are other people out there who do what I do, so talking to them got me so inspired and I was clear after that on what kind of life I wanna have. 

I wanna be a digital nomad.

How I fell in love with life

Soon after my skydiving training, I moved to the Algarve (Portugal) and there I met a large community of digital nomads. I made a lot of friends and I was exposed to different ways of making money online while working remotely. 

It seemed like everyone was living the life and only I was stranded at a job which kept pressuring me to return to the office. 

Some people say that is not a good idea to quit your job before you have a good income stream from outside. That could be true, but a lot of people stay in their 9-5 jobs for decades just dreaming that “someday” they will do something that will allow them to escape the rat race. 

Me? I am different. I like to take risks, to climb a rock without a safety net because that will constantly remind me that the only way is up. When I quit my job, I knew that starting my own business was the only way for me to progress. There was no other option and that kept me motivated. 

I decided to cut everything that was not productive, including drinking alcohol after years of binge drinking (the socially acceptable term for alcoholism). Surprisingly it was a lot easier than I thought, but that was because my focus was on my business and everything that was not useful for that must go. 

Here is an ironic story: I told myself that I was going to stop drinking until I got my first client for marketing services. It took me about 5 weeks to get the first one signed, but the first client I got is running recovery programs for former addicts and one of the reasons for which we also wanted to work with me is because I was also sober. I found it funny but also thought that the universe was trying to tell me something, so I decided to quit drinking for good.

Connect with the right people and opportunities will follow

It was the Autumn of 2023 when I first connected with Dina. At the time I was still sending cold emails hoping to get more customers when I stumbled across her website. She was different from the people I was contacted at the time, so I ditched my template for the email and sent her a personalised, from-the-heart email. She responded back and we chatted for a bit about the potential of working together. 

About one month later, she came back with an interesting proposal. To partner on her business and work closely together. It was a big surprise for me because all the opportunities I had in my life were received after a lot of work and this time someone else was coming along with the proposal. 

We hit it off right from the bat and the rest is history. Been working together since the beginning of the year 2024 and things are just getting better and better. We are building something great together and I am forever grateful for this opportunity. 

The best advice I can give to everyone starting out is the following “If you don’t have a better way to do things, just knock on every door and, even if you get a million no’s, eventually a door of opportunity will open for you”