Four months ago, I quit my startup job as a backend software developer, hauled everything I owned into a 10x10’ storage unit, and left my life on the West Coast behind.

At the time, I’d only intended to travel until the complex phenomenon that is burnout began to fade, hoping that I’d somehow regain my desire to contribute to America’s tech economy. Something was wrong, and I wasn’t sure what it was, though I had a vague sense that my life was no longer in balance, and probably hadn’t been for some time, despite friendships, regular exercise, and a healthy diet.  This is not that blog post, but perhaps another time we can explore tech burnout.

Unexpectedly, I got over my burnout minus one week into my planned 6-month travel period.  This is also another blog post, but for the sake of cohesiveness, I’ll give you the condensed version: I went out for a good-bye drink with my best friend, who invited me to a Web3 conference in Amsterdam that was happening in a couple of weeks, one week before my official last day at work.  Overcome by a sense of nihilism and despair, I acquiesced, thinking I’d go look at tulips in hope of making a tiny dent in my burnout with some gentle tourist activities.  The sort of thing that looks pretty on Instagram, but may or may not hold any therapeutic value for the burnt-out developer. I visited a couple of conference events, and experienced a paradigm shift.  Up at 4 AM feverishly reading EVM documentation, I saw the future, and it lit me on fire.  I found the frontier I’d always dreamed of, since growing up as a weird kid in a rural island nowhere with a subscription to Wired and a stack of 2600 ‘zines.  I dove into Web3 and applied to a competitive (free) bootcamp with Encode Club, then a security fellowship focused on contract auditing with Macro, which would begin one week after the boot camp ended.

Since that week in Amsterdam, I have been traveling continuously for 4 months through mostly Latin America, Europe, and soon a month each in the UK and Near East.

Along the way, I’ve met other digital nomads and crypto nomads.  I’ve interviewed (a polite term for ‘relentlessly badgered’) them about topics ranging from checked luggage to duration in each country to international tax and immigration law. I’ve attempted to read between the lines when they mention their conference peers noting that they were still wearing the same outfit several days into the conference. Some are a little more extreme—take Vitalik’s 40-liter backpack travel guide.  Some spend a month per location. Others have an absolute minimum of 4-5 months per location.  Some travel in loose or highly-organized packs, with or without a ‘director’ of sorts, while others travel solo, or with a romantic partner or friend.  Some choose coworking and coliving spaces.

While some have full-time jobs for DAOs or corporations (including international companies or companies based in their countries of origin), others are freelance or bounty hunters. I am currently a student, and spend about 20 hrs per week on lecture and homework—sometimes more as I prepare for my security fellowship with pre-coursework.  So consider the perspective, and take what you will.  Rather than offer a ‘top 10 must-have digital nomad travel tips’ or some other clickbait, I’ll summarize a slightly more philosophical set of principles for thriving in our cyberpunk future, starting with Part I of this series:

I. Reconsider Consumerism and Materialism:

Most Americans are used to the yearly 2-week vacay to Mexico or Hawaii (or, God forbid, 3-4 ‘long weekends’ actually spent flying to and from weddings) or some other block of time where they will typically pick up a handful of souvenirs, if international travel, or perhaps engage in some personal shopping. This is all fine if you have a house or apartment to come home to and dump your accumulated goods.  How nice!  A case of wine, a new hat, some exotic handicrafts!  When traveling continuously for months, this is neither practical nor enjoyable.  You will literally carry the burden of your consumerist tendency to accumulate on your back and in your hands, dragging it behind you in the form of luggage (if you’re the wheeled-luggage type), so choose wisely.

Rather than buying loads of low-utility objects (my personal weaknesses are art and fine fragrance), consider what you need and integrate that instead. For example, foreign toothpaste, a journal, or a great sweater made of local fiber when the season begins to turn.  While not souvenirs per se, these items are connected to your travels, and act as ephemeral or less-than-ephemeral reminders of your experiences.

Many of these utilitarian things will disappear as you use them up.  So take pictures or simply become more comfortable with the fleeting and transitory nature of travel.

Some of the best souvenirs do not take up space in your luggage.  Relationships and experiences don’t weigh a gram, and can last far longer than any material object. And you’ll never get sick of revisiting an awesome memory in the way you might get sick of looking at a pice of art that’s been on your wall forever.

As Americans especially, consumerism is encouraged as part of daily life, a vehicle for aspiration, a sign of success, even a form of nationalism. If you’re not afflicted with this cultural programming, lucky you!  However, one way to scratch the itch without actually accumulating low-utility stuff is to consume in a way that leaves nothing behind—that is, going out to a great restaurant.  This could be solo, with a friend, a date, or someone from your current expat or topical meetup group.  This could be a food tour you’ve booked via AirBnB or TripAdviser. It could be a $1 roasted fish on a stick from a street vendor, or a 12-course meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant.  Food is a necessity, so why not leverage the experience while traveling?

Another small strategy that I really love for avoiding the curse of stuff is embracing a more digital form of consumerism—one of my favorite projects is POAP (https://poap.xyz/)—short for Proof of Attendance Protocol—that allows you to collect a (usually) geolocation-linked digital token for events attended in person. The tokens are custom illustrations, date-stamped and often with a short description, and sometimes limited in quantity like NFTs. It’s a fun way to keep a memento from events without having to sort through a pile of SWAG from a conference—how many pens, t-shirts, and branded buttons do you really need, anyway?

Finally, if accumulation is inevitable, realize that you can always pull the emergency ripcord and ship your belongings to friends or family.  Perhaps you thought the climate would be wetter and you didn’t need that technical raincoat after all, or you received a tapestry blessed by a shaman, whatever the situation—costly as international shipping may be, some things are worth sending home for a variety of reasons.  Just be sure to include a ‘thank-you’ gift in the package if you’re shipping to a friend or relative for safekeeping and free storage, if you don’t have an address to go back to.

This concludes Part I of of my guide to crypto nomadism, or really lightly-crypto-flavored digital nomadism.  I intend to cover more elements of life as a nomad at length in future posts.  Let me know what you think on Twitter—find me @morganjweaver!

Four months ago, I quit my startup job as a backend software developer, hauled everything I owned into a 10x10’ storage unit, and left my life on the West Coast behind.

At the time, I’d only intended to travel until the complex phenomenon that is burnout began to fade, hoping that I’d somehow regain my desire to contribute to America’s tech economy. Something was wrong, and I wasn’t sure what it was, though I had a vague sense that my life was no longer in balance, and probably hadn’t been for some time, despite friendships, regular exercise, and a healthy diet.  This is not that blog post, but perhaps another time we can explore tech burnout.

Unexpectedly, I got over my burnout minus one week into my planned 6-month travel period.  This is also another blog post, but for the sake of cohesiveness, I’ll give you the condensed version: I went out for a good-bye drink with my best friend, who invited me to a Web3 conference in Amsterdam that was happening in a couple of weeks, one week before my official last day at work.  Overcome by a sense of nihilism and despair, I acquiesced, thinking I’d go look at tulips in hope of making a tiny dent in my burnout with some gentle tourist activities.  The sort of thing that looks pretty on Instagram, but may or may not hold any therapeutic value for the burnt-out developer. I visited a couple of conference events, and experienced a paradigm shift.  Up at 4 AM feverishly reading EVM documentation, I saw the future, and it lit me on fire.  I found the frontier I’d always dreamed of, since growing up as a weird kid in a rural island nowhere with a subscription to Wired and a stack of 2600 ‘zines.  I dove into Web3 and applied to a competitive (free) bootcamp with Encode Club, then a security fellowship focused on contract auditing with Macro, which would begin one week after the boot camp ended.

Since that week in Amsterdam, I have been traveling continuously for 4 months through mostly Latin America, Europe, and soon a month each in the UK and Near East.

Along the way, I’ve met other digital nomads and crypto nomads.  I’ve interviewed (a polite term for ‘relentlessly badgered’) them about topics ranging from checked luggage to duration in each country to international tax and immigration law. I’ve attempted to read between the lines when they mention their conference peers noting that they were still wearing the same outfit several days into the conference. Some are a little more extreme—take Vitalik’s 40-liter backpack travel guide.  Some spend a month per location. Others have an absolute minimum of 4-5 months per location.  Some travel in loose or highly-organized packs, with or without a ‘director’ of sorts, while others travel solo, or with a romantic partner or friend.  Some choose coworking and coliving spaces.

While some have full-time jobs for DAOs or corporations (including international companies or companies based in their countries of origin), others are freelance or bounty hunters. I am currently a student, and spend about 20 hrs per week on lecture and homework—sometimes more as I prepare for my security fellowship with pre-coursework.  So consider the perspective, and take what you will.  Rather than offer a ‘top 10 must-have digital nomad travel tips’ or some other clickbait, I’ll summarize a slightly more philosophical set of principles for thriving in our cyberpunk future, starting with Part I of this series:

I. Reconsider Consumerism and Materialism:

Most Americans are used to the yearly 2-week vacay to Mexico or Hawaii (or, God forbid, 3-4 ‘long weekends’ actually spent flying to and from weddings) or some other block of time where they will typically pick up a handful of souvenirs, if international travel, or perhaps engage in some personal shopping. This is all fine if you have a house or apartment to come home to and dump your accumulated goods.  How nice!  A case of wine, a new hat, some exotic handicrafts!  When traveling continuously for months, this is neither practical nor enjoyable.  You will literally carry the burden of your consumerist tendency to accumulate on your back and in your hands, dragging it behind you in the form of luggage (if you’re the wheeled-luggage type), so choose wisely.

Rather than buying loads of low-utility objects (my personal weaknesses are art and fine fragrance), consider what you need and integrate that instead. For example, foreign toothpaste, a journal, or a great sweater made of local fiber when the season begins to turn.  While not souvenirs per se, these items are connected to your travels, and act as ephemeral or less-than-ephemeral reminders of your experiences.

Many of these utilitarian things will disappear as you use them up.  So take pictures or simply become more comfortable with the fleeting and transitory nature of travel.

Some of the best souvenirs do not take up space in your luggage.  Relationships and experiences don’t weigh a gram, and can last far longer than any material object. And you’ll never get sick of revisiting an awesome memory in the way you might get sick of looking at a pice of art that’s been on your wall forever.

As Americans especially, consumerism is encouraged as part of daily life, a vehicle for aspiration, a sign of success, even a form of nationalism. If you’re not afflicted with this cultural programming, lucky you!  However, one way to scratch the itch without actually accumulating low-utility stuff is to consume in a way that leaves nothing behind—that is, going out to a great restaurant.  This could be solo, with a friend, a date, or someone from your current expat or topical meetup group.  This could be a food tour you’ve booked via AirBnB or TripAdviser. It could be a $1 roasted fish on a stick from a street vendor, or a 12-course meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant.  Food is a necessity, so why not leverage the experience while traveling?

Another small strategy that I really love for avoiding the curse of stuff is embracing a more digital form of consumerism—one of my favorite projects is POAP (https://poap.xyz/)—short for Proof of Attendance Protocol—that allows you to collect a (usually) geolocation-linked digital token for events attended in person. The tokens are custom illustrations, date-stamped and often with a short description, and sometimes limited in quantity like NFTs. It’s a fun way to keep a memento from events without having to sort through a pile of SWAG from a conference—how many pens, t-shirts, and branded buttons do you really need, anyway?

Finally, if accumulation is inevitable, realize that you can always pull the emergency ripcord and ship your belongings to friends or family.  Perhaps you thought the climate would be wetter and you didn’t need that technical raincoat after all, or you received a tapestry blessed by a shaman, whatever the situation—costly as international shipping may be, some things are worth sending home for a variety of reasons.  Just be sure to include a ‘thank-you’ gift in the package if you’re shipping to a friend or relative for safekeeping and free storage, if you don’t have an address to go back to.

This concludes Part I of of my guide to crypto nomadism, or really lightly-crypto-flavored digital nomadism.  I intend to cover more elements of life as a nomad at length in future posts.  Let me know what you think on Twitter—find me @morganjweaver!