This is my all favorite Latin quote. Your homeland is where you’re feeling good, whatever that means for each of us: prosperous, happy, challenged to outrun others, connected to one’s roots, among friends. I always thought I could live anywhere as long there was a reason to do it: a work opportunity, getting an education, trying something new. I believe I can adapt to any place, as long as there are people I can connect with. That is why I’ve always believed I am location independent.

And I really am! I’ve traveled enough to know I’d have no problem changing countries for a while. Actually, I’d love to move to a new country every six months. Hard to earn a living like that? Not really! I am a PR and Marketing strategist. My clients rarely need my physical presence; they just need my ideas, my written words, my advice. As long as I have an internet connection and my laptop, I can do my thing.

I will probably not move anytime soon. But I could. And that sense of freedom is most precious to me. Just like the sense I could just go out for a walk if I wanted to and postpone work a little. Running your own business gives you that freedom. Or a quick glance at it. Because let’s face it, maybe I’ve postponed work a few times since I’ve started managing my own company. It’s a rare event, but it’s a very real possibility.

The Internet has become my extended home. I have friends and family online. My homeland is slowly moving online. That’s where 50% of it is right now. The rest is the palpable world, which might be a city or another in Romania, the so-called suburbs (the nearby villages where new houses are built), a different country, an isolated island in the country of no one. It’s our relationships that give us the feeling of belonging, not the place where we live. And moving around will not make me less of what I am now, I won’t stop being Romanian just because I live abroad.

Patria ubi bene. The pragmatic approach. Your heart tells you where your home is. The sentimental approach. Your office is where you plug in and start working. The “someone needs to pay for all the fun” approach. But the main idea behind all these approaches is pretty much the same: if we’re happy, we can adapt to anything, new places, and new people. Just as long as we stay connected to all those who are important to us. And given today’s technology, it’s hard not to.

In this day and age, we’re all living a Location Independent Life. And if we’re not, we can easily start living it.

This is my contribution to the Location Independent Group Writing Project. If you want to join it, the deadline is May 27, so hurry up!

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I’ve not completely disappeared. But if we only connect through this blog, well, I might have led you to believe I’ve deserted and am hiding away . So I thought it was high time for a quick update on what yours truly has been doing lately.

• Working, of course. Both with my existing clients on some amazingly cool projects and with new ones I’ll tell you more in a short bit. It’s been fun and challenging, but is also took a lot of my time, including weekends The situation won’t change, but I’m learning to better adapt to it.
• Reading and listening to music – these have been my favorite ways of relaxing. I’ve finished the first three books of the Twilight series (the fourth will only be published in Romania this autumn, so I’m getting it from Amazon). As for music, I finally reconnected with my old habit of listening to music while working. I draw a lot of inspiration from it.
• Looking into buying a house. Actually, rent it first, then buy it, as this is not the best moment ever to get a loan. So, thank God for smart companies, they’ve invented this Rent-2-Buy program, where you pay rent for a couple of years and after that, when you buy the house, all your rent is deducted from the price. So it appears I’ll soon have my own little house, with a little garden, a terrace and a huge kitchen
• Writing! I can’t really explain when exactly I’m doing this, but I’ve started writing a novel. It’s been a while since I last considered writing fiction again! But it’s a great opportunity to use my English vocabulary for something more than business writing. I can tell you it will be a vampire story. Simply because after dozens of books, movies and TV series, I still fee I haven’t been told the story I always wanted to hear. So I’m writing it

I’ve missed being here, reading blogs and connecting with you all! But I bet my break from my online home is over! See you around

I am finally back from my rather long vacation in Turkey and I was greeted by rain, cold weather, people saying they hate me for having such a vacation (hope they were kidding) and about 8000 spam messages in my work inbox!

It was a long first day on Monday: fighting junk and trying to find the legitimate emails took almost the whole day. At the end, I had about 40 marked for follow up. Then today, after finally completing the to do list, I felt like running back. Thinking of sunny skies, the blue see and great food while seeing the clouds outside and getting scared by the tasks swamping you is extremely counterproductive!

But I am back, with great new plans, a lot of ideas and tons of travel stories that you will soon see published on Travel Spells. It’s been great reconnecting with online friends on their blogs, via messenger or on twitter. I am happy to be back, don’t mind my whining, but it wouldn’t have hurt if I could have stayed a little longer, maybe until the official season closure, November 1st?

Greeting hugs to everyone,

Alina