118: David Cole | Questioning normal - Our Offbeat Life as a full time traveling family

AUTOGENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Jesper Conrad: 0:10

Today we're together with David Cole and we will swap podcasts where we will first talk with David and then afterwards he will talk with us. So we will recommend you go out and listen to David's podcast. We will be out a little later than ours, but once it is we'll put the links in the show notes. So first of all, welcome, david. Thank you very much.

Cecilie Conrad: 0:32

We were put together by Rachel, who is running the World School Clubhouse, because we both are nomadic and have children and are part of this community, and you were reaching out to her to get ideas about who to talk to on your podcast and I thought, hey, wait a minute. We do a lot of podcasts on unschooling it. We do a lot of podcasts on unschooling, but the freedom life is very much about also choosing other ways of doing things differently. Quote, unquote and are you part of both actually?

David Cole: 1:09

yeah, both, because we do unschooling primarily. We've put our son into some online schooling as well to give him some structure at times, but mostly it's been a lot of unschooling. Our whole second season was not only the interviews but we did a whole series on different ways of world schooling from homeschooling to road schooling and even world schooling. So it's just a cool little bunch of 15, 20 minute episodes on our thoughts on what it actually is, so you probably enjoy that too, since that's your whole gig.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:41

Why don't we start from the beginning? Where are you from? Why and when did you leave? What's up with your setup as a family?

David Cole: 1:52

Okay, so we left a little bit after. From what I understand you guys did, we left in 2019. And so we sold our house in June of 19 in Chicago and decided that we were going to try to make house sitting a part of our world, school and adventure. So we did some house sits across the US until we got on our cruise out of LA to go to Singapore. So that was our way of getting across the ocean no jet lag.

Cecilie Conrad: 2:25

How is that? I'm going to interfere with the short version. I'm curious. I think it looks like these big floating balls. It looks like these big floating walls.

David Cole: 2:37

In a way it is. Yeah, it's just like a giant hotel. Yeah, it's fun. That was our first cruise, by the way 20, 22 days at sea.

Cecilie Conrad: 2:48

Well, walk into the unknown Exactly.

David Cole: 2:54

So we crossed the ocean in comfort. I we got to singapore for a culture shock, obviously it's. I was really surprised that everybody spoke english. I mean, I knew it was the national language but being from america, you just like you, always assume nobody speaks english when you travel and so you get those little assumptions broken right away as soon as we get there. But then we only spent a couple of days in Singapore because it was so expensive. We went over to Indonesia, which was our first goal anyway, because we wanted to go to Bali, meet up with some of the groups, the homeschooling groups there, and then head out to Komodo Island and did that. We did a couple of days out there. That's how we really got got started. And then we came back or we went over to malaysia, settled down for a few months to rest, recuperate and start working again on the road, since I went months and months without working for the first beginning of our journey david, I would like to go even further back.

Jesper Conrad: 3:52

Why did you as a family decide to pull the plug? What happened in your life? Had it been a long time dream or was it something sudden? Because many people they are like you know dreaming of it. When they're on a vacation, they're like oh, there's never need to stop, I could just stay on. But life on the road is not a vacation, it is still life. There's everyday chores, there's work. There's everyday chores, there's work. There's family, there's cleaning, doing the laundry, all those things that is part of everyday life.

David Cole: 4:22

Ours kind of was an unfolding thing, because when Brody and I got married, we already knew we wanted to travel. Travel is in her background and we ended up having a wedding over in the Bahamas. We want to make travel part of our lives and I jokingly say that she bought me a sailboat for my birthday this one year. It just happened that we closed on it the day after my birthday. So we had our sailboat in Chicago. We traveled around the lake a lot. We were going to take it out into the ocean, sail around, and we were fixing it up. Then our little man came along along and things got hectic. It was harder to work on the boats and get things done, so we ended up selling the boats and scrapping that part of the dream and a few years later we were just planning you know, let's go for a long trip and see how we do so. He was 18 months old. We went to Cambodia, where we are right now. He was 18 months old. We went to Cambodia, where we are right now, and we went to Cambodia, thailand and, spontaneously, china on the way back and just had an absolute blast. Found all right, we're doing it with a kid in tow. This is awesome.

David Cole: 5:30

So we spent the next couple of years figuring out well, can we logistically make enough money to do it? We both had physical jobs at the time. I was managing a call center, my wife was in human resources at the peak of her career, managing offices all across the country, and we just couldn't figure that we could do either of those online. One of mine that I was doing at the time was I was teaching online college through Colorado Technical University. I found, oh, that's really cool, I can teach that way. And I ended up getting an English teaching job through a friend of mine and I'm like, oh, wow, well, we're able to live in Chicago and my teaching income is doing decent.

David Cole: 6:21

Brody had just lost her job at that point, and so we were like, if we can afford to live on my salary teaching in Chicago, still we can do it anywhere. So let's just figure out how to sell everything and get on the road, and we'll figure out Brody's working situation later. And so that's kind of where it ended up going. She took a job she didn't really want, but we knew we could bank the money and with the plan that she would quit in a year, and that's what we ended up doing, and we sold our property and we hit the road. So, to answer your question short, yes, it's always been a plan, but it took us six years, counting our marriage 12 years really to get to that point.

Cecilie Conrad: 6:59

But another short version that I really like that I hear from your answer is why did you pull the plug? Because you're passionate about traveling.

David Cole: 7:10

Basically, it's more important than other things, yeah, makes sense.

David Cole: 7:13

Yeah, brody and I, we didn't have kids right away. We waited what was it? Six years, because we wanted to enjoy ourselves and our marriage. And we ended up taking one domestic trip across the US every year, as well as one international trip down to usually down to Mexico every year. And so we were like, well, we're doing this, we're doing this, we're doing this, it's great. And then, during that whole process of trying to figure out how to work online, we met some other families who were doing it and who were also teaching at the same teaching company I was teaching with and we picked their brains, saw their budget and they were a larger family than us, who actually like more extravagant things than we do, so they live a little bit more less shoestring than we do. And I was like, if they can make it happen, we can make it happen.

Jesper Conrad: 7:58

And we figured it out how was your dream versus reality has something surprised you. Is there places where you're like this is not the dream life we dreamt of. This is way different. What are the differences between sitting at home in a job where you're like, oh, I want to travel, and then all of a sudden doing it full time?

David Cole: 8:21

Well, yeah, I had some of those same expectations that some people have, that, oh, you're going to be on your vacation all the time, and then obviously realizing no, you're not on vacation all the time, and I say this all the time to people is that, yeah, I work, I do the same things every day that I did in Chicago, but I'm just doing it in a different location, and instead of going out and going to the Sears Tower or going to Navy Pier, I'm going to Angkor Wat or I'm going to the Great Wall of China, depending on where I'm at Machu Picchu, it's just where your location is, so you're able to do the different things as though you were a local, still living your normal life. It's pretty cool.

Cecilie Conrad: 9:04

I think there is this element of the nomadic life. It can be a little bit hard to explain, though. It's quite obvious that you can leave your home base, you can leave the culture and country that you come from, but you cannot leave yourself. You are coming along with all of your stuff in your backpack and all of the tasks that life have your backpack and all of the tasks that life have. It's not like you don't need to get dental work done or you don't need to do your abs workout or you don't need to find some way of taking responsibility to educate your children and yourself. You have to make money, you have to wash clothes.

Cecilie Conrad: 9:54

So the not on vacation hashtag is a good one. It really resonates. And I think the great thing is how this just do. You say you've bended a neon. In English, in our language, if something is very clear and very right there, it's bend a Neon, like the ads in the 80s. So this is how life is, even if you're not nomadic that you're going to be there with your backpack and your chores and all the things, and you need to cope with that no matter what. But I feel like this making, recreating what life is everywhere we go just makes it so clear you need to do these things, you need to deal with these things. This is what life is, no matter what, and you have to love it and stay present in it. And yeah, then the fun part is we get to walk the Great Wall of China.

David Cole: 10:54

Yeah, I mean it is we get to walk. Great Wall of China yeah, I mean it is. It's amazing that so many people around the world everybody has their own sites that they take for granted. There's a waterfall that we found in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina that the locals are like yeah, we just go there on the weekend, it's just the local park for us, but it was amazing for us. But again, they take it for granted. Us Chicagoans, we take our stuff for granted as well. There's a lot of Chicagoans who just don't go to all the sites because they're just there, they're just part of the city, and the same thing goes for anywhere in the world. And now we get to have that opportunity to see it. Our son gets that opportunity to experience all these things growing up as though they're just part of his backyard. It's cool.

Cecilie Conrad: 12:21

I'm thinking about the passion element. You know we asked you why do you do this? Why did you choose to do it? And I hear a passion for traveling and it resonates because we're crazy travelers as well and in a way, I'm curious because I'm not sure I understand myself. So maybe we can mirror here what is it about this? What is it about this that really makes so much sense and keeps? You've been going for a long time, We've been going for a long time. Why can't we stop? Why is it so interesting? What's around the next corner, behind the next?

David Cole: 13:00

mountain. Yeah, we keep kind of talking about well, what if we settle down? Where would you want to settle down? And I keep thinking, well, why do I want to settle down? I haven't seen it all yet and I was the reluctant one. I was the reluctant one to get going in the first place. I told her I have to have this much amount of the bank in case something goes wrong I have to meet these criteria before we go.

David Cole: 13:20

She was like let's just go, let's just go, I don't care about our stuff. She's more into it about the history and the people that we see and meet. And I'm, my son and I are really about a lot of the animals. We love animals, we like the scenery, we love the people. I like the crafts that we see. I just sometimes can spend hours just looking at the craftsmanship of people around the world and seeing how it's different from what I saw growing up that type of thing. So we all have our own interests and what we love about this and that keeps us going and like we keep trying to say, all right, well, where do you want to settle down? What would be ideal for you? And we all have our own things on that as well. So it's really cool that we're trying to find our own path together.

Jesper Conrad: 14:09

David, the people out there dreaming listening to two nomadic families being like oh, we want this life for ourselves. Where would you suggest they start? What are the hurdles you need to pass? What is it that is stopping most people in your dreams? What stopped you doing it in the start?

David Cole: 14:29

The thing that stopped us the most was, I think, early on mindset thinking that we had to have the perfect job to do it. And now that I've interviewed, I think, over 30 people and we've met way more than that traveling everybody has a different job. You don't have to be an online teacher. You don't have to be a stockbroker. You don't have to be whatever. Have to be a stockbroker. You don't have to be whatever.

David Cole: 14:57

Some of these people can have more money during their travels, but that mindset of I have to have it this way can hold people back from getting out there and doing it. I say the way we did it. Doing that two-week big trip with the child in tow really showed us that it was possible and that we could make things happen and that the world was way more affordable than I thought it was. So living in America things are a lot more expensive. I can live everywhere else for way cheaper. This giant two-bedroom apartment is only $350 a month US and it comes with two poles it's a question of looking at our ideas about what blocks it.

Cecilie Conrad: 15:42

It has to have this before I can do that.

Cecilie Conrad: 15:44

I've heard a lot of people who want to change their career and maybe do something radically different with their lives.

Cecilie Conrad: 15:51

And lots of them say I need to write a book about this first and then I could start doing stuff.

Cecilie Conrad: 15:57

And what I really hear them say it's a bit like people with addiction you know, I will stop drinking, and all I hear is you keep drinking until easter monday.

Cecilie Conrad: 16:06

You know, just like I need to write a book first. It's like, oh, you don't want to do the thing, you want to have something stopping you and and I think we all have these mental blocks if we are to do the thing, you want to have something stopping you and and I think we all have these mental blocks if we are to do something that seems a little risky or new or harder to do, then it can be really nice to convince ourselves that something big and complicated is getting in the way so that we have to resolve that. Because this big and complicated thing we can understand, like getting another job you have a job, you want another job, that's doable, whereas selling everything and have a backpack and a child on your hip in China, that's a little bit further away from your comfort zone than you can actually handle. So maybe, looking at that, if you feel a passion to start traveling full time. What are the things I'm putting up here and are they real? Questioning, that, I think, is a very good idea.

David Cole: 17:10

Yeah, I mean questioning your preconceived notions is big. Listen to other people's stories, which is why podcasts like yours and mine exist. Give people that opportunity to hear these types of things, that things are possible out there. Like the first episode of our podcast this season, we talked with the people that we met in Mexico at a World School Hub pop-up that we hosted and they were thinking about becoming nomads. Most everybody at that pop-up were traveling, vacationing families, some of whom were considering traveling full-time.

David Cole: 17:46

This couple, kevin and his wife they decided that they would talk to us. They picked our brains while we were on site there, just like we did to that other family that we met in Mexico when we were trying to figure things out. They just picked our brains and then we got on WhatsApp. We just talked for months and they finally decided to bite the bullet and do the whole process go and their story is really cool because it mirrors mine. It mirrors a lot of the families I talked to out there and I think it mirrors the same thing that you and I are talking about here mindset and breaking through those barriers that you have, those preconceived notions. That's really what you got to do and, I think, the only way to do that is to listen to other people's stories and resonate with someone.

Jesper Conrad: 18:34

I think one of the reasons people think traveling is expensive is because they compare it to how they have traveled in their life, which is often on vacation, which is this compressed piece of time that just needs to be the best time of the year and therefore you go out and spend enormous amounts of money.

Jesper Conrad: 18:52

One of the projects I worked on I talked with a guy there and they are going to Japan and I asked him about that budget and I was devastated for how much money they would use on a two week vacation. I'm like that is full time traveling for four or five months you're talking about. I didn't say that to him because I was like, okay, yeah, all good, okay, just thinking I understand it if it's the one-in-a-lifetime vacation, but it's unfortunate that people compare the full-time traveling with the vacations where they use so much money on a week or two, because that's not the life all of us are living. Most of us are living everyday lives with everyday economy, just in new, for us exotic places. Right now we are in Budapest and it's, for me, exotic. It's a beautiful city, I love the street art and we're living here for a month and it's fantastic, but it doesn't cost much more than living in an apartment in Copenhagen for a month.

David Cole: 19:58

Yeah, and I think you're right on that, because a lot of people do compare it to their vacations. And the other thing about vacations is you're kind of living a double life. You're paying your rent back home plus you're paying that week's worth of rent, which is actually like a month's worth of your mortgage back home while you're on your trip. It's double, if not more, than living your normal, regular everyday life going on a vacation. Doing this is you can cut the other part out, whether you decide to sell your home or whether you're going to rent it while you're on your travels. It's up to you. You can have different ways of doing this.

Cecilie Conrad: 20:30

But this is the budget part of the reality here and I think it's very important to talk about, because there's a lot of misconception about how, what your budget would be if you went full time traveling. But I think there is also it's very important. We meet a lot of people who say, oh, I wish I could do what you do. Oh, you have so much freedom. It sounds amazing and it is. It is, but at the same time, it's not a vacation. It's not like packing your bags, taking your favorite things, having all the time in the world to prepare. I've read the book, bought a new set of flip-flops or whatever swimming costume. You're really excited about the new color and leaving everything behind. You don't have to think about the insurance thing you have to file, you're not. You don't have any dentist appointments. You don't have any work things. Maybe you don't even read your emails. You can forget about whatever your sick mother, or maybe you can't forget that exact thing. But whatever, it is lots of real stuff from real life. You leave it behind for a week, two, three weeks, whatever your time frame, and the feel the shoulders come down, you're like and it's so stimulating. You see new things and you don't have to do all the annoying stuff. It's so nice I get that.

Cecilie Conrad: 21:59

I haven't had it for many years because I live a different life. I have no vacations, there are no pauses, it's not. I'm not leaving my life behind, I'm bringing it with me all the time. I don't have a home base, I don't. I have my insurance policy problems in my laptop, in my backpack, and it's my problem. No matter where I go, I have no time to prepare for the next trip, because what, where would that how? I'm always on a trip, so, and I need to get dental done. We need to get a cast off. Our son's arm in two days from now broke his arm in one country, I had to have a checkup in the second country and now we're whatever. These things are real and I think it's important, if we have listeners who are flirting with the idea of going nomadic, to really you know, yes, it's cheaper than you should think and it can be very cheap if you choose that, but it's not vacation, it's not this peace of mind instant thing that you have to work for the peace of mind.

David Cole: 23:09

That is true. Work for the peace of mind? That is true, yeah, that peace of mind. I know a lot of people who travel that are well off, they have the money to do whatever and they have everything set up for them. But for the majority of the travelers they are. They're living, like you say, day to day. They've got their everything in the backpack. Their insurance policy is in the backpack, their whole life. This computer here is my life, everything on it is needed, my backpack. I don't travel with extra, extra things that I don't really need, other than one or two frivolous things that, just because I want that and you have to have those, make those sacrifices for the type of lifestyle that you do want. But yeah, it's. But yeah, it's living your normal life plus this other thing and another thing on top of it. So, yeah, you don't always have a vacation Not really. I like to say sometimes that, oh, this place feels like a vacation, but then I'm still going back to the work and working that evening with all my students.

Cecilie Conrad: 24:07

I like to use the word adventure. I think it's a better word because I'm not vacating from anything, but I'm exploring.

Jesper Conrad: 24:15

David, I would love to talk about freedom because it is a big thing for us. It is among the reasons we are traveling to be able to choose what we do, when we do it, how we do it, without external forces you can say deciding over our lives, and by this I also mean having a kid in a school. Because your kid is in a school, you are set to be in a certain place in a certain time. You can only, as a family, travel in certain periods. You only have time together with your kids in outside school hours or in vacations and the weekends. That is also freedom.

Jesper Conrad: 25:02

So it's not like only freedom from a state. It is freedom from office. It is freedom from circumstances that control your life in a way bigger fashion that you can phantom when you just think oh, you want to be free. No, I want to be free from the constraints of modern life that ties me down in ways I hadn't seen when I lived it, life that ties me down in ways I hadn't seen when I lived it. So this is a long-winded question, or way to a question where my question is what is freedom for you and why is it important?

David Cole: 25:39

I've always tried to live my life a little bit outside the norm. I consider normal to be abnormal. Norm I consider normal to be abnormal. You know, nobody's the same, nobody's cookie cutter, but like I as a state, as a stay-at-home dad. I was a stay-at-home dad with my son from the time he was born until they he left, or we left on the road, and then we both became the co-parenting uh, all full-time because she was working when we were in Chicago. So I found that I always inserted myself into his life. I was part of that. Whether he had to go to school, I started helping out at the school when he had a field trip. I was on every field trip, but those were my choices because I wanted to spend my life with my child and so that carries through into my travels and what I want to do.

David Cole: 26:29

I don't want to work at a sit-down job anymore. I fight that. If I have to try to find it, I want to find something that's interesting to me, which is why I teach English to kids online. It's really interesting to me. The time is flexible. I make my own hours for the most part. I'm very creative, so I do a YouTube stuff as well, the podcast is another way for me to be very social, and I started it because I wanted a chance to really continue to talk to people and be social in that way, as well as help people out and share some really important information. So all these go back to helping me keep that sense of freedom and do what I want, be where I want in the world. Sometimes it feels a little selfish that I get to live this way, but that comes with throwing off the stuff that you have in civilization Not normal civilization, if you like to say that with air quotes.

Jesper Conrad: 27:27

What did you think made you that way? Upbringing or philosophy?

David Cole: 27:32

I was always an odd one growing up. So I am adhd, so a little neurodivergent in that realm, so I've always had that little being on the outside type thing and having a little bit of a different thinking pattern and always having to be aware of that when I'm in situations because you're not, then you're just like all over the place and you're wacky. So and I usually when growing up chose to be wacky, be a little all over the place and not really rein it in. As you get older you learn to rein it in. But I just decided I don't always, I don't really want to have to do that if I don't want to need to and just live myself as myself and I think that has influenced me and accepting that ADHD is who I am, not using it as ever as really as a crutch and just using it as this is my personality, this is who I am and I'm going to gonna live with it I think the challenging normal is another interesting thing to explore.

Cecilie Conrad: 29:17

I'm curious and I've been thinking during this conversation feels like usually I talk a lot. This time I had time to think also about the what is it we're leaving behind and what is it we're bringing with us. And when we challenge normal and say what does it really mean we're letting go? You said something down the line of letting go of the modern culture, something like that. I can't remember your exact wording and I'm thinking, yeah, but I kind of need internet. Of the modern culture, something like that. I can't remember your exact wording and I'm thinking, yeah, but I kind of need internet and I want toothpaste and I'm sitting on a sofa, I eat for plates, I cook my food on an induction thing. I'm not leaving all of it. I might be engaging with it in a different way. So, yeah, I don't know. Can we explore that idea of what is it we're challenging with our question mark around the normal thing?

David Cole: 30:24

Yeah, because I do. I was raised my dad liked to have stuff. He always had the highest technology, the newest gadget, the best TVs. So I grew up with that mindset that the stuff is great. And so I am a little materialistic in that way and I do like luxury.

David Cole: 30:42

I like a soft bed. I don't always like it when we have to have a hard bed because that's the local place. That was a real big problem when we were in Japan. I had to get used to it. Every bed is hard and the breaking free of that mindset has helped me sometimes to really understand that. You know, all right, I don't always have to have the latest, the newest thing. My computer now is 16 years old I think 12 years old and it's still going great. But I am planning on upgrading because I have to, because it doesn't take Windows 11, and it's not going to be security supported. So now I'm only upgrading it because I have to, but not because of materialistic wants that I think were ingrained in me for the longest period of time, and that type of thing Is that taking us down to the right road that you're thinking?

Cecilie Conrad: 31:32

Well, yeah, it is questioning. I'm just wondering, you know, what is it really? We're questioning? Because it becomes a little I don't know superficial to say, oh, we just question normal, Because a lot of normal we actually do take with us. The thing is, maybe we question it and then we more or less consciously choose which parts make sense for us and resonate with who we want to be. As you said, I don't want to be that materialistic. It's not that interesting and important to me because other things are, and I think this whole sifting through values and sifting through options and doing the work of figuring out what makes sense, living by the question mark more of what we're doing than rebelling against mainstream there's a lot of mainstream in the nomadic community actually.

Jesper Conrad: 32:23

I think what I really love, and some of the aha moments I have had, is doing the math on different things. For example, I did the math on how because we chose school for our first child and we have four children and there is age difference on them I looked at how long time we as parents would be connected to that school, how many years, and what it meant for the rest of our life choice of house, choice of work, etc. That thinking about there's a choice here. How does it affect the totality of your life? I find that very interesting and I like going down these paths and I like doing the math on it and being like, oh, that was like. I can't remember it was 20 years. Yeah, it's something crazy stupid. It was a lifetime. Based on that, our oldest daughter, who is now 26, we put her in that school and our youngest son is now 13, so he would still be there. It was just crazy.

Jesper Conrad: 33:25

The same I did I got hold of like a media usage in denmark showing how much media people consume per day back then, and then I put this together with people questioning or being like, oh, I want more vacation, I want more spare time and less your time and then I did the math of how much less your time do you actually have in your life. If you go to work eight hours a day, you maybe have half an hour to an hour commute. Every way, you need to do a lot of stuff that isn't normally put into the world. That's like leisure time Now we. Then I just looked at the media consumption per day and I'm like, oh, if I cut that out, I will have like three or four years more vacation in my life than many other people.

Jesper Conrad: 34:14

So I like doing these things and it's the questioning how we choose to live our life. It is, for me, questioning normality and mainstream, not because it's normal and mainstream, but because I don't accept to live in a certain way without having tried to think it through. Why is it important to do it like this without having tried to think it through? Why is it important to do it like this? And I find these things really fun. I also at one point did the math of how much longer, in some ways, I am married to my wife than people who go to work every day.

Cecilie Conrad: 34:48

If you had gone to work. Maybe don't judge other people but your choice of staying home instead of staying in an office. How many more hours did that give?

Jesper Conrad: 34:56

you. Yeah, so I've got so many more hours living together with my wife and my children by changing my life around to staying at home and working from home, and that is just fascinating to me. And it's like very simple math. It's just multiplying stuff. I'm not a math genius in any way. It's just looking at it, being curious and saying oh, and then seeing the numbers and being like, okay, I can see this is a fun way to live.

David Cole: 35:26

Yeah, okay, we've now been traveling as long.

David Cole: 35:30

I think, yeah, this is going on. My son's going to be. He was six when we left and he's going to be 13 now, so half his life has been traveling and that first half my wife worked full time. I was a stay at home parent. She felt like she never got time with him as a little one at that age bedtime. So a lot of times she's coming home from work and with the commute in Chicago, sometimes she was getting home after I put him to bed. So she and with the commute in Chicago, sometimes she was getting home after I put him to bed. So there were some days where she never, ever actually got to see him, which was really sad for her and it's a sore subject at the time. Now she's got all the time in the world and sometimes I think she's his favorite parent. She gets that extra love and extra attention that she didn't have for all those years.

David Cole: 36:14

And yeah, if you do the math on it, it's crazy, because it's not just oh, I go to work for eight hours a day. No, I also have commutes and this. And what are you missing during those eight hours of the day that you're at the office? It wasn't just her time not with him. She and I had to reconnect on a totally different level. She and I had to reconnect on a totally different level, spending this much extra time together now that we were both not working anymore. We were in the same house with each other, sometimes studio apartments, or not to mention the whole two and a half year drive that we did in South America, where we were in a car, all day, together, every day, sometimes camping, and and just this tight, close-knit family living for a couple of years. So I do, I get your idea of doing the math on it. I actually now I want to go do the math.

Cecilie Conrad: 37:05

Yeah, it is fascinating that be the two recommendations from this. Maybe, or two of the takeaways that could be from this podcast. Go do the math and fun stuff. You know, do some random multiplication on how you spend your life. And then the other one please enjoy the question mark. When you question things, you realize what's really important. It's I was thinking about when you talked about freedom before, how freedom for us and freedom for you, I suppose, is one of the big freedoms is to be location independent. But I think some people, for some people, freedom would be to have a really awesome location, not have to think about it, not have to figure out language and logistics and where to buy the organic zucchini tomorrow, all all these things they are set so we have freedom to do whatever is important for that person, which is totally fine. It's questioning what kind of freedom do I need that gives the real freedom to choose what is important. Did that make?

David Cole: 38:10

sense. This is true, yes, yeah, everybody's got their own sense of freedom for them, their own sense of wants and needs. Yeah, and in questioning the question they can get there.

Cecilie Conrad: 38:23

And you figure out what it is. Sometimes you can in some phases of life, live a little mindlessly doing what the neighbor does, doing what the norm is doing, normal, whatever that means. But if we start questioning things, then we figure out what we really want and then we can get it, yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 38:41

David, for people listening to this podcast. They want to know who you are, listen to your podcast and hopefully also listen to the episode you will air with us. So please plug away. How do people get hold of you? Where do they find the podcast?

David Cole: 38:59

The podcast is on all the platforms out there. We do generally do it as a video podcast, but you can get it as audio as well through Spotify and Apple and all that we're on. If you go to find our blog at ouroffbeatlifecom ouroffbeatlifecom, you'll find access to the podcast there a lot of Brody's old blog posts. She's really great at talking online, trying to provide as much helpful content as possible on there. But if you want and you're interested in the podcast, it's available as well through the site as well as on those other platforms out there.

David Cole: 39:34

And we're even trying to do more and more with YouTube as we go along, as well as on those other platforms out there. And we're even trying to do more and more with youtube as we go along, as we find time to get those episodes or those videos edited and put on there of our travels. So we try to show some really cool places. We've been what you should do when you go there, like my most recent one is. I literally just did a six 10 minute walkthrough of this apartment and what you can get in Cambodia for $350 a month. So yeah, again, our offbeat life.

Cecilie Conrad: 40:03

We'll put it in the show notes.

Jesper Conrad: 40:05

Perfect. Thank you. It has been a pleasure hanging out with you today. It really has.

David Cole: 40:11

Thank you. It's been awesome hanging out with you all as well.