Marina Rose Travels

What could happen?

Name the worst thing that could happen to a Digital Nomad when they reach their destination. If you said, no Wi-Fi or the internet doesn’t work, then you would be right.

I work for a small, Swiss company selling a very niche medical products for dentists. I work as part of customer care and support sales with analysis. The customer care part means that I get calls throughout the day dealing with these offices and that is currently the majority of my job.

So why does that matter? Picture this if you will. You’ve sold all of my furniture and personal belongings. You left winter clothes in your grandmother’s basement and cut down your life into two checked bags and a carry on. You think you can beat the system and buy two extremely old, checked luggage bags at Goodwill. One bag is over 50lb, so you have to pay a $200 oversized fee. Not a great start.

Then, you struggle like hell to move these impossible bags through the airport when you land. Someone needs to help you because you look like a toddler who hasn’t learned how to hold a cup upright; stuff just keeps falling off your shoulders and the cart you’re toting. It’s hot in Costa Rica. Hotter than New Jersey at least.

They just told you inside the airport to beware of scams with the taxis, so you are cautious. It takes a security guard from the airport vouching for a man named Jorge to convince you that he is a safe driver to get into the taxicab with. You find out the AirBnb check in is at 3pm not 11am like you thought so there is 2 hours to wait. You watch “You People” on Netflix and laugh so hard the front desk girl thinks you might have a condition.

There is a mix up at the front desk and you end up on the wrong floor, still dragging these bags with you, emotionally and physically exhausted. You end up on the wrong floor. The tears start to come, all you want to do is get through the door of the apartment. Finally, finally, you find the door and open it. It’s nice, but there are tiny bugs on the counter. You can fix that; you think to yourself.

A Treacherous journey across the street

That brings us to the apartment where I was standing. I dropped my things and let everyone know I had arrived safely. At that point I was tired and hungry and still a bit riled up after all the travel. I took a quick shower to wash off the airport and to calm myself down a bit. Then I realized there was a market across the street which I had noticed on the way in. I decided I should eat something before bed.

Suddenly a pang of fear rang through me. What was the phrase for “I would like” in Spanish? Or was it “Can I have”? All of my language practice seemed to fly at me in one moment. I was suddenly back in Spanish 101 practicing my greetings, but I didn’t want to sound too formal. Should I say “Que tal?” But is that too friendly? I don’t know them. My brain started spinning and grinding and all of a sudden, I didn’t want to go eat, I just wanted to curl into a ball and not leave the apartment at all.

The thing about my brain versus hunger is that the hunger always wins. Truth be told, stressful situations definitely prompt me to eat more, so the anxious feeling that rose up in me as I contemplated leaving the apartment was no match. I went down the elevator, fumble my “Hola” to the man at the front desk and walk my way across the street.

Do you remember that feeling on your first day at the middle school cafeteria? You don’t know where anything is, what they serve, and all the faces looking at you are familiar yet different somehow? That’s how I felt. Tons of options, tons of faces, and I seemed to have gone mute when people shouted to me “Buenas” instead of the “Hola” I had been training for.

Finally, I noticed a Lebanese food stand in the back corner, recognized the Falafel picture and made my way over. I looked down at the menu and, of course, everything was in Spanish. But I have no idea what the word cucumber is in Spanish or most of the other food, so I made an educated guess. Thank God this woman spoke English as well and I was able to order to go with her help.

I sat down in shame, after telling all my friends I had conversational Spanish ready to go, I failed at ordering a simple sandwich. I got my food and raced back to the apartment. That night I watched a movie on my phone and fell asleep wildly early. I could blame the two-hour time difference, but it was really the intensity of the day and the sadness of my perceived failure that took me out.

Am I Going to Lose My Job?

The next morning, I woke up confused about where I was. I pulled clothes out of the unpacked suitcase and logged in to my computer at 7am (9am EST) start to my day.

Unpacking my food items, I found there were hundreds of little bugs trying to get at my spices. This very porcelain apartment was going to need constant cleaning to keep them away. My camping mindset kicked in where I started packing and sealing all the items keep it from the bugs or bears. Probably not bears.

I logged into my job’s ordering website, the internet, and the phone system. Everything seemed to be going perfectly. Ping! A message from my boss “Good Morning, how is it?”. “So far so good” was my response. Then a call came through, I answered. No one on the other line. That happened sometimes, a call came through, but no one on the other end. I didn’t think much of it. Then it happened again. And again.

Cue the circus. My VoIP phone software, the main component of my job, was not working. I contacted the phone company, the wifi company, my AirBnb host. I found information for the IP address, the router, and called everyone I could think of to help.

It was a really strange experience. The first few days I felt like I was going to be able to figure it out at that everything was going to be okay. However, at the days kept going and all the ‘solutions’ I tried turned out to be dead ends my fear continued to escalate. By day 3 I was starting to think about what would happen if this never got fixed. I started to consider if I would have to look for another job, how long I could keep this job to try and stay in Costa Rica, or if I was on a failed mission.

The stress that started to overtake me made it feel impossible to leave the apartment. I didn’t want to shower, grocery shop, or explore the building I was in. Maybe a small part of me was worried that this problem would end my stay prematurely and that there was no reason to get comfortable when I was going to have to leave so soon.

Even in the midst of the problems, I couldn’t bring myself to view it as a break from work or even to leave the computer. I just sat at the computer like I would have anyway, messaging my boss updates and praying that something was eventually going to work out. I wanted to live in another country, doing the job that I had been doing, until I was comfortable here. Now I was anything but.

Everything is always okay.

That is the thing about me. I always want to be comfortable and yet I am constantly making decisions that lead me to discomfort. I want the benefits and growth associated with the discomfort, but I definitely do not want to sit with those feelings.

This last week had forced me to sit with every version of fear, of worrying that I might not be as brave as I thought I was. I worried I had made a terrible mistake. I really considered abandoning ship and going home. Then I came to my senses, knowing this travel is integral to my spiritual and emotional growth, and I thought about how I could stay if I did lose my job.

I experienced I would say 90% of the emotions available to us humans in the last 4 days. It was exhausting and honestly frightening. Who wants to be confronted with the worst-case scenario?

Then finally, a suggestion. “Does the building have a library or a common space you could work at?” Yes, in fact it does. My building has dedicated co-working spaces, and I didn’t even think about trying that, because I had buried myself in the problem inside the apartment. Poetic.

I went to the 21st floor. A call. A person’s voice on the other end of the phone. I almost cried at the relief. The woman on the phone could not have known what hearing her voice meant. It meant that my hair-brained scheme of Digital Nomading was actually going to work. It meant that I wasn’t an idiot for trying this. It meant that everything was going to be okay.