What Two Years Without a Fixed Address Actually Taught Me

In mid-2023 I left Sydney with one carry-on and one backpack. That was it. Two bags containing everything I needed to live.

Friends thought I was underprepared. I thought I was finally honest with myself about what I actually needed. I have not once wished I had brought something I left behind.

The ‘stuff’ conversation nobody wants to have

We accumulate things because having them feels like security. A full wardrobe for every occasion. Gadgets for every scenario. Backup versions of things we rarely use the primary version of. Most of it sits there, costing money, taking up space and quietly adding weight to a life that could be lighter.

Before I left I did an honest audit. Not the motivational kind you read about and never actually do. A real one. I went through everything I owned and asked a single question: do I actually need this in a week’s travel? Then I applied a rule I have kept to this day. If I buy something, something else goes. One in, one out. No exceptions.

What surprised me was not how little I needed. It was how free I felt once I accepted it. Stuff is just stuff.

Experiences do not fit in a suitcase and they do not depreciate. They compound.

The practical side

Living and working without a fixed address requires more intention than most people expect, and less sacrifice than most people fear.

Pack with a system. Every item in my bags has a dedicated pocket or place. It never moves. That sounds minor until you are packing and unpacking in a different city every week and you stop having to think about where anything is. Everything is where it always is. It takes thirty minutes to pack and thirty seconds to find anything.

Plan the logistics on weekends. Flights, transfers, hotel check-ins. All of it happens on a Saturday or Sunday, wherever possible. That way a delayed connection or a wifi problem does not land in the middle of a client call on a Tuesday morning. Simple discipline, significant reduction in stress.

Go with the flow. This took me longer to learn than I expected. Not everything works out. Plans change. Bookings fall through. The thing I was looking forward to gets cancelled. Every single time, there has been a Plan B. Often Plan B has been better. The capacity to adapt without catastrophizing is probably the most useful skill I have developed.

The part nobody writes about

Make time for the people who matter. It is easy, moving constantly, to let relationships drift. Friends in Sydney. Family in Brisbane and Auckland. People who are important to you do not stop being important because you are in a different time zone every month.

I make deliberate effort to route trips through cities where people I love happen to be. A weekend with family in Brisbane between work trips. A few days in Auckland with my partner’s family whenever we are passing through New Zealand. It requires planning rather than spontaneity, but it is worth the planning.

Talk to strangers

I mean this seriously. Some of the most interesting conversations I have had in two years happened with people I sat next to on a flight, shared a table with in a restaurant, or met in a hotel lobby. A retired architect from Chicago who had just spent a month in Patagonia and changed everything he thought he knew about what he wanted to do next. A couple from Munich celebrating their anniversary on a cruise ship who turned out to have lived the most extraordinary life. You will meet people who are different to you in every possible way.

Start with an open mind. Listen properly. You will learn things about the world and about yourself that you could not have found any other way.

What two years actually looks like

I have worked from cruise ships in the Mediterranean, hotel rooms in Europe, an apartment in New Zealand and a café in Sydney during a visit home. My office has had extraordinary views and terrible wifi and occasionally both at once. The work gets done. The clients are looked after. The life in between is one I would not trade.

The question I get asked most often is whether I miss having a home. The honest answer is that I have stopped being certain I understand what that word means.

Home, for me right now, is wherever I am when the work is done and something interesting is about to happen.

That turns out to be most places.