Until relatively recently, you had three main groups of people who were highly mobile:
I'm a former military wife and, although dad retired when I was three and I grew up in one spot, my father was career military for 26.5 years. My (ex) father-in-law was also career military.
Because of that background where I had firsthand experience with a mobile culture and was surrounded by people who also lived that way, I was unusually well positioned to recognize and embrace this emerging phenomenon of remote work and recognize that it provided some incredible benefits heretofore mostly reserved for certain upperclass types who not only had money but were also not tied down by a normal ("9-5") job.
Remote work tends to be associated with well-paid jobs in the minds of most people, such as programming, but I was homeless when I began doing remote work and I continue to have a very modest income for various reasons. Yet even while homeless, I was able to recognize that having remote work conferred privileges upon me that were pretty unprecedented.
It was clear in my mind that in terms of my work and other logistical factors, I was free to move anywhere in the continental US without having to first arrange a job. This allowed me to research various cities and move around while still homeless and I eventually got myself back into housing without going through any kind of program because I had portable income.
In terms of my work, I could have also potentially gone to Alaska or Hawaii but those were out of reach for me for other reasons, one being lots of volcanic activity in both places. I have serious health issues that drive a lot of my lifestyle choices and strongly influence where I can live and they include both respiratory problems and sensitivity to sulfur.
My sensitivity to sulfur is likely what pushed me over the edge and landed me on eight or nine prescription drugs while in GIS school. Two days before the week-long break in the middle of this two-month long bootcamp-style Summer School, the air in Riverside turned yellow and I began turning bright red and feeling my throat begin to close up anytime I left the building.
Most likely, some local industrial thing began spewing sulfur into the air just in time for me to see a doctor back home in familiar territory during the break and get him to load me up on good drugs. I don't regret it because this helped save my life, which is a long story not pertinent to this post, but as a rule of thumb I don't want to live somewhere with a lot of sulfur in the air.
Historically, the viable options for where I could realistically live and not be deathly ill were extremely narrow and boiled down to a relatively thin strip of low-ragweed, low humidity etc along the West Coast. That may no longer be true, though I currently lack sufficient data to determine a real answer.
My health situation has changed, so I am somewhat less sensitive to myriad things and generally less fragile. But also the world has changed and I don't at the moment have up-to-date data at my fingertips for details that would be pertinent to me.
Historically, the Northeastern US was someplace I was unwilling to consider due to high sulfur in the air from coal burning electric plants. Between me being less sick and the trend towards cleaner burning coal plants, this may no longer be true but it is a question mark in my mind.
Scorecard.org is no longer online and the info was out of date a decade or more back when it was still online. I'm not sure where to find up to date data on environmental pollutants, which is one of the things that I consider when contemplating what places might work for me.
I like moving around. My health issues make standard vacations not work for me. Going someplace far away for a week or two is hell on earth for me, but I enjoy moving someplace new every few years and I enjoy taking day-trips.
Researching places to live is sort of a longstanding and ongoing hobby of mine, though this post is not intended to catalog all the details of what I personally look for in a place to live. I'm trying to illustrate the point that in part because I have a Certificate in GIS (database and map stuff) and the internet exists, I was able to do something while very, very poor that historically was a privilege of the most wealthy classes in the world: I was able to move around at will, research what places I might want to move next and improve my life under very challenging circumstances.
Twenty or more years ago, I used to buy Places Rated dead tree books and Colleges Rated dead tree books and laboriously pour through them trying to determine where I might wish to live someday. These days, all of that info and more is available online and a lot of it is available for free.
"Your best place" type articles are common and popular, but they tend to be more entertaining than genuinely informative. "Where should I move?" type questions are pretty popular online.
So this is an emergent phenomenon. It's not just me, though I was perhaps a tad ahead of the curve and I have professional training from a world class program.
For years now, I have batted about ideas for how to help Ordinary Joes do this better. A couple of years back, I started a reddit called r/Relo and in recent weeks I finally feel clear what I want to do with it and it's finally gaining members (currently has 22 members after two years of me being the only one).
I'm still not sure where exactly to go with this, but I am clear this is an emergent phenomenon and I am also clear there is LOTS of room for the world to do this better. r/Relo is my current small contribution for moving this idea forward.
- The Jet Set
- Comfortably well-off retirees
- The American military
I'm a former military wife and, although dad retired when I was three and I grew up in one spot, my father was career military for 26.5 years. My (ex) father-in-law was also career military.
Because of that background where I had firsthand experience with a mobile culture and was surrounded by people who also lived that way, I was unusually well positioned to recognize and embrace this emerging phenomenon of remote work and recognize that it provided some incredible benefits heretofore mostly reserved for certain upperclass types who not only had money but were also not tied down by a normal ("9-5") job.
Remote work tends to be associated with well-paid jobs in the minds of most people, such as programming, but I was homeless when I began doing remote work and I continue to have a very modest income for various reasons. Yet even while homeless, I was able to recognize that having remote work conferred privileges upon me that were pretty unprecedented.
It was clear in my mind that in terms of my work and other logistical factors, I was free to move anywhere in the continental US without having to first arrange a job. This allowed me to research various cities and move around while still homeless and I eventually got myself back into housing without going through any kind of program because I had portable income.
In terms of my work, I could have also potentially gone to Alaska or Hawaii but those were out of reach for me for other reasons, one being lots of volcanic activity in both places. I have serious health issues that drive a lot of my lifestyle choices and strongly influence where I can live and they include both respiratory problems and sensitivity to sulfur.
My sensitivity to sulfur is likely what pushed me over the edge and landed me on eight or nine prescription drugs while in GIS school. Two days before the week-long break in the middle of this two-month long bootcamp-style Summer School, the air in Riverside turned yellow and I began turning bright red and feeling my throat begin to close up anytime I left the building.
Most likely, some local industrial thing began spewing sulfur into the air just in time for me to see a doctor back home in familiar territory during the break and get him to load me up on good drugs. I don't regret it because this helped save my life, which is a long story not pertinent to this post, but as a rule of thumb I don't want to live somewhere with a lot of sulfur in the air.
Historically, the viable options for where I could realistically live and not be deathly ill were extremely narrow and boiled down to a relatively thin strip of low-ragweed, low humidity etc along the West Coast. That may no longer be true, though I currently lack sufficient data to determine a real answer.
My health situation has changed, so I am somewhat less sensitive to myriad things and generally less fragile. But also the world has changed and I don't at the moment have up-to-date data at my fingertips for details that would be pertinent to me.
Historically, the Northeastern US was someplace I was unwilling to consider due to high sulfur in the air from coal burning electric plants. Between me being less sick and the trend towards cleaner burning coal plants, this may no longer be true but it is a question mark in my mind.
Scorecard.org is no longer online and the info was out of date a decade or more back when it was still online. I'm not sure where to find up to date data on environmental pollutants, which is one of the things that I consider when contemplating what places might work for me.
I like moving around. My health issues make standard vacations not work for me. Going someplace far away for a week or two is hell on earth for me, but I enjoy moving someplace new every few years and I enjoy taking day-trips.
Researching places to live is sort of a longstanding and ongoing hobby of mine, though this post is not intended to catalog all the details of what I personally look for in a place to live. I'm trying to illustrate the point that in part because I have a Certificate in GIS (database and map stuff) and the internet exists, I was able to do something while very, very poor that historically was a privilege of the most wealthy classes in the world: I was able to move around at will, research what places I might want to move next and improve my life under very challenging circumstances.
Twenty or more years ago, I used to buy Places Rated dead tree books and Colleges Rated dead tree books and laboriously pour through them trying to determine where I might wish to live someday. These days, all of that info and more is available online and a lot of it is available for free.
"Your best place" type articles are common and popular, but they tend to be more entertaining than genuinely informative. "Where should I move?" type questions are pretty popular online.
So this is an emergent phenomenon. It's not just me, though I was perhaps a tad ahead of the curve and I have professional training from a world class program.
For years now, I have batted about ideas for how to help Ordinary Joes do this better. A couple of years back, I started a reddit called r/Relo and in recent weeks I finally feel clear what I want to do with it and it's finally gaining members (currently has 22 members after two years of me being the only one).
I'm still not sure where exactly to go with this, but I am clear this is an emergent phenomenon and I am also clear there is LOTS of room for the world to do this better. r/Relo is my current small contribution for moving this idea forward.