Are you a Nomad or a Homesteader?

[Chad]

I'm a homesteader. Traveling is fun, but I always enjoy coming home. I could never be a permanent nomad.
It is odd that the majority of people on here with significant others are opposites. Or, the peolple with opposites as significant others have bigger and more memorable conflicts over this, so they think about it more. Thus, they are more apt to respond?

[McTrex]

I love travelling, but doing it full-time might be too much. I prefer to have a nice cosy place to call home, with a garden and a place to work on hobbies and have enough free time for regular long-distance/slow travel (cycling/sailing/train holidays). To me that sounds like the best of both worlds.

[GandK]

We are in the same situation. I'm a homesteader, G is a nomad. At this point I'm thinking I will try it his way for a while first, and hope that either I will like it more than I currently anticipate, or he will tire of it soon as some others here have done and THEN we buy the dream house. My logic is simply that it would be much easier financially to go from being nomads to homesteaders than the reverse.

[SW]

Definitely a nomad. I've committed myself to North Carolina until baby brother graduates high school (June or July 2013), but I've been getting antsy. I've grown up here, moved away for college, and came back in 2009, so I'm ready to move on to somewhere else. I've combatted it so far by moving at least every year, once my lease is up. I've moved 5 times around this area since 2009, so I stay in one spot less than a year. I think I've got one more move before June 2013. And once baby brother is out of the house, I'm gone. The funny thing is most of my brothers are homesteaders through and through. They look at me like I'm crazy, and baby brother is getting pretty sick of being dragged around to new places. But I can't imagine living in one house, in one city, for the rest of my life.
One thing I really like about moving is it makes me haul out all my possesions and reevaluate what I've got and whether I want to keep it. I get rid of more and more junk each time. When I stay in one spot, I can easily overlook my stuff, or figure I'll get around to it another time. But when I'm moving, it becomes a more immediate focus. "Do I really want to expend the energy to move that?" has become a very good filter for what I own, and helps me to keep my level of stuff in check.

[Riggerjack]

Homesteader. As is my wife. Nomading seems part of the "freespirited hippy " liberal mythology. The grass is always greener somewhere else. When you've travelled a bit, you eventually accept that people are people, and the cultural differences are mainly sampling error. So the only real differences are geographic and demographic. Find where you like to be, then make it where you want to live. My wife says if the grass is greener on the other side, fertilize your lawn.

[4hrwweek]

Lots of homesteaders on here, I was actually surprised to see that but I guess being early retirement doesn't always entail travel.
For me, I have always loved traveling. I have traveled someplace every year since age 19 (now 32). I feel very strongly that people should not "settle down" until they are old. Why? Because, frankly, that is what old people do best. Have you ever looked at old people? That is what they are doing. They want cozy, they want easy, they want their own garden, etc. etc. Not to say that those that are doing cozy are necessarily wrong but look at your life in a whole. Save the "old people" things for when you are old.
Young people have the energy, health and interest that sustains long-term travel. Frankly, I feel sorry for old people that are traveling because they aren't really having a good time. They are worried about the nearest hospital, getting hurt, being tired too early, etc. It isn't worth the wait until you are old to start to travel.
For example, my in-laws are rich. They have all the money to do whatever, whenever, however in their life. Do you know what they do all day? Not much.... Living a life of an old person is sitting around your house and working on it. Not much else. That is what you are headed for. For those that haven't traveled much, they probably don't completely duplicate why travel is so amazing. But each to their own because every person is entitled to their own way of living. That is a god-given right. But to sit here and say that sitting in your house all day and going to the store, friends houses', same ol' scenery day in and day out is "the good life", man, I must be from planet x because that is just boring...I mean how could being the same place year after year be "exciting?".
On my gravestone, I want it to say that "I was uncomfortable sometimes but I had adventure, I had once-and-a-lifetime experiences, I was given what the world had to offer me and I am very grateful." My husband and daughter could say the same.
Get off the "mainstream path" because they are all heading to "no change life - all the same each day."
Each to their own - live the life that excites you but test some waters to find out if more excitement is out there for you.

[George the original one]

@4hrwweek - I can't imagine anything more boring than being cooped up in a car/train/plane for endless hours to reach a destination, all in the name of "adventure". There are plenty of destinations much closer to home that provide adventure.
Yeah, I've been to a number of countries (Canada, Mexico, England, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Austria, Italy, & France). Nice experience and I'm glad I went, but... hours on end of time-wasting boring travel when I could have stayed here in my beautiful home of Oregon (or Washington) and gotten in many more hours of excitement.

[S]

@4hrwweek I've traveled a lot and can definitely say it just doesn't "do it" for me. In the past 2 years I've been to almost every US state plus some of Canada and Mexico. I've also been to India and Europe in the past. Honestly, I'm happier when I have a place to call home and work on all the little projects I like to have going. It's not about "easy" it's about "interesting". Sitting in a car so I can go to a tourist trap is not interesting to me. Learning how to care for a plant so it thrives is. Those who prefer a homesteader lifestyle do not necessarily do so out of ignorance of some joys of travel but may in fact be making an informed choice based on their own personality and interests.

[Lancelot]

Put me in the nomad camp. Five years in Bangkok, three in Pattaya, one in CHiang Mai and now back in the USA

[livinlite]

From a "stay liquid" standpoint, I'd say I prefer to be ABLE to be Nomadic, even while staying put. I love the PacNW and would like to be able to grow a family here, hopefully in a smaller town at some point. But I'm also open to going abroad to live for a few years. I don't want to live out of a backpack constantly on the go, but I wouldn't mind transplanting to a different country and staying in one place for a few years while taking short trips to see different parts of the country.
I think that's a middle-way?

[Chad]

Chiang Mai seems to be incredibly popular with the travel set, as travel blogs all seem to talk about it.

[Laura Ingalls]

I thought I was nomad hemmed in by public school schedules. After a 20 day Prius road trip of the Northeast US plus some of Ontario and Quebec I’m a little less sure.

I have enjoyed joined my 10 days in our camper parked on my mom’s acreage too. More relaxed less planning although camper management is getting to be a chore with cold weather and keeping the pipes unfrozen.

DH has enjoyed watching the deer in rut, cleaning my mom’s gutters, cutting down a dead tree. I have enjoyed having a kitchen to cook in and we have been continuing to try to eat through our pantry before the mice do.

OTOH I am more tolerant of the cold and the small ancient camper as we are going to South Florida soon and I don’t have increasingly cold weather and shorter days to anticipate.

[DutchGirl]

I love to putter around the house. If I travel, I'd prefer to stay someplace for at least a month. So maybe I'm something in between?

And maybe for some people, they don't like the quick type of travel where you try to put as many activities, cities and miles as you can in your week-long holiday, but they might love slow(er) travel or really settling down somewhere for half a year or a year or so...

[7Wannabe5]

I think many of us have this internal conflict, which also often overlaps with the City Mouse/Country Mouse conflict. As an eNTP, I generally hate or come to hate any sort of dull routine, but I find that my small set of daily routines/practices is what keeps my life woven together during periods when I am being more nomadic and/or poly-home-orous. OTOH, mixing things up in small ways can serve to keep me engaged (for a while, not indefinitely) while the major pieces of my lifestyle stay stable.

This was a major conflict with my second "husband", because he was forced to immigrate when he was 16 due to war, and he basically never wanted to leave or alter the nest he had created for himself. So, all the pieces of my lifestyle, almost literally, had to be fitted into the confines of his "homestead." Suffocating.

[jacob]

I'm not even sure.

I think I'm a homesteader but mainly in my head and not associated with a particular place. When I go somewhere, I never miss home. Indeed, it's as if it no longer exists. I'd be content never to return. It doesn't take me all that many days to forget my home address. I have almost zero sense of belonging to a particular latitude+longitude. Yes, I know where I generally live, but I have the feeling I could live anywhere. I'm not attached to any particular place.

OTOH, I don't enjoy travel for travel's sake. I think traveling is a hassle. I'm not excited to visit new places because "visiting" reduce every place to the same type of low-effort experiences I'm not all that interested in, namely seeing, watching, or eating something.

For the kind of experiencing I am interested in, the internet+globalization pretty much delivers what I desire to my doorstep, wherever I am. I don't feel a need to see people IRL when I can skype.

If I were to enjoy traveling it would be as a process of doing something. Walking, pedaling, sailing, ... whereas being in a train, car, ship, or a plane doing nothing but sitting or watching carries little appeal.

I'd travel to "do something" insofar I can't do it at home... I'd rather blow a quarter mill for 2 minutes in space than ditto collecting 170+ different (but mostly same as far as I'm concerned) stamps in my passport.

[Henry]

If moving from the couch to the refrigerator is considered wandering, I am definitely a nomad.

[rube]

If moving from the couch to the refrigerator is considered wandering, I am definitely a nomad.

If the refrigerator is in the same house as the couch, it is part of the same homestead. If you get up from the couch to get something from the refrigerator in someone's else house, hotel, bar etc. you're a wandering and can be considered a (temporary) nomad .

I like to have a place which I can call my home. But I like also to travel, living temporarily at other places. I foresee that in a couple of years when both children no longer need us to be at home, we'll be living at other places and/or slow traveling from time to time.

[luxagraf]

Are most of you Nomads or Homesteaders? Are you partnered with the opposite? How have you worked that out?

After 7 years traveling in an RV, I am firmly in the nomad camp. That said, I am married to someone who I think could probably have been happy in the homestead scenario as well, or some blending of the two. We worked that out by trying out the nomad option and at this point I think both of us see the idea of living in a house as a net negative.

[okumurahata]

I adapt quite well to every place I have lived in, from 50 EUR/month apartments to well equipped AirBnBs. Traveling, planes, and taxis can be a hassle, but once you realize how comfortably you can live with just a bag, home no longer feels like it used to be. I would describe myself as a nomad who enjoys spending several months, if not years, in the same location. However, not in the same place indefinitely.

[Henry]

I have learned that all I need is a house and a mountain trail. So I can leave, find a modicum of joy and return. I would prefer the house not to be populated with bats, the neighborhood not to be populated by old ass crazy people and the mountain with bears but the world is the world and it's simultaneously a nice place and an absolute fucking hell hole. The last thing I need or desire is that Kung Fu wander the world shit. Geography is like history in the continuity hyphen lack of continuity dialect there is significantly more continuity so the husk remains and only the kernels change. People always asked why I never went to Israel and now I can say because I'm not afraid of death but I am afraid of being beheaded and shit like that tends to happen when I'm in town. I'd probably be blamed for it so not only do I get my head chopped off but my picture is in the history books with my junk out pissing over a fence with the caption "the moment that caused WW III." Fuck it. I'm moving the refrigerator next to the couch. Can't be too safe these days.