I am sitting with my laptop on my lap, somewhere on a mountain in the woods. The door is open, our cat Butter stretched out in the sun. My coffee is cold by now, forgotten again. I have gone all out again to work out all the creative ideas. As soon as I look outside, I think: look at me sitting here, I could never have imagined this a few years ago.
Hi, I’m Marieke. For almost 15 years I worked as a physical therapist with people with non-congenital brain injury. I did it with love, passion, maybe even a little too much ambition. Working full-time, getting a master’s degree part-time and then also teaching courses. But that’s part of doing what you love, right? I lived a completely different life, a busy but nice life. Permanent job, a house to buy, vegetable garden, animals, a rich social life, traveling. A life I had dreamed of, or at least it was when I was in my mid-twenties.
Inside, something had been gnawing at me for a long time; after each trip, that feeling grew stronger. I often thought about it, but yes… tying the knot, you don’t just leave everything behind.
Changing course
In 2023, my friend Luc and I decided to change course. We longed for a slower life, more connected to nature. For space to feel and discover. Curious about a different kind of life, about who else we are, apart from all expectations, standards and education. A kind of second life, but one where we can make conscious choices for ourselves with the knowledge and experience we have now. As you could already read, we didn’t do this from one day to the next, but ended up doing it without an outlined plan. Only one end goal we had clear: one day we will live in the Alps.
Letting go to discover new sides
We did it nice and rigorous right away. We quit our jobs, sold the house and placed our animals with a sweet nanny. Enthusiasm quickly gave way to excitement and grief in the early stages, away from the familiar, missing family and even selling the house did more to me than I had imagined.
Out of our savings, we decided to travel before settling down somewhere again. To break free from our old structures, ways of doing and thinking. And so we set off on an adventure, with a one-way ticket to Hanoi in our pockets. Nothing to do, no planning, no idea what the future would bring. Wonderful to just live with the day. I no longer had to conform to what I thought was “success. My head became super clear and creativity blossomed. A side I didn’t know about myself at all. I started painting; capturing everything that amazed me. It brought stillness and focus.
Perhaps what surprised me most was how little I could have imagined this beforehand. We are so often taught to figure everything out rationally. To make a plan, to build in certainty. But just by stepping out of that for a moment, it became clearer that there was so much more to me.
I learned how to translate my creativity into graphic work. Luc has a background in communications and multimedia design and soon we noticed how our interests and skills complemented each other.
The start of remote enterprise
In the months that followed, we let all ideas run wild. When we returned to Europe, a trip to the Chamber of Commerce was quick and Flying Goose was born. Our own company in web design and branding, completely remote, from our camper van. Finding that first client was actually quite simple. Luc responded to a call on LinkedIn and after an introductory meeting, with the Moroccan Sahara in the background, the first collaboration was a fact.
Now, more than a year after starting, we work an average of three to four days a week. Our needs and lifestyle have changed, so we have fewer fixed expenses and can afford to work fewer hours.
At first I was afraid that our customers would miss the personal contact. That digital collaboration would feel distant, but actually the opposite is true. Online collaboration has now become so normal. Not all of our clients work from a standard office schedule in the Netherlands. I meet one client on Tuesday evening and another on Saturday morning, because that fits in better with their week. It may actually make collaboration more personal and more attuned.
Freedom also has challenges
It may sound like ultimate freedom, working and traveling; at many times it is. But it also requires that you can deal with uncertainty. Specifically, that means, for example, that there is no fixed income, that the flow of clients is variable and that you have to arrange everything around it in addition to your work.
In addition, what I have noticed is that when you work location-independently, the line between work and home often becomes thinner. Your work literally goes with you wherever you are. In our case, there is something else. Because we live and work together, work and home sometimes flow effortlessly into one another. During a walk we suddenly have a new idea, or in the evening we are still thinking about something.
In a way, that’s the beauty of it, most of the good ideas just happen outside, in nature, without you consciously working on them. But it also means that it takes discipline to close your laptop and really let go of work sometimes. Because it is always there and there is always something to do.
These are absolutely not reasons for us not to do it, but they are things to be aware of.
Because for me, it gives me exactly what I craved most: the freedom to plan my days flexibly. As a physical therapist, I had a different client every half hour and still had to cram my administration in somewhere. Now my week looks very different. Today my day started with a cup of coffee outside, I spent a couple of hours working on a website next to the fireplace, I grabbed my skis in the afternoon to hit the slopes, and tonight I’ll probably work on some illustrations for a patient trip.
My tips for remote entrepreneurship
Perhaps directly my most important tip: you don’t have to know everything in advance. Just by starting you discover what suits you. And it really doesn’t have to be big or rigorous right away. Small steps are also totally okay.
What has helped me is to regularly reflect on what makes me happy. Write it down, reflect on your days and consciously make time for moments when you don’t have to do anything. It is often there that new ideas and insights arise.
If you want to get started with this, here are a few things that work well for me:
- Keep space in your weekly schedule
Your days often run differently than you anticipate, especially when you travel. By leaving space, you can be flexible in responding to whatever takes priority at the time. And that gives you so much more peace of mind. - Go offline for a moment every day
A walk, a cup of coffee in the morning sun or just a moment outside. Good ideas often arise precisely when you are away from them for a while. New colors, smells and impressions really do provide the best inspiration. - Schedule fixed sales or content days in
New customers don’t all come naturally. Schedule monthly set times to do acquisition and content creation. This will keep the flow of customers going. And believe me, a full inbox of inquiries gives you so much peace of mind. - Slow travel!
If you have to work on the road, you can’t drive every day and also do fun outings. You don’t have to keep going constantly, take your time to explore places besides work. - What you once chose does not have to determine where you stay
Your education or previous work does not determine what else is possible. It is precisely by clinging a little less to that, it creates space for new directions that you may not even have seen beforehand.
Dreaming of something similar? Go ahead and do it! You can always adjust, adapt, start over or even go back to the familiar.
Our next destination
Well… some news, because since a few weeks we have parked our camper in a permanent place and that dream house in the mountains has become a reality. In fact, we bought a house in the Italian Alps, where we will live and work off-grid. The first project is to build the power system so we can just work remotely from here.
In case you like to follow our life, I occasionally share more about it on Instagram @mariekerijkers.
Read more adventures of digital nomads here:
Leven en werken als digital nomad – met een camper, kat en laptop
