Living The Dream: Things are going to work out way better than you can even imagine

Amy quit her job to take a nine month solo trip around the world. When it ended she didn’t want it to, so she set herself up as a freelance editor to continue Living The Dream.

Amy Scott

What was the first country you visited? Who with and why did you choose it?

I believe my first international trip was to Europe—France, Switzerland, and Italy—when I was in high school. It was a trip to celebrate my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary, and they were generous enough to take me and my brother along. I don’t know why they chose Europe, or those particular countries, but I was thrilled to have a chance to practice French, which I was learning in school.

When did you start a travel lifestyle? What inspired that change?

I grew up traveling a lot, and I also moved around quite a bit, but my travel lifestyle (which I like to call “Nomadtopia”) began in earnest in 2004, when I quit my job in book publishing in the San Francisco Bay Area to take a nine-month solo trip around the world. The whole thing was inspired by a casual conversation a couple years earlier with some older cousins who encouraged me to travel “while you still can.”

I didn’t want to go back to an office after my round-the-world trip, so I set myself up as a freelance editor so I’d be able to live and work from anywhere, and I’ve been doing exactly that ever since.

Do you have a base you travel from? Or is it continuous travel? And why do you choose that style?

I’ve done it a lot of different ways over the years. At the moment, my husband and I have a base in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he is from, but are often gone for up to a year at a time. We own an apartment there, and his family is there, so it makes sense to go back occasionally, and it’s nice to have a place to leave our stuff and hang our hats occasionally—plus it’s the only place in the world we’re both allowed to stay/live indefinitely, now that I have residency! But it’s awfully far from most other places we’d like to spend time, so we’re starting to look for another home base.

How do you fund your travel lifestyle? Is it something you do when travelling or are you a saver?

For my round-the-world trip, I spent more than two years saving money before I quit my job. Now, I take my work with me, and I have several income streams that support my lifestyle, including editing, coaching, online courses and ebooks, and renting out our apartment in Buenos Aires.

If you could tell yourself one tip before you started your travel lifestyle, what would it be?

It’s time to hit the road! Trust yourself and go with the flow. Things are going to work out way better than you can even imagine.

What does "Living The Dream" mean to you?

Being able to call the shots in my life and business and living life on my own terms. Sometimes that means traveling a lot, sometimes it means staying in one place, sometimes it means working a lot and other times not so much... There are no rules and nothing’s set in stone.

You can find Amy Scott here -

Website: Nomadtopia

Twitter:  @nomadamyscott 

Founder of Nomadtopia, an online community and source of inspiration and information for those who want to live their ideal life, anywhere in the world.