How I Manage to Work and Travel.
On July 1st, I packed up my little family (my wife – Gretchen – and our two dogs) and drove 13 hours North of our home in Redwood City to Ritzville, Washington. It was the first big heatwave of the year. The highs in Northern California were around 104 degrees. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts as a backyard mechanic, our recently acquired van had no A/C. We took off from the San Francisco Bay Area at 9:00 pm to beat the heat, but it was still more than 90 degrees until we passed Lake Shasta. Ice packs down our shirts were our only saving grace.
We showed up at my parent’s house around 10:00 am and slept through most of the day. That evening, we took off to my great aunt and uncle’s home at Long Lake, a 23.5-mile “long” stretch of the Spokane River bookended by the Nine Mile and Long Lake dams. We spent a handful of days at what essentially amounted to an annual family reunion – lounging about, boating, waterskiing, wake surfing, and – in my case – attempting to ski barefoot.
From there, we left the dogs with their babysitters (aka my parents) and flew to Austin, Texas. Gretchen’s brother lives nearby with his wife and kids (two of the coolest most even-tempered teenagers I’ve ever met). Her company also has an office there and, as a newly licensed attorney in the Lone Star State, I felt I should pay a visit. While the trip had its business purposes, it was an absolute blast! We ate BBQ, saw sights of all kinds, and beat the heat in more lakes, pools, rivers, and lagoons than I thought possible in such a hot place. At the end of our time in Texas, we ventured up to Oklahoma to see Gretchen’s other brother, his wife, and their two adorable (much younger) children.
Flying out of Dallas, the two of us parted ways. She was off to Maryland and Washington D.C. on a two-week stint for work. With no wife waiting for me at home, I went back to Eastern Washington and reunited with my dogs. I spent five days camping at Lake Roosevelt (north of Highway 2 and Wilbur, Washington) with family and friends, then a week in Ritzville with my parents and younger brother.
After a short flight out of Spokane for me and a long flight out of D.C. for Gretchen last Saturday, we’re both back in the Bay Area, playing house and re-establishing our old routines while we await our next adventures.
Some people struggle to understand how I work and travel at the same time. I think some people question whether I work at all. I’ve heard my mom jokingly say to friends, “his whole life is a vacation.”
I’m going to pull back the curtain and let you all know my secret…
I can work anywhere with an internet connection! I can sit at a lake in Eastern Washington, hotspot from my phone, and send legal documents to an attorney in Vancouver. I can sit in the cab of a rental car, in a parking lot at a coffee shop in Buda, Texas, and have a Zoom meeting with the general counsel of a tech company in San Francisco. I can sit in my mom’s home office in Ritzville and take a phone call with a business owner from Southern California who’s vacationing in Hawaii.
It seems some people are concerned about my legitimacy. They wonder “How can he be a real attorney if he doesn’t have an office?” They don’t understand that my office travels with me wherever I go. There is no filing cabinet. There are no papers left at home. There are no hard-copy books to dive into. To work, all I need is a laptop. With cloud technology – that laptop doesn’t even have to be mine!
Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to have a designated space and good equipment. I travel with a mouse, keyboard, and headphones. I also usually manage to track down a spare monitor too. I’m not exactly a minimalist (wait until you see the dual monitor setup that’s going in the van) but the bottom line is this:
Our modern world does not require me to be tied to one place, so I’m not gonna be.
– Tyler O’Brien –
