Most of the people I know online who run websites and make a decent living from it spend their time living in different places all over the world. I guess it’s because I run mostly travel websites so I know other people who do the same and – yep – we all love to travel so it makes sense to be scattered all across the globe. ‘Location independence’ or being ‘digital nomads’ gets talked about a lot in these circles as a major benefit to doing this sort of online work and, while I couldn’t possibly agree more that it’s an amazing benefit, the other big advantage of earning passive income doesn’t seem to get talked about as much.
That’s free time! If you’re able to automate your earnings and rake in some passive income then you’re going to have a lot of free time on your hands. I can spend an obscene amount of time working when I’m really into it but when I’d prefer to take a break from the computer and do my own thing, having the money still coming in is huge. HUGE! It means I can do all of the things I love to do without worrying too much about my next paycheque.
In the past couple of years this has meant spending a bunch of time volunteering with All Hands. This is probably my favourite thing to do in the world and since I spend very little money as a volunteer, it actually makes economic sense to do it for as long as possible. It keeps drawing me back in but in between chasing disasters, I have to find something to do with myself.
Here in Kigali I’ve taken the having free time thing to the extreme and have gone a little crazy in the hobbies department. I still spend a good amount of time working but I’ve also started taking guitar lessons, playing tennis again, attempting to put some permaculture principles to use in our backyard garden, cooking more often, drawing and painting, studying french, and I’ve started back up at the gym. I take long walks, meet friends for lunch, go out to dinner a lot (and review places for my Kigali life site) and head out for drinks on the weekends. Plus I still manage to sneak my afternoon naps in. I love naps.
Earning a passive income means that I have more of what I think is the most valuable resource of all – time. I’m packing a lot into my days but I’m doing things that I love to do and hopefully growing as a person because of it. The guilt part? All of the things I’m doing these days are very me-oriented. Everything, actually. I’m working the self-improvement angle to the extreme and I’m not sure how comfortable I am with that.
It seems like everyone I meet here in Kigali is doing some job aimed at saving the world… or at least at helping Rwanda. Most people here work for one NGO or another on interesting projects. They’re doing work to benefit Rwanda while I’m just living my life and living it here because I love the country so much.
If I were to move to the US or anywhere in Europe I wouldn’t think twice about the whole ‘giving back’ thing, but here I have this strong sense of guilt because I feel like I’m taking so much and not giving anything back. My main problem is that I’m not really so interested in the typical volunteering opportunities that I find here. I don’t want to teach English and I’m not big into kids. I like to shovel and wheelbarrow and build stuff and there’s not a lot of scope for that sort of thing here. A friend’s boyfriend works at a home for street kids. This is something I feel like I could really get behind, but I’m not really sure how I could help. It’s something worth looking into but I can feel myself getting lazy…
What do you guys think? For anyone who’s spent time living in a developing country – did you get involved in good causes or just do your own thing? Have you ever felt guilty about not playing some role in a country with a lot of issues? Do you feel like it’s enough just to live in a place, enjoy it and contribute to their economy by buying things and existing?
I’m not claiming to be some virtuous traveller who does good deeds everywhere I go… far from it. It’s not something that bothered me terribly as I travelled around Asia or lived in Beijing. But here, now, given that I have a lot of time on my hands… the guilts are creeping in.
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