Expats don’t have everything. Weird, right?

I have gotten a lot of feedback on Facebook and here about my current adventure. Ever since I decided I wanted to walk away from my corporate 9-5 job and live on a tropical island, I have had people telling me all kinds of things.


You’re so lucky.
I wish I could have your life.
Your adventures are amazing, I’ll never be able to do that.
I’m jealous of you.


In no way to I want to discredit how fucking awesome my life is. It’s crazy, it has its ups and downs, but it is pretty amazing and I fully recognize that.

HOWEVER.


I think that a lot of people saying these things to me are forgetting some things when they look wistfully at my endless pictures of beautiful beaches or partying on megayachts.


I made a concious decision to take my life in this direction, but I think my fellow expat/travel bloggers and friends will agree that this type of lifestyle includes some sacrifices that people don’t think about. Not to mention, I worked REALLY REALLY hard to get to where I am right now!


Let me tell you what it means to have my life:


I’m going to have to work until I die. I’ll probably never be able to retire comfortably. I have exactly $750 in my retirement savings, and I might have to dip into that to get a new computer since mine is dying. I barely make enough to sustain myself as a dive instructor, and what little I have left over goes to savings (which is also mostly non-existent) or new gear. On the other hand, had I busted my ass at my two full time jobs and sold lots of stuff and NOT moved to Roatan, I would have had nearly $15,000 at my disposal. Think about that.


I’ll probably never be able to buy a house or a car, or any other major purchases. See the point above. I have no savings. I don’t have a ‘real job’ any more, according to the tax man and credit agencies, so for as long as I do this I won’t have any employment references that count in the real world. I have no partner with a stable source of income/employment either… I’m on my own and what I have isn’t good enough for things like that. 

I can’t have real relationships. I’m in places where people are super transient, so nearly everyone I meet leaves. And (apparently) I leave the country at the drop of the hat. I’d be a terrible partner right now; my life is extremely unstable…I don’t want someone to be dragged along on something they don’t want to do, and I don’t want to follow anyone else’s agenda right now. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get lonely. I’m jealous of my friends who have boyfriends/girlfriends and husbands/wives as built-in partners in crime for everything. I eat at amazing restaurants, explore new places, and spend time on some of the most gorgeous beaches in the world… but I usually do it alone, and that sucks sometimes. I’m fiercely independent, but I’m not a robot.

I never get taken seriously by employers. I think in the future this might be the closest I get to regretting something in life. I leave jobs after short time periods to do something new, and that looks bad on my resume. I’m nearly 28 years old and my resume looks like a high school kid’s. This will likely not fare well upon my eventual return to the real world.

I’m away from my friends and family for months and months on end. Yeah, of course I’m making new friends and having fun with them. Yeah, I Skype people at home like nobody’s business. But I miss my mom. I miss my best friend. I miss seeing my coworkers every day. It’s not the same.

I don’t have any of the perks of ‘real’ jobs. I don’t have health insurance, a discount transit pass, an RRSP matching plan, paid vacation days, or weekends off. I also make $25/day! I don’t have any disposable income to buy things I want. I used to take these things for granted at my jobs.

I rarely get to have the comforts of home. I can’t get a lot of the foods I used to eat at home. There’s no cafes in Roatan that can make a decent coffee. I have slow, unreliable internet and ridiculously expensive water and electricity bills. I have to pay someone to do my laundry and I usually get a few things “lost” every time they do it. I can’t afford to use my air conditioning. I only have about 10 shirts and four pairs of shorts to my name. I never get any time alone. I haven’t been to a movie theater or a concert in six months. My only choices to go out to eat are rotisserie chicken or sandwiches. And for some reason, hair detangler doesn’t exist in Roatan.

I get eaten alive constantly in Roatan. This is something I don’t talk about often on here, because to other people it might seem trivial. But I am uncomfortable nearly 100% of the time when I’m in Roatan. (Just try to imagine being uncomfortable 24/7!) I get absolutely massacred by the sandflies and mosquitos there, both of which I’m allergic to. My legs normally look like I’ve been run over by a motorcycle, and I’m constantly getting infected bites. Nothing heals because I’m in the water 3 times a day, and I often have literally hundreds of open sores all over my body from these bites. It’s NOT cute, and it feels awful. I’m itchy all the time, and it drives me ballistic. I have insane scars on my legs, arms and chest from the last 5 months and the two times I visited Roatan before I moved there. People are always asking me what happened to me, telling me what to put on them, and just generally meaning well but being annoying and intrusive about it. There’s nothing I can do about it, and I get bit all the time. It’s just part of life here for me, but it really blows.