My family has been traveling, moving from place to place, for the last 10 plus years. It was however only a few years back that we realized that we are in fact living quite an unconventional, nomadic life. A live that suits us. For many an alternative lifestyle. A worldschooling kind a life. A location independent lifestyle. A lifestyle that implies embracing certain aspects and rejection many that most take for granted and even hold as almost sacred.

World schoolers is a term used by families who either unschool or homeschool whilst traveling. I find it a very nice word, a positive word. However, it doesn’t account for any other aspects of our family’s life, besides the educational one.

I have seen many blogs where people who, like us, live and work on the road, oppose terms such as Location Independent and Nomadic lifestyle. They hate labels and wonder why they can not just ‘be’. I get that they do not want labels. Yet, what should we call it, how can we describe it, the way we live, when people ask, as they always do?

Some of you may say, but do we need a name for everything, do we really need to call it something? Well of course we don’t need to, but it makes things easier.

I find that trying to explain to people, when they start off, as everyone does, with the ‘what do you do’? where do you live?’ questions that it is easier to be able to give a clean cut, short answer rather than a wordy description (that is unless I have time and want to explain in more depth, but I find that I often end up almost ‘evangelizing’ our lifestyle and that can be quite overbearing i think). To say for example, “we are location independent, meaning we travel a lot and we bring school and work with us wherever we go’ works better than going into a lengthy explanation involving definitions and justifications: no ‘we don’t have a home per se, no we do not live anywhere precise, we move around, sometimes staying for months in one place, sometimes for shorter periods, or we have decided not to live like this or that, but to embrace the possibility of living more freely, not subscribing to musts and needs or adhering to a given schedule’.

Often there is no need to explain anything, or if I am tired I simply say we are from Stockholm but traveling at the moment. That ends it (unless I say how long we have been traveling.…)

Initially people do not get how we live. Rather than not understanding the logistics, I believe it is more a matter of people not grasping that it is possible to live without a proper home, a real school and a nine to five job. When we explain that we have made several conscious decisions to live a certain way also meaning we have rejected aspects of, or even sacrificed, another way of living, schooling, working ie rejected a conventional life, many get defensive, immediately defending their own lives. In no way is that my intent, to attack other’s lifestyle choices. However, I do often question, even attack, the lack of a conscious choice of lifestyle, of morals and ethics. I believe many never make any choices, they just run along with the way it has always been, leaving little room for growth or new impressions.

Having written this, reading back, I am no longer sure if there is a good term for our lifestyle or if we should even use one. It feels kind of contrived. i guess, I will continue with the lengthy descriptions, the messy explanations. After all,, life is pretty messy, but in a good way.