Anywhere versus somewhere

Where would you rather be?

I recently listened to an audiobook, The Yellow Wood, an interesting short book (it was just over 4 hours long) about, amongst other things, our preference to travel the world or stay at home — the anywhere person versus the somewhere person. I immediately thought I am most definitely an anywhere person. I love to travel, I love to see new things, I love to be anywhere. But after finishing the book and I thought about it in a bit more depth, I came to the realisation that it wasn’t as simple as that.

Summer sunrise in my somewhere - St Leonards, Victoria, Australia. January 2025.

While I like the idea of being an anywhere person, of travelling with no fixed abode and being anywhere, rather than somewhere, the whole idea of that is a little flawed. It’s not so black and white. Let’s say an anywhere person is someone constantly travelling, less a digital nomad and more a true traveller. No home base, nowhere to return to, no previous address or forwarding address, no material possessions holed up in a storage shed “back home”, wherever home is, and probably less likely to have a digital footprint. That life would be utterly exhausting. Yes it would be minimalist and easy to run from problems and challenges, but it would be hard to not have any place that you could call your own, no sanctuary away from the rest of the world.

For me, digital nomads don’t have the same feel as a true traveller. They might live in cheap or exotic places while they work, having the luxury to work from anywhere, but are they really anywhere people? Speaking in general terms, I see them as people who live somewhere for a period of time while they work. That could be six weeks or six months, but they are still living somewhere while they work. They aren’t solely there for the purposes of not having connections or are without a base somewhere else, they aren’t there to contribute to or entrench themselves in local society before moving on to the next place. They aren’t there to leave behind their own lives elsewhere. They’re still connected to somewhere. They’re more likely to hole up in hotspots with other expats or digital nomads, notably Chiang Mai or Bali at my end of the world, Mexico City in North America. They’re mostly not travelling for the pursuit of travelling or for the notion of contributing to the local culture or society. They generally live in their own separate areas with other digital nomads. So, in my opinion, digital nomads are not anywhere people. They are somewhere people that could be anywhere. Not anywhere people that like to have a somewhere.

I have come to the conclusion that I would be a terrible digital nomad. I have done that kind of work before, pre-Covid and still do to an extent, where I have a part-time job without an office (I also have another part-time job with an office). Everything is done virtually. I lived in Egypt and Malaysia for six months, again pre-Covid, and had that job to sustain me. But I didn’t travel the way I would when not working, or on a break from work. I had to make time at night and during the day for online meetings and sending emails. I had to be present, I couldn’t completely relax, I couldn’t be offline. I still had a home base, albeit in another part of the world. And I was not travelling, I stayed put. I did see some of the sights, Alexandria and the Giza Pyramids, and I did enjoy the sights, sounds and tastes of Egypt and Malaysia, but I did not experience it in the same intentional way as I would have done if I was travelling for pure enjoyment and life experience.

So what kind of person am I, if not an anywhere person and not strictly a somewhere person, even though I have a somewhere? Well, I guess that is pretty self-explanatory, given that previous sentence. I am an anywhere person who likes to have a home base, a somewhere. I am not a somewhere person. Or a somewhere person who likes to have another somewhere to go to for a break, for example those people who go to the same place every year for their holiday whether that be a holiday home at the nearest beach town or an interstate or even international getaway (which is mostly Queensland or Bali if you live where I live). My anywhere intention is exactly that. I like to go anywhere, everywhere, somewhere I have not been before, although there are a few places that I have returned to more than once. I’ve said it time and time again that I like to see new places, meet new people and do new things. If I had to travel to the same place every year for that same holiday experience I would probably poke myself in the eye!

I am definitely an anywhere person who likes to have a somewhere. That somewhere is my home base. The place I love coming back to after a holiday, after being anywhere. It’s my sanctuary and my home. It’s the place I love showing off to my friends and family. It’s the place that brings me peace and joy. It’s the place I can display all my travel experiences, photos, trinkets, art collection, and other objects collected on my travels. My home itself is a hotch-potch of sentimental items from places far and wide, all the anywheres I’ve ever been to and the people I’ve met along the way. While the region in itself is someone else’s anywhere, it’s the place I choose to be my somewhere, the place I feel most at home in this world.

Getting back to the book that started this train of thought, The Yellow Wood, as the name would suggest, quotes from Robert Frost’s poem The road not taken A LOT. And while I do relate immensely to that idea, St Augustine provides another travel quote that I absolutely adore:

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.

Happy travels to you my friends, whether you’re the anywhere or the somewhere type. I hope to meet you along the road less travelled.

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What I am reading: The Yellow Wood by Minnie Drake - inspiration for this post. Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner - it was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize and in my library’s “to read” list.

What I’m watching: Recently finished watching The Better Sister on Prime Video. I actually really enjoyed this one, but didn’t think I would because murder, thriller, cops, etc.