Coding and Nomadic Lifestyle

It’s been so long for me to update this blog. I suddenly have a mood to write about my life update mostly about my nomadic life and my coding journey, shout out to fellow nomads and junior developer out there!

pic: obtained from my instagram @nadindadev that is dedicated to tell about my coding journey

So, according to Wikipedia (who doesn’t refer to wikipedia the first time? :p) A nomad is a member of a community of people without fixed habitation who regularly move to and from the same areas. A nomadic lifestyle is not for everyone, but as I am considered myself as an impulsive person or a go-getter, I really enjoy to live in as many cities, countries and even planets as I can afford. Currently, I may only move between cities in my country, Indonesia. Mostly because it's cheap and still lots to explore. Rather than city hopping, I prefer to stay for a few months in one city to experience living like a local then move to another one (as a new opportunity arise haha). Bear in mind even tho I stay in the same country, Indonesia has many different tribes therefore different local languages and cultures even within the same city sometimes.

So how did I start out? My first journey is moving out from my hometown, Surabaya, to pursue my bachelor’s degree. That was at 18 living in a 2x3 meters room then 3x3 meters in the cold Bandung. This was a life-changing journey as a person. But that was also when I realized that my heart is hooked somewhere else. Fast forward at the age of 21, I took a crazy risk to make a career change even before my career has started. I’ve been learning to code ever since to shift my career from finance to IT as I like to be involved more in the creative process behind programming than merely just an administrative job. Don’t get me wrong, my interest in coding has grown since I was in primary school. My first ever dream job as a little girl was to become a game developer. Sadly I was told as a girl it would be hard for me to pursue a career in the tech field, so little me gave up just like that.

A few years later, the world is changing and becomes more supportive to girls so I decided to give a shot. Right after I graduated from university (with a business degree) I admitted to a coding school to take a basic android class in Yogyakarta. It was one hell of a ride. New field, new city, new people. I was the only one who doesn’t have an engineering background. And girls are still scarce! But it’s like a dream comes true to build apps from nothing to something useful. I am still amazed to this time how writing some lines of code can actually help someone with our digital products. I wish I had more courage not to listen to others and believe in myself when I was younger.

Then another opportunity came. I could take another course in that coding school, a full stack web development class but this time in Tangerang. I almost took the one in Batam but my hubby didn’t let me do it. HA? Another story for that one. In the mean time I also learned independently some harder languages from C++ and Javascript to simpler one like Python. I registered to almost all of online courses providers. I bought paid courses from Udemy and Datacamp, great freebies contents from freecodecamp, youtube, blogs and even won scholarships from Udacity and other sites. People say I must focus but I can’t help it to munch as much tech stack as I can.

During my study time, I also tried to get some freelance remote works varied from design to content review. Later that I know I am living as a digital nomad! Haha. So this is actually unplanned. It’s been a year and a half now, only living in 4 cities so far but I’m addicted to a nomadic lifestyle. This year I am planning to move to Germany to study data science (This is quite a journey as well, I'll tell every tips and hints about study in Germany here once I got my Zulassung!). And hopefully I can finally break into a coding-related job preferably with possibility of doing it remotely so I am not going to be location-bounded and travel more around Europe or even other parts of the world.

To all of you who is in different stages of being a nomad or life in general, the one who’s still searching and learning or the lucky ones who are already living to the fullest. Keep hustling but don’t forget to enjoy your time. As simple as taking an afternoon walk to the local park (I know how being a nomad sometimes require to live frugally). My favorite activity to spend my free time is to connect with local communities, be it meetups or workshops.

Cheers to all of us!