How I Became a Digital Nomad

My face was pressed into the sidewalk. The jackboot of a police officer was on my neck.

Choking from tear gas, he grabbed my hair, handcuffed me, and threw me in the back of a paddy wagon. I was under arrest for joining a homelessness rally.

America was great again!

I worked as a business development executive and my employer went bankrupt. I also did a music business side hustle.

My career left a small 401k and Social Security pension, which was a few years away before I was eligible to collect on them. I only had to figure out how I would survive until I could get the benefits.

Unless you had connections, 57 years old was considered too old for the livable wage job market.

Regardless of the bleak picture, I breathed slowly and took the job loss shock with tentative confidence.

The unexpected side effects of looking at tall buildings…

For a fee, I tried polishing my resume with help from headhunters.

I tried launching social media job search accounts.

I rehearsed and honed my interview skills into a tape recorder, and video, and dyed my hair. I also tried customizing my wardrobe which I thought matched the salary level of the potential job (tie or no tie).

I applied for 715 jobs over two and a half years.

Then the rejections came back with a second-choice candidate. I was too experienced, earned too much money, and was too old.

Baby Boomer extinction

There were no sustainable living wage jobs in my skill set or was the rejection for other reasons?

What were my options past 55 years old? Go back to school again?

I already had two vocational certificates and two college degrees.

How many ways must one reinvent themselves in a lifetime?

I knew people with high-paying jobs in IT and manual laborers with no post-high school education. I didn't need a college degree for most of these jobs. The need for a college degree is questionable.

I call the college degree the high water weed out.

What I thought was my ticket to the middle class put me in debt for life.

One thing that improved in the job application process as I no longer had to give my birth date, religion, gender, and my hobby.

The days of the "help wanted" sign in business windows are gone and now a Google spider determines if I'm the right fit.

I missed the self-employed recession-proof jobs.

I was now on the Tuba player backup list. The question wasn't why but what melody I should play.

I felt like a member of a diaspora in the broadest definitions of the terms.

Food shelves and thrift stores were my new go-to.

Getting by like a struggling rock star would not be enough money.

Sad to admit but I had no fans and even my yesteryear rock star client tossed me under the tour bus.

If I was a millennial, tips on being poor and believing in another chance would be relevant.

When you're a senior what should you know about subsidized housing?

How about Meals on Wheels, volunteerism, and discount coupons?

Scout garage sales and become a reseller guru on Craigslist or Poshmark. Fill your social media with fake followers.

Wake up sleeping rust, your previous employed life is over.

Reach for the stars!

The bills were crashing down on me and time was running out.

My savings looked like a half can of Spam.

I didn't qualify, for reasons never explained, to refinance the mortgage on my home.

After 50 years as a Minnesota resident, I lost the only long-term home I ever knew in foreclosure. The home where I raised my daughter, the neighbors, and a billion memories fueled my last Minnesota nice campfire.

Both of my parents had passed away a day apart only a few years earlier.

My older brother died, and my sisters both suffered divorce. My ex-spouse died from liver disease. There was no saving the day, inheritance, or friends. I had no one able to step in and help make ends meet.

I was collateral damage to the American Dream.

Mom and Dad said I was a misfit.

The "system" wanted to rehabilitate me long ago. They were right?

In an act of self-esteem building, I celebrated a handful of my life's lottery ticket moments.

As an entrepreneur, I published a book of poetry and a novella. I released a double album of music, owned a recording studio, and performed as a professional guitarist.

I also earned a major label music contract and resurrected a former rock star's career.

Only months earlier, I was shaking rock guitar legend, Jimmy Page's hand.

On the corporate path, I earned a President Club sales award!

What happened? "Nice story. Write a book," the Sales Manager said.

I lost my home, for half of its original value, to a young immigrant couple. They came to America for a better life-the same reason I was considering leaving it. I wished the young couple from India good luck.

I was about to discover what it meant to be a refugee. I had seen the writing on the wall.

It was too late for me to start up my own business and I needed a reboot experience.

So, I contacted an expat I knew living in Bali. I sucked up his Kardashian-painted lifestyle on the island.

No stress days filled with Yoga, available partners, and healing.

Who could say no to that?

Not knowing the language, culture, or how anything worked in Bali was overlooked. I didn't care.

I was crazy in a sick society.

In an act of soup line fear, I booked a one-way ticket to Bali.

In preparation, I tried to wash the tear gas from my clothes and backed up my life on a thumb drive.

There were worse things, I reasoned like a drunk driver severing your spinal cord.

Modern American life evaporated before my eyes. The house, cabin, pet, health care, car, record, and book collection are gone. Everything that added up to the past 50 years of my identity was sold.

I was not over-leveraged. I wasn’t perfect but I lived within my means.

As I lost my possessions, it felt like a butcher chopped o a part of my body. My suitcase was full of bloody fingers and toes. Contact with my adult daughter would become a challenge.

There was even the more horrible prospect of losing a reason to want to live.

I kept my guitar and headed to the airport under a dark eye of disapproval from my daughter.

There was a sense of freedom in freefalling off the unemployment trail.

Absent a farewell party, bon voyage, or our last goodbyes, I faced my destiny of downsizing alone.

The unpredictable winds of change fingered my hair, the smell of lightning over a rice field, the hunger for a dream over the sacred smoke of Shaman fire.

A tuba played in my head.

The sound filled the canyonlands of my skull with an ancient melody. It sounded like how a boy once saw his life outside a bus window.

The jet was somewhere over the pacific before it dawned on me this was happening.

I accepted a glass of wine from the flight attendant and gulped down the reality of my destination.

Until I had a better idea of where I was going, I prayed the cheap part was true.

The book is available at Amazon Kindle.

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