The Benefit Of Two Way Doors
“Please could I get another code?” I asked the lady behind the counter. She looked at me like I was insane. I could see the thoughts running through her mind: how has he already finished? He must’ve been watching Netflix. Does he not care about anyone else here? As with most kind people, she gave me the benefit of the doubt and gave me another code whilst I ordered a drink I didn’t really want.
Back at our beautiful table by some wide-open iron wrought doors, overlooking the rice paddy, I leaned into Liv to whisper, “she didn’t seem happy.”
“She probably has no idea how you’ve used 2GB of WiFi in five minutes,” Liv said, happily logged in to the WiFi with one of the Black Honey Café’s dogs by her side. I opened my laptop for a second time, ready to embrace day one of the digital nomad life.
I’d been looking forward to this for a long time. Since I’d left corporate, I’d always wanted to sit by the rice paddies and the beaches of Asia with my MacBook and a coffee. Now that Liv had joined Wildest Dream full time, we could live the dream. We had a week ahead of us of café hopping the rice paddies and beaches of Ahangama, Sri Lanka.
I finished my Sago Granola Bowl – the only choice for me and my newly accepted gluten avoidance. It isn’t an intolerance or an allergy, just the kind of sensitivity that makes a plate of bread seem like a terrible idea. Trust me you wouldn’t want to share a car journey with me after that.
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No sooner had I eaten the last morsel of this delicious breakfast than my WiFi once again cut out. “Oh my god, how am I supposed to work without WiFi?” I asked Liv rhetorically.
“Mine is fine,” Liv was happily working on her first day. I couldn’t go back and ask the lady for another WiFi code. I decided to sit outside by the rice paddy and send a few work-related messages to people and to take some notes on my phone about a podcast we are starting. I came back inside, sweating from the heat, and Liv laughed, “it doesn’t look like the digital nomad life is everything it’s cracked up to be?”
For those of you hanging on tenterhooks about what happened to my WiFi, I had Google Drive running in the background on my laptop, uploading all of our social media videos, eating into the WiFi at an entirely selfish rate. I am sure the rest of the café was wondering why the WiFi was being so slow.
So, the bad WiFi, the lack of food options and the intense Sri Lankan heat taught me, once again, that the grass isn’t always greener. There was no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. I love nature, I love to be outside exploring, I honestly had an incredible week, but could I work as a digital nomad from there for more than a week? No.
But I did learn something. On our final day at another hotel near Colombo’s airport, we sat on a terrace decorated by four antique doors, restored and opened to let the view of the rice paddies in.
It reminded me of something Jeff Bezos is frequently quoted as saying:
“Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible – one-way doors – and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before. We can call these Type 1 decisions. But most decisions aren’t like that – they are changeable, reversible – they’re two-way doors. If you’ve made a suboptimal Type 2 decision, you don’t have to live with the consequences for that long. You can reopen the door and go back through.”
Jeff Bezos.
Going to Sri Lanka to try the digital nomad life was an obvious two-way door. I am now sat back in the comfort of Bangkok, wearing a t-shirt I bought at the Black Honey Café and writing this latest blog post. Coming to Bangkok was a two-way door. Liv and I always came here with the knowledge and intention that we can get back on a plane to London at any moment we don’t like it.
That’s the thing about life, you have to try things in the full knowledge that it could be a terrible idea. A Brit moved to Sri Lanka to try the digital nomad life and ended up starting my new favourite Black Honey Café. So, try something, at the very least you’ll get a cool t-shirt, at best you might open a new café.
Our next two-way door is moving to Italy. We’re well underway with getting our visas and plan to move in February. Sure, we might get there and hate it. But we also might just love it. Either way, we can always turn around, get back on a plane and head to London.
So, take a minute, what decision have you been putting off? What if it isn’t a one-way door at all, but a two-way door that you could walk right back through if it turns bad?
Deepen Your Curiosity
I have just finished reading Jane Goodall’s Reason for Hope (1999) - I could not recommend it highly enough. It is a story of how she has spent her life protecting the natural environment whilst going on her own spiritual journey.
