For years I wanted a job that I could take with me anywhere. That I might be one of those enviable cosmopolites, on the loose in Lisbon, long weekends in Istanbul, winters in Bangkok or Johannesburg, anywhere suitably warm and feverish.
But the thing of it is, I have no skills at all in any of the ‘digital nomad’ professions – which might be summarized as anything to which the word ‘analyst’ might be appended. And I had thought, of all my previous lines of work, the most likely candidate to allow myself entry to this community of globetrotters would have been when I worked as a journalist. This assumption was false, though, for reasons too myriad to detail here. And I had to settle for mending.
Mending, you see, is a comprehensive profession. One grasp it both physically and mentally. It encompasses both the older and newer sense of the word ‘comprehend’. To understand, or to seize, to embrace. Give me a needle and thread, and my workshop is wherever I can carry my kit, the contents of which are as follows:
- Two spools of thread, one light grey and one dark
- Measuring tape
- Beeswax
- Needles of various size
- Sundry embroidery floss
- Flat head pins
- Thimbles – one leather, one palm
- Stitch ripper
- Tailor’s chalk
- Hera (a tool for creating straight lines and tidy pleats)
- Scissors
All of that fits within a 4 X 2 X 6 inch vintage fruitcake tin purchased for $2 at an estate sale. This compasses the most valuable portion of a portable life.
Now I do have two other kits as well – a darning kit stocked with wool threads for sweaters and hats, an embroidery kit for color work – and I have some much nicer sets of sheers besides the small snips I pack in the fruitcake tin, but this kit is the most fundamental. The one without which I’m not sure I would know how to begin my work at all. Because when I have this, I feel rather like a wizard might when armed with wand or magic amulet. So long as I have this one, I can stitch my way out of any fix.
Good thing, because I’ve never made fantastic sums of money, a fact of which I was reminded this past week while applying for a worthwhile opportunity for longterm study in Japan. I was asked to please write up my entire working history, going back to my very first job at age 18. This was something I don’t think I’d ever done before. And considering that tally from the long range age of 40 – camp counselor to journalist to short order cook – it was hard to sense any kind of underlying theme besides survival. Fleeing from job to job with only pennies in my pocket, somehow always just one step ahead of the hammer.
Maybe mending was the most natural outcome then. It was likely either this or artist in residence at a junkyard. Some line or work I would never have to fight over scraps but be paid to take them away in artful arrangement. (of my love of scraps, I’ve written before) Not spectacularly well paid work – my earnings at home as a mender have never brought in more than a thousand dollars and month – but still paid.
So then, if my bank account is and always has been on the shallow side, how can someone like myself – a low wage trade worker – afford to take two months, unpaid, and take up residence in another country?
Because if you’re not rich you’d better be resourceful. Here’s how I did it.
First, a few months prior, I took on additional jobs and set aside the extra. As I have started teaching classes on sewing and mending, I went from teaching three basic classes a month to teaching more intermediate and advanced classes five times a month, which brought up my earnings from $450 to $950 per month. I also increased hours at my weekend job to bring in about another $500-$600 a month.
Then, as I arrived in Japan in the off season, my ticket was fairly inexpensive – $800 roundtrip – significantly less than I pay in monthly rent. As for rent, I found a subletter to cover the two months that I’m away, which saved me $2,200 total. As for my lodging here, I am volunteering at a hostel in exchange for lodging. Two hours a day of changing beds and scrubbing toilets and I have a free place to stay.
And, not least of all, the Japanese yen is much weaker than the American dollar, with approximately ¥150 JPY to $1 USD. Here in Osaka I can have a very decent restaurant meal for ¥2,000, or about $13.50 U.S, something impossible in California at almost anywhere that isn’t a fast food franchise.
And the overall cost of living in Osaka is fantastically lower than in Berkeley. I could have an apartment to myself in central Osaka for 35% less than what I pay to rent a bedroom in Berkeley. (~$710/month for Osaka versus $1,100/month in Berkeley)
My entertainment here is walks, books, my journal, free language lessons on Youtube, conversations with guests, sewing, knitting. So, much the same things at home. Though of course I will spring for some indulgences – museums, visits to cultural centers, the all-female Broadway style Takarazaka Revue – and as I have today and tomorrow off, the plan is to take the local train to Kyoto for fabric shopping in the antique stores and the montly flea market, for which I can get a roundtrip train ticket for under $10, something that would cost at least $30 for a comparable distance.
A friend recently recommended a financial advice podcast, and I gave it a listen. The contents were not so stirring as to warrant my own recommendation, aside from one particular new-to-me phrase – geographic arbitrage. That is to say, treating the globe as a game board, yourself as one of the players, and then moving about the world to wherever you are most likely to win. Or at least, less likely to lose.
While I would love to leave my part-time job at home (weekend work at a sandwich shop) and become a full time tailor, mender, clothing designer, this isn’t a particularly smart move for me financially. At least not at the present. But being here in Japan, I wonder if the present obstacle isn’t time but geography. Perhaps it would be faster, easier, and more financially rewarding to work in clothing here. Though this would of course present other challenges – language, legal status – which I am exempt from at home.
Further research needed. Simply spending less money is not the same thing at all as making it. But I have some months to sort out what the venues might be.
Good thing my life is portable.