15/08/2025
My partner and I recently got back from a fabulous three week camper van adventure in France. Before we set off, I had a couple of things in the diary and we discussed the implications of cancelling or doing them while travelling.
As Minerva is so new, I decided it would be better to keep up the momentum. So off I went, laptop in hand, ready to host a webinar from the depths of the Normandy countryside. I was excited to be joining the seemingly growing community of professionals working remotely while ticking off items on their bucket lists. What could go wrong? As it turns out, quite a bit!
So for anyone contemplating a bit of van life alongside work, here's some points to ponder:
Can you guarantee a solid internet connection?
It may sound straight forward enough but even when at someone else's house or in a hotel, you can't fully guarantee everything will behave as you expect. In my case, I logged on really early to test the connection, got all of my live demos prepped then sat back sipping my coffee feeling confident and ready to go.
So what went wrong? While I've had many online meetings in the van, I didn't consider the impact a larger group AND live demos would have on internet speed. My demos were ruined - they were all about automation and transfer of data and not one of them worked. This really affected my confidence and I'm sure my presentation suffered as a result.
Is your laptop backed up and insured?
Nothing awful happened to my laptop while we were travelling but I must confess I felt a little anxious at times when we went walking and I had to leave it behind in the van. This did take the shine off things on a couple of occasions, especially when my iPhone kept alerting me to the fact that my laptop was no longer with me!
Can you ring-fence work time?
For years I was a complete workaholic and I struggled to compartmentalise my life effectively. For me, van life makes this harder. There are so many wonderful things to do and places to explore - are you seriously going to be able to wave off your partner with a smile and knuckle down to some detailed work?
I really found this difficult and ended up slipping into old habits of checking my phone regularly but not really focusing fully on anything. This nearly led me to lose out on a job when I sent in my quotation but missed a further request from the client to provide some additional information. Luckily, they made some assumptions and no damage was done, but it really made me think.
