I suppose I was a pioneer in the remote work community. I worked remotely since 1999.
Past essays have mentioned our first RV journey that took us from Colorado to Alaska, where we stayed for 12 years.
But I never explained my Why.
At the time, I was working for the county, providing training to municipalities in western Colorado. If you have ever been to that area, you are familiar with the remoteness of those small towns.
And the roads in winter caused my knuckles to turn white.
Video cameras were making their way into boardrooms so that people did not need to be in the same room to get something accomplished. But the setup was expensive, so smaller communities could not participate.
This was 1999 and early 2000. The internet was in its infancy compared to what we can do today.
But I must have had a vision.
I knew there had to be a way to teach and reach these small communities without risking my life on the roads. Ice was not the only issue. I counted 112 deer on one 50-mile drive.
Long story short, this is what prompted me to finish graduate school with a focus on online learning.
The challenge of online learning continued for a few more years – at least to today’s standards.
After graduating in 2002, I teamed up with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources and Fish and Game to teach curriculum online to teachers in rural Alaska so they did not have to leave their classrooms.
If they did leave, they left the school empty. Many villages only have one teacher.
A trip to Anchorage for training meant a 3-4 day trip, if the weather held. And to be honest, those teachers wanted to go to the mall and eat out more than they wanted to sit in a classroom.
The online program proved to be a great success for many years. Teachers were learning in their own environment and using the curriculum with their students while still in the 6-week course.
We all know how going to live training can be. Excitement while you are there, but the content you learn goes on the shelf as soon as you go home. Life gets too busy to look at it again.
The classes filled up every quarter and were a great success. I made a lot of friends.
One year, I think about 2006, we took a road trip to the lower 48. I had a few conferences to present at, so we made a summer of it.
During that trip, I was still holding classes, which had a live session every week. This was before Zoom. I had to use methods that everyone could use. The lowest common denominator.
Each teacher received a prepaid phone card (yes, long distance was still charged by the minute) and an email with PowerPoint slides.
We got on the phone, and I told them when to change slides.
Boy, do we have it easy today, right?
The fun part was where I did this from.
I had an old flip phone and a laptop on board. One class was taught from a laundry room in northern Washington. Another from a library somewhere in the Yukon. Many calls were from a parking lot or pull-off where we had a signal.
One time, we were driving back from Anchorage to our house about 40 miles north, and I had to teach. The only connection I could grab was outside the gate of the women’s prison.
Surprisingly, no one came out to see why I had a laptop open in the passenger seat while talking on the phone.
I bet they would today.
The point is that it is now easier to earn a remote income than it was just a few short years ago.
You don’t need to worry much about how to do it. You just need your WHY.
