Glimpsing a less-constrained you in very different circumstances, even if only for a moment, hints at a larger, fuller life that you might otherwise have lived. It suggests a life that you might otherwise, being still alive, still live.

For me years ago, the word ‘expat’ meant being Arthur C. Clarke in Sri Lanka, Graham Greene or Hemingway in Cuba, or even Bogart in a Casablanca nightclub. I have my moments but I never feel as distinguished or well-dressed as any of those guys.

But when an old friend came to visit us in Bali recently and mentioned with just a hint of fraternal sarcasm, “Hey you’re an expat now”, it got me thinking. I bought my little base here in 2005 and have been in Bali nearly continuously since mid-2008. Had I passed some arbitrary time requirement? What does ‘expat’ mean in 2013?

A 21st century expat in Bali or elsewhere in Southeast Asia can enjoy the exoticism of his chosen location without many of the attendant inconveniences, deprivations or even dangers endured by those iconic figures from another time. OK, so call me soft. Still, talking to friends via free Google video chat or flying inexpensively to Singapore for a visa run and authentic masala dosa is something I wouldn’t swap for doing it the way they did 50+ years ago.

Being a Bali expat is an exercise in having it both ways, sometimes almost embarrassingly so. Having said that, the frustrations and negative aspects built into expatriate life in Bali keep me from getting too smug. Today I’ll just tell you about the good stuff, the 19 best things about being a Bali expat, according to me. In no particular order:

***getting laundry done by a friendly Balinese family, three minutes’ walk away. They charge 15 or 20 US cents per piece, folded and neatly bundled for next-day pickup.

*** enjoying the melting pot that is Bali. Not only do people come from all of the world for everything from short visits to making a long-term base, people come from every corner of the Indonesian archipelago for the opportunity that exists in Bali, or simply to vacation. It’s hard not to feel stimulated by the sheer variety of people here–everyone seems to show up eventually!–there’s nowhere better to see it than on the beach at sunset time.

*** Balinese umbrellas and flags.

***At night in the rainy season, sitting at the computer surfing the planet with my cat on my lap, or just sitting in warm humidity on the balcony, listening to the late-night torrents.

***having time to read every single book on the “must read” list.

*** having time for my sunset walk on the beach every day. Funny how I never have to force myself to get a nice hour and a half worth of low-intensity exercise here. I know it’s good for me but I do it because I love it.

*** having time to reconnect with family and friends. It’s ironic that being so far away from home without a work schedule means that you have more time to spend with people than when you are geographically closer to them.

It goes without saying that you have the technology in Bali. You’ll have a connection at home and there is free Wi-Fi in most of the restaurants, which means among other things that your VoIP telephone solutions work great internationally without ever having to involve a ‘service provider’.

Also, when friends and family come to Bali to visit–a surprising amount do–we get to spend hours and hours talking as we rarely seemed to back in the realm of the busy. People are more interested and interesting without a schedule and so, most likely, are you.

*** magnificent luscious fruit. I wouldn’t want the stellar vegetables to feel left out either, and one certainly will find both elsewhere in Southeast Asia, but I’m amazed still at the variety and freshness of mangosteen, papaya, pineapple, honeydew and watermelon, several varieties of bananas and mangoes, rambutan, snake fruit, dragon fruit, durian, etc. I always have fruit at home and indulge in a half-papaya every day.

*** taking spur-of-the-moment flights to interesting places. I start every day in Bali knowing that if I got the urge I could wake up the following morning in any one of a hundred interesting cities, watching the world come alive in Chiang Mai, Kovalam Beach in Kerala, Ho Chi Minh City, Penang, etc. etc.

If you’re coming to Asia from Europe or the United States it would be difficult to see too many of the places you’ve “always wanted to visit” without taking a six-month sabbatical and aggressively connecting all the dots. Lots of people buy a backpack and do this at some point, but having a base in this region means spontaneous explorations won’t break the bank, nor even require much planning. Led by Air Asia, the availability of cheap flights has increased dramatically over the past 10 years; more competition has meant that one is no more than US $100 or $200 from destinations worthy of checking out. Most days, I do not jump on that airplane. But I can, and that has made all the difference.

***one-hour massages priced from US$5.

*** seeing at every turn the amazing, usually functioning blend of Balinese tradition combined with all the modern world has to offer.

*** good quality DVDs and CDs of recent film/music releases on every corner for US$1. I know that no one is getting paid but the people from whom I buy them, most of whom make less in a month than Johnny Depp slips the valet.

***having time for leisurely two- or three-hour meals in restaurants, depending on the conversation and who might show up. Never will there be an insinuation that you should order more or perhaps free up the table. This is not unique to Bali of course; budget travelers in the region know the Asian informality that blurs the line between eating and socializing.

I’ll admit that I have sat for so long after a meal that I get hungry again and order another meal. Well, I’m not the only one. Since Internet access is a given at Bali restaurants, it’s easy to combine the additional dimension of working, alone or together with friends on the Project. Or not.

*** not spending time trying to convince myself that to defer life is to live. Get ready, here’s a heavy idea that I didn’t invent: in dreams begin responsibilities. Execute and come to a place where you are (finally) without reasons why you can’t act , today, and you will find if you are worthy of this dream of yours, and all the effort that it took to get you here in the first place.

You can fall into a deserved retirement when some arbitrary timetable finally allows you to, but if you decide that it is time to live today, making an equally arbitrary decision that’s fundamentally different because it is of you, that you deserve to pursue living as you define it, the onus will be on you to act. I think of it as having time to pursue my projects, and simply to breathe. Of course you can do it anywhere; being in Bali was a catalyst for me, a freedom metaphor.

*** losing weight with no effort. Yep, you read that right. Don’t call me if it doesn’t work for you, but the warm climate in Bali makes me less focused on food. Portion sizes at restaurants reflect a culture not obliged or intending to feed the insatiable. I tend to eat to live in Bali rather than the other way around. It sounds pretentious so let me elaborate: I have no fixed schedule in Bali, so I’m without the scheduled mealtimes on which I fixated back in the salt mines, for lack of other immediate satisfactions. Engagement in activities that interest me has added up to shedding at least 40 lbs. I’m sure the walking doesn’t hurt either; out of 24 hours in the day it’s easy to make time for it.

*** Bluebird brand taxis cost no more than $1-$2 for just about everywhere I want to go. Air-conditioned, pleasant drivers who turn the meter on every single time without having to be asked.

*** No problem getting around with English, though if you’re a Bali expat you’ll pick up at least basic Bahasa Indonesia, as it’s one of the easiest languages to learn: no verb tenses, a Roman alphabet with no difficult pronunciations, etc.

***Arriving back at my apartment in the afternoon hours on a steaming hot sunny day to the pleasure of the cool air in our little place. Add the right beverage and you can go from wilted to refreshed in about 10 seconds. If I feel like getting especially decadent I can pop a DVD in and watch it during the midday heat, until 5 PM or so when it becomes much cooler and time to hit the beach for sunset.

***meeting interesting long-term expats, most of whom seem to have biographies worthy of a movie. Think you’ve been around? In the market last night I run across an acquaintance in the produce section. He’s a charming fellow with a US accent in his early 60s (I guess) who has been in Bali and elsewhere in Asia for most of the last 40 years, and always looks as though he’s heading to an afterparty in the Hollywood hills. My understanding is that he has been a collector of Dayak art since he was a hippy, and that he’s made countless trips up rivers in Borneo in his day.

He tells me he has nearly 5,000 Facebook friends now, and very little time for anything other than keeping his active online and off-line social life organized. He allowed someone to place an ad to sell a house on his Facebook wall and to his surprise it sold very quickly; he sees this as an enormous business opportunity-not that he particularly that needs the money-and feels like the future is wide open, full of possibilities. I’m not sure if he has ever had a “real job” back in the United States, but no mention is made of impending retirement and Social Security compensation. He is clearly not waiting for anything. I imagine he never has.

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Being a Bali expat has been an adventure in living for today without sabotaging tomorrow. We are taught that there is a natural dichotomy between enjoying oneself and doing what it takes to pay for or even deserve that enjoyment.

At the risk of sounding like a simpleton or making anyone uncomfortable who spends time employed in a job he or she doesn’t like, let me speak plainly. This distinction is a delusion, played out on a mass scale by good people who too often don’t even question their participation in it. Life doesn’t have to be win lotto/nose to grindstone, holiday/work, or retired/not yet retired. If one embraces today there are other ways to live!

I know too many people whose lives are evidence of this not to believe it.

What about you?

Have you always wanted to be a person who writes, paints, sculpts, makes furniture, designs clothes or leather goods, designs shoes, jewelry, or toys? Are you interested in being an Internet entrepreneur, making a real difference at an orphanage, being a freelance travel consultant, a wedding planner, a documentary filmmaker, or building your own home? Do you just want some time to study something new, for all the right reasons?

Redirection may be too expensive for you to consider ‘back home’, but It’s cheap enough in Bali to pursue even a vague interest, and I will bet you that it results sooner or later, directly or indirectly, into a means of paying the bills.

It won’t take much.

If you have an idea for a better purpose that won’t let you go, living in Bali (or many other places in Asia) will give you time to work on your project. This means you’ll have time to step back from your life and a schedule that has turned somehow from being a comfort and an acceptable price to be paid to being a soul-killing drag, short and simple.

You can step toward a better plan of your own devising.

If you look your dream in the face, even if it’s just a vague desire for more, and tell yourself that only people with trust funds, or those somehow ‘chosen’ can escape, you’re half right. None of my friends in Bali have trust funds as far as I know, but we were in fact all chosen for something different. But here’s the secret: it was we ourselves who did the choosing.

Hey, remember the quote about the devil finding work for idle hands to do? It was handy for people who wanted you to keep your nose to the grindstone, toward an end they’d supply, that would in turn profit them.

Those devils found work for you to do in return for concepts like security, and the satisfaction of small desires. Shed this ah…arrangement.

Having time to be self-directed, possibly for the first time in one’s life, is the basis for a profound transformation for many people.

Not everyone has a hole that can be filled only by taking action in their own life that might seem imprudent to observers. But if you do, don’t kid yourself in an effort to placate those ‘observers’. Your friends will cheer you on, and the other folks don’t really care that much anyway.

By the way, you don’t become a Bali expat and ‘never go back’, unless you really don’t want to. Chances are that the same flexibility that made Bali a possibility in the first place will take you back to where you’re ‘from’, though you’ll probably return without the person you are now.

I said that being a Bali expat can be an exercise in having it both ways. Come see how you can create a life in a new place without cutting ties or jeopardizing existing connections to what is important to you.

What is the one question I can answer for you regarding being an expat in Bali or Southeast Aisa? Just leave it in the comments and I’ll give you the best answer I can. I’m putting together another quide to Bali, one that will answer some of the best questions I’ve been asked about creating the means to move to Bali, and what life is like for a Western expat here. Ask a question and you’ll be on my list to receive a free copy when it’s finished! Thanks— Tom.

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Here’s a list of qualities and attitudes that might mark the psychological shift to assuming responsibility for one’s own ends, rather than unhappily being the means to the ends of others. I know the implied scope of my list feels larger than a professional redefinition. These ideas have been foundational for me as I’ve reset myself toward a sort of vertical integration of my whole life, in an effort to put energy into micro-economic constructs of my own devising, as it were.

Fortunately–or hopefully–most people are not actively dissatisfied with employment per se, especially in light of the solvency it affords them. There are times in life where economic self-determination might be less attractive and maybe less appropriate than it would be before we have kids for instance, or before we are inspired to pursue an idea whose time has come, for us.

So to be clear: most employed people probably have no need of this article. Are they prostitutes? Do they have a choice? Who am I to say? Doing it for money doesn’t make you a prostitute. Hating it and continuing to do it just might though. Take it from me.

Internalizing each of these ideas was part my own process of seizing a post-employment life.

1) A willingness to embrace the next phase might not push you to move unless it’s coupled with an active, consuming dissatisfaction with working jobs just for a paycheck. That dissatisfaction might not lead you to change either, and I wouldn’t suggest seeking it out by the way. But if it has you, if your larger intentions are set irreconcilably against your circumstances, choose to see it not as a curse but as an exit catalyst.

2) Are you ready to give your blood to execute on ideas you believe have merit, with no assurance that you’re correct? Do you trust your capacity to construct a viable tangent? If not, if prostitution has beaten the necessary psychological self-reliance out of you, then better to face the fact that you’re not ready to create your own opportunities. Yet.

3) The opportunity cost of shrugging (i.e. not executing) scares you more than turning your back on a paycheck. Are you more afraid of never hitting a home run than you are of striking out fairly regularly?

4) Consider well that for which you settle. Satisfaction and comfort are fine goals, but don’t use them to paper over a marginal situation and distract yourself from changing your objective circumstances. If a better you knows you need a change, this will be a problem in your reflective moments until the day you die.

5) No one cares. Why is this hugely liberating and actionable? It removes erroneous motivational triggers and permits you to focus on what matters to you. Other people are so wrapped up in their obsessions that your extra 10 pounds, perfect lawn or job title doesn’t register with them. It’s great news.

6) Even if it takes years to get the psychological and practical groundwork in place for them, moments of redefinition requiring a “yes” or “no” answer will arrive which make it impossible to return to an earlier life. “No” may be the appropriate response, but make sure it doesn’t come out of your mouth because you aren’t ready, or simply afraid.

7) Things never really go according to plan anyway so be prepared to jettison all spreadsheets if you catch a whiff of an opportunity to do it rightnow. Failing in accelerated arrival is better than prostrating yourself to the seductive comfort of further preparation. Execution is infused with its own grace; it is its own justification.

8 ) There is no sin in getting up every day and going to a job. Some people make a career of it. And while “getting the job done” while assuming your position has been conceived for us as a virtue, never confuse pleasing your employer with adequately addressing the opportunities latent in your life. If you suspect that there might be more to your life than “the Job”, even if you’ve had a single job for decades, well guess what little bird? It may be time to fly.

9) One way or the other you create all the doors. Even when presented with huge, no-brainer opportunity, you had already done what it would take to put yourself in this position. Do that more.

10) ‘Busy’ is not the goal. The goal is progress. Busy is something that people watching the clock do to distract themselves from jobs they dislike. You must instead embrace efficiency to free up time to be the opposite of distracted, i.e. focused, and create conditions that provoke and facilitate focus in you, most likely while keeping others busy.

11) If the time comes when career satisfaction and the products of your success seem morbidly inadequate, don’t let fear of the unknown have you convincing yourself that they are compensation enough for refusing new, larger directions.

12) After tasting any success in business you’ll feel debased by awards and other morale-building exercises many employers use to provoke feelings of well-being in their employees.

13) A wise man said that you’ll either give yourself permission to embrace a better purpose, or find a ‘boss’ to assign you one. A corollary is that you will have moments of indecision, no one to blame, and ultimately only yourself to lean on.

14) Everything you do is a decision to expand and improve the basic terms of your life, or a choice to decline to do so. A better you is engaged in continual battle, and the forces of inertia, fear, laziness are strong. You are not absolved.

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Nowadays Bali especially is seeing a huge influx of foreigners looking to save by renting an apartment or house by the month (or by the year!) and work on a project, start an online business or simply take an extended break. My aim with this article is to remove visa-related question marks as barrier to doing this.

The Sosial Budaya, or Social Visa is the answer. Costing approximately US$60 in 2012 depending on where you apply, it allows you an initial stay of 60 days, then is extendable every 30 days for about US$25, up to a maximum stay of six months without having to leave Indonesia. A stipulation with the Sosial Budaya is that you must apply for it while you are physically outside of Indonesia. You also need a letter of invitation from an Indonesian citizen. This is simpler than it might sound.

I’ve applied for quite a few Social Visas in several cities around the world, so I might be in a position to elaborate, but I must emphasize that my info is current through 2012. Please check online with the Indonesian embassy through which you’ll apply for current information. Interestingly, different embassies sometimes have different application forms and slightly different requirements.

Bonus Tip #1: Even when the process seems clear on the embassy website, I always call first to confirm that I understand exactly what I’ll currently need. This has saved me time and money in the United States for example, where you’ll find you must apply to the Indonesian embassy closest to your permanent address.

The Sosial Budaya or ‘Social Visa’

In 2012 residents of most countries can get a 30-day ‘Visa on Arrival’ (VOA) stamp at the airport, which is extendable once for a maximum stay of 60 days. It requires no arrangements in advance. If you’re new to Indonesia you might be inclined to get a VOA initially, and once you’re here you’ll undoubtedly make the acquaintance of Indonesians who might provide you with the letter of invitation you’ll need for a Social Visa.

Once you have a brief invite letter and you’ve decided to stay longer, you can apply for the Social Visa yourself and save money. In my experience, expressing a desire on the application and in the invite letter to visit Indonesia for extended travel and to visit friends is enough reason for the authorities to give you one.

If you’d like to have a Social Visa in hand when you first arrive in Indonesia, there are travel agents who will handle everything for you before you leave home. Check the Bali Advertiser online or the print edition if you’re in Bali, but do shop around because prices can be exorbitant. You might email my friend Denny at denny_warly@hotmail.com. Over the years he has helped me and many friends with Social Visa applications, as well as visa extensions once in Indonesia.

After either your 60-day stay in Indonesia on your VOA (or up to a 6 months’ stay on the Social Visa for that matter), you’ll be obliged to leave the country, but if you fly to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, etc. you can apply for a(nother) Social Visa immediately.

Practically speaking, since you have to be outside Indonesia to apply for the Social Visa, you’ll most likely spend 3-5 days in a city with an Indonesian embassy to apply for another one, depending on the city in which you apply. Just Google ‘Social Visa’ and the city to which you’d like to pay a visit, to check the length of time it will take to get the visa there. It is normally a two- or three-day turnaround.

Bonus Tip #2: Be aware that outside of Southeast Asia, the process will take longer if you aren’t a citizen of the country in which you apply. It’s another reason why it is imperative to call ahead.

I check Air Asia‘s website well in advance for cheap flights leaving on Monday (much cheaper than Sunday usually), as early as possible, so that I can get to the embassy to which I’ll be applying that same morning. By applying on Monday I can usually have my visa in hand before the following weekend, and avoid paying to stay longer while I wait for the visa.

Ultimately the Social Visa/Sosial Budaya is a terrific way to stay in Bali for longer stays, or to do some serious travel to other parts of Indonesia entirely. In an archipelago this far-reaching and varied, spending even six months would be just a start!

If you have any further questions, please ask in the comments below. If you found this article helpful, please Retweet it. And, if you’d like boots-on-the-ground info about getting started as an expat in Bali, you should sign up for my free E-Guide, below:

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You’ve decided there’s a stand to be made, some flag to be waved, a song to be sung on mountain tops at the top of your mortal lungs, boy.

All that stuff.

You huffed and you puffed and you made a calculated and arbitrary decision that a reasonable response to all you know was not satisfaction; that you would reject satisfaction even if your best friend thought you’d chucked your capacity for calm contentment with it; that you would drag your ass and dying wit and perspective around the whole world for some small surprise, an interesting death and a mirror that would show you a face you could look in the eye.

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photo credit: h.koppdelaney

This post from ex-Google employee Jean Hsu on why she left Google caught my eye. She quit Google just two years out of college, without a firm plan but inspired by her husband, who’d also left the company two years previously to work on iPhone apps. Hsu is enthusiastic about her prospects even without a specific plan. I think she sees that new directions might never present themselves if she doesn’t leave the comfort of Google.

The food is undeniably delicious, and I really miss the heated toilet seats. In the end, what it came down to was that I felt too young to work at such a corporate job indefinitely. I felt that if I stayed, I would look back at this time years down the road, and wonder, what else could I have done?

I thought that for her it was less about rejecting Google than about embracing the unknown. What we think about life’s latent possibilities will play heavily into our assessment of her move. Is an endless horizon and its uncertainty dangerous, or full of promise? Don’t let anyone else answer that question for you…

Many of the post’s negative comments were less about leaving Google per se than leaving the supposed security of employment in a big company. But if Hsu expects more from her vocation-and her life-why wouldn’t acting on this fact be at least as sensible as not leaving in spite of it? You might remain employed your entire life if you are fulfilled by your job. But if you are not, I’d suggest not letting ‘security’ be the factor that tips the scales in favor of staying.

It’s been asked before but I’ll ask it again: why do we tend to assume that we have security by virtue of being employed, having given away direct control over the continued means to our livelihood to a company that will most certainly let us go if it suits them? The question is pertinent because this imagined security is part of the compensation package we receive. We know that it is a security contingent on larger forces, but the momentum of the ritual of ‘coming to work’ every day, seeing our co-workers’ cars lined up in the parking lot, knowing just where the coffee pot is, soothes us and makes this fact easy to ignore, if we want to.

Even if the security was real, do you want your whole life to be merely a weird tribute to it–a celebration of security?

And the alternative is what? Well, it is proceeding in a life just as full of cumulative risk, but accepting that the only thing standing between hitting the baseball out of the park and a lonely oblivion is self-reliance. This is serious, and requires more energy than staying comfortable.

But remember: if you are unhappy with your job there will be endless conflict between a part of you that expects more and your desire for comfort, and it will never go away until you either wage freedom or give up and accept less.

If you are unhappy in your job you must do what it takes to leave. If you don’t yet know what part of life to explore, go to avoid embracing death earlier than you must.

Becoming a freelancer, an independent contractor or an entrepreneur means you marshall your strengths/assets/abilities as a supernova of vertical integration, assume responsibility and reap the consequences of ‘adding value’ on your terms, rather than involving an employer who mediates untold economic chaos and opportunity, and gives you a place to remain seated each day at work.

You will fail. Lord knows there will be cold toilet seats when you least expect it. In time you will see that it is merely battles you are losing as you win the war.

In my experience, the amount of regret you experience in waging freedom will relate directly to the amount of effort you put into new direction(s) you find and make for yourself. If you are engaged you will succeed by definition, and not regret it. Even setbacks don’t really matter in the long run; you will just change direction because that is part of your new compensation package, and it’s what free people do. If moves like this are about exercising freedom they are also about making a workable vocation a livable life.

Jean Hsu knows what she had with Google, and what her critics don’t see is that–since she was not happy with her job–she values the answers to the question of what she’ll do with an unknown future too much to simply cower in what is quantified neatly and known.

The only real danger for her, for people like us, is to forget the spirit of personal responsibility with which we made our decision. We decided that treading water was not swimming. Now we must swim. That we might backslide is a risk worth taking.

I’d say good luck to Jean, but luck is for people who feel unentitled to take the bull by the horns.

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photo credit: Stoned59

“Keep on going. Burn! Go! Keep going or you’ll disappear. If you want to go, go! Go big. Try to do it. What I do next is important as anything I’ve ever done.” – Neil Young, explaining “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.”

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photo credit: h3nr0

Getting a job is like enrolling in a human domestication program. You learn how to be a good pet.

–Steve Pavlina (Ten Reasons You Should Never Get A Job)

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…………. I never cared
Once I found out they never dared
To seize the world and shake it upside down
And every stinking bum should wear a crown

photo credit: Michael Markos

…with the ‘stinking bums’ in line for our crown-fittings.

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