When I call Carly Koemptgen on Wednesday morning, her crazy brown curls and beaming smile flash across my screen for a minute before she switches off her video.
“Sorry,” she says, “I have a little bit of an unstable internet connection.” It’s an all-too-familiar situation for anyone who, like the 25-year-old American, has ditched the desk and the 9-5 job for a remote ‘van life’.
At the time, Koemptgen is parked up in Queenstown after having spent the last month travelling the North Island in a van provided by Deel, an online payroll platform.
She has almost two months of travelling New Zealand ahead of her, followed by another three months in Australia as part of a PR campaign with Deel as their ‘Social Media Nomad’.
After winning the gig, Koemptgen packed up her life in Seattle, where she worked as a freelance social media marketer, and prepared for her first trip outside North America.
Although, the Gen Z-er isn’t a stranger to unconventional work arrangements. Straight after college, Koemptgen drove a giant hot dog around the US for a year as part of a PR stunt for Oscar Mayer. After returning home and bouncing around advertising agencies, Koemptgen decided to freelance as a social media marketer.
“I like the flexibility, being able to make my own schedule and choose the clients that I get to work on.” It was then, she heard about Deel’s campaign.
“It was kind of the perfect combination of the travel lifestyle, and being on tour,” she said. Plus, she could keep up her contract social media work.
“I’m not the type of person that does well sitting in an office”
After landing in Auckland in early March, Koemptgen drove to Rotorua, Taupo and then Wellington before taking the ferry to Nelson and hugging the West Coast to Queenstown.
The trip has been a whirlwind of highlights, but the young American said highlights included “breathtaking” Taupo, and Nelson, which was unexpectedly cute.
After the South Island, she’ll fly to the top of the North Island for her third month in New Zealand before heading to Australia for another three months.
It’s a long time to travel alone but Koemptgen said, as an extrovert, she meets lots of people along the way.
“I really get energy from meeting other people and talking to other people, and hearing their experiences,” she said, adding that she couldn’t do the more conventional working environment anyway.
“I’m not the type of person that does well sitting in an office, I’ve tried that before and I get really restless. I like to be outside, I always have.”
And with a flexible job, she can. “I can do a few hours of work in the morning, and then I can go for a walk that’s like has a beautiful view,” she said. Or, on a rainy day like today, she said she could hunker down and get a bunch of work done.
The negatives of nomadism
Any arrangement, whether it’s a typical office job or a van in Queenstown, has its drawbacks. For some it may be the lonely moments travelling alone or the instability (of internet connections or life in general) but for Koemptgen it’s the simply logistics of living in a vehicle.
“All of the basics of being a human being like water, sleep, food, showering, takes a little bit more time to co-ordinate it, and a little bit more effort,” she said.
As a result, she said she’s become “very low maintenance,” but still has to think about access to water or topping up her butane supply. Just a day earlier she drove to several shops hunting for butane; something one typically doesn’t have to worry about.
Fortunately, Koemptgen believes she has the disposition necessary to make the nomadic lifestyle work.
“I’m a pretty flexible person, and I can kind of like, just roll with like the punches.”
A future full of question marks
After finishing the Deel trip, it’s anyone’s guess where she’ll end up. “I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do afterwards,” she said, adding that she didn’t have an apartment or job pulling her back to the US.
“Part of me wants to just continue travelling, there are just so many places that I want to see.”