I get to the coffee shop early enough to claim the corner booth, which I think of as mine (even though it obviously isn’t). The morning light on the Central Coast of California in May is gray, the marine layer not yet burned off by the midday sun. My dirty chai cost more than it should — the way it does every time I come home and decide I’d rather be at the coffee shop than my parents’ house — and my laptop is open. My planner is next to it, the week blocked out in my own handwriting. I’ve been here an hour, and I’ll be here a couple more.
I’m five thousand, nine hundred and some miles away from my desk, which sits in the south of France where I live. It looks out over a courtyard with laundry strung between the windows, and if I stand up I can see the city center past terracotta roofs and swaying palm trees.
I built a whole life around that view, and a business too. A bestselling Substack publication, a coaching practice, a community of people who turn up every week expecting new content from me in their hands.
However, this month I’m in California. My grandmother had heart surgery over the winter, and I wanted to be near her while she got her strength back — in the same room instead of over a laptop screen.
What I didn’t want was to choose between being here for my family and keeping my business running back home. I’d worked from a suitcase before, back when I was a digital nomad. But I was freelancing then, ghostwriting on assignment, and the work traveled easily.
What I have now asks more of me: A brand with my name attached, a coaching practice, a community of 20K+ people that count on me every week.
Could I keep all of it going from nine time zones away?
Turns out, I could.
My Monday download went out, the way it always does. A coaching client got her audit back on the morning I’d promised it. The membership chat filled with conversations, the way it always does, whether or not I’m watching. My community didn’t feel the time zones move. It came with me, all of it, largely made possible by what’s sitting on the chair across from me right now.
I have a bag, the Marina Tote, that I packed in Nice and have carried to the coffee shop every morning since I landed. It holds what I’ve come to think of as my “portable desk,” which is really just the short list of things I’ve learned I actually need to do this work anywhere: the laptop, the planner, a pen I’m particular about. The small accumulation of objects that turn any table into a place where the work happens. It’s a deeply unglamorous inventory. It’s also, I’ve realized, the whole secret. The business is portable because I made it portable, on purpose, and the bag is the everyday reminder of a much bigger choice I made about how I wanted to live.
This decision ties back to what I’m always writing about over at Petal + Hearth: Freedom, autonomy, the ability to build a life you love.
The version of success I was originally sold needed an address: An office to commute to, a team in one place, somewhere to point to when people asked what I did. The version I actually built bends toward the people I love when they need me. It lets me close the laptop in Nice and open it again at a coffee shop two blocks from the house I grew up in, without one costing me the other.
Sure, I miss Nice while I’m here. I miss the courtyard and the palm tree sunsets and the particular sound of a city I chose. But it’s beautiful to be home, too. To spend too much money at this coffee shop and be in the same room as the people a screen usually stands in for.
In a few weeks the Marina Tote and I will be at a different cafe, on the train packed with summer Euro travelers, back in the apartment overlooking the courtyard and the French Riviera rooftops. The bag will keep moving, and the work will move with it. I’ll continue to follow the people and the places that matter, without leaving anything behind.
Because for me, a creative building a business on her own terms, that’s what freedom really means. And that’s the version of success I’d choose again and again.
About the Author:
Hey there! I’m Olivia, the heart behind Petal + Hearth. I’m a full-time Substack writer, originally from California, now living in the south of France. Here, I write about life abroad, what I dub ✨main character energy ✨, and what it really takes to build a creative business you love. When I’m not writing, I’m coaching other writers on how to grow their own Substack publications. It’s the kind of life I once only dreamed about, and I’m so glad you’re here for it.
Olivia, this made me smile. You captured something I think about a lot at OLEADA: a work bag is never just carrying a laptop. It carries the little system that lets you keep building your life, wherever life takes you.
Thanks so much for having me!!