The group helps Beth plan Coworking Across America

Since becoming a member at Cohere, it’s been funny/interesting to see how many people (myself included) didn’t realize they needed coworking until they found it. Bringing five, seven or 20 creative people together in a space creates an extremely fertile environment for cultivating good ideas, sometimes on a whim, that grow up into life changing projects.

My partner, Eric and I have always rejected traditional definitions of what it means to be young, happy, and successful in this world. Why does “the dream” always have to include an office job and the picket fence? We wanted to experience life in different parts of the world, and find out just how much of the stuff we worked so hard for was really relevant to our happiness

When I abandoned my desk job for the freelance life, we realized we had the perfect opportunity to put our ideas to the test.

One day at Cohere, I mentioned to the coworkers that we were planning to sell most of our possessions, buy an RV, and travel around the country for a year. Thanks to the marvel of WiFi, my work could come along for the ride, and we could live the fancy-free life of retirees without all the hip issues.

But something was missing. I expressed to the group that as a writer, I wanted some overarching purpose to tie the trip together. I wanted to chronicle the trip in some cool way, so that we would come out of this crazy experience with knowledge that would be helpful to other freelancers wondering if such a thing were possible.

Without batting an eye, Angel spun around in her chair and said: “It would be super cool if you could visit a bunch of different coworking spaces all over the country and blog about what you found. It would be like coworking across America.”

And there it was! The idea I had been waiting for, sitting all shiny and full of potential right on the curvy Cohere desk. A couple of #FrankFridays and Angel+Beth brainstorming sessions later, ‘@GoneCoworking: a year-long RV trip to see if it’s really possible to be a location-independent freelancer’ was born.

Since that fateful day, we’ve gotten invitations from coworking facilities all over the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. We’ll be blogging (soon to be at http://gonecoworking.com) and tweeting about our independence on the open road and how each coworking space exhibits its own unique interpretation of the Coworking Values: Sustainability, Communication, Openness and Collaboration.  Check out our map too!

Ultimately, we hope to prove that where you are doesn’t have to limit what you can do. Especially when where you are is Cohere.

You comin’?