I don't have an address.
I house-sit my way around the US. Someone else's home, someone else's dog, a new town every few weeks. A 2024 Bronco Sport called Daisy gets me between them.
Some of it gets written down. The essays are the reflective end of it. Findings is the other kind, and narrower. What a place was actually like, for somebody deciding whether to bother. Plenty of places get neither.
- Name in print
- Jenna Harbour
- What I do for work
- Remote work in the digital space, with any and all who want to exist online. My office is Daisy, the house of the week, a hotel, a cruise ship - wherever I happen to exist.
Five stories, depending on your desk
Housesitting instead of renting
Housesitting is the housing arrangement, not a holiday from one. I look after homes and pets through TrustedHousesitters, and that is where I live. No lease and no mortgage. There is still a storage unit, which is the part nobody warns you about. Giving up an address does not mean giving up everything you own.
It works because it is a trade rather than a discount. The homeowner gets somebody in the house, and I get somewhere to be. The story for most readers is not the saving. It is what happens to the idea of home when you never own the room you are standing in.
Fits: housing costs, cost of living, property and renting desks.
Staying domestic, on purpose
Nomad usually means Lisbon, Bali or Mexico City. I have stayed almost entirely inside the US, and that was a choice rather than a compromise. The one exception is two weeks in Burnaby, just outside Vancouver.
Staying domestic means no visa clock and no flight home for the thing you forgot about. The trade is that you have to find your own country interesting, which turns out not to be hard. Most people who live here have seen less of it than I have in a year.
Fits: travel, domestic tourism, lifestyle desks. The contrarian take on digital nomadism.
By car, not by plane
The other way to do this is to fly somewhere further away and more photogenic. I drive. Daisy is a 2024 Bronco Sport and she gets me between sits on whatever backroad looks worth it.
Driving is slower, and that is the point. You see the parts between the places, which is most of the country. It also means I arrive with everything I own, which is what makes the next sit possible at all.
Fits: travel, automotive, road trip and outdoor desks.
The office is wherever I am
A Starlink Mini, a Bluetti and a foldable desk. That is enough to do remote work from a trailhead, a guest room or a ship.
The hard part is rarely the technology. It is the moving. Every few weeks brings a handover, a drive and an unfamiliar kitchen. The working day has to survive all three. My partner travels with me.
Fits: remote work, future of work, technology desks.
Postcards, and writing things down
I send postcards from the road. Real paper, a real stamp, posted in a real box. It is the least efficient way to tell somebody where you are, and that is most of the point.
A postcard is a way of bringing somebody with me. A text arrives and is gone. A postcard sits on a fridge for a year. Writing by hand also makes you look harder at a place. You have to decide what was worth the space.
Fits: culture, lifestyle and slow-living desks. Anything on analogue habits surviving a digital life.
Things I have actually done
- Housesitting as a housing arrangement, and how sits are actually found
- What it actually costs to live without rent, storage unit included
- Staying domestic: why the US rather than Lisbon or Bali
- Driving between places instead of flying over them
- Looking after other people's animals, including the hard weeks
- Remote work from a vehicle: power, connectivity, and what actually fails
- Writing a place up honestly - the verdict, the cost, and what the footage left out
- Writing about the life itself, and what a year without an address does to the word home
- Sending postcards from the road, and why paper still beats a text
- Keeping a written record of a life that will not hold still
Press images
High-resolution versions on request. Credit as Jenna Harbour.
Getting hold of me
Email is best, and I answer from the road. If you are on a deadline, say so in the subject line and I will work to it.
- Press email
- [email protected]