We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Victoria Levinsohn a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Victoria, appreciate you joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I think this is an interesting question for my unique situation because really, I am not in fact earning a full-time living from my work. If I’m being totally honest, not even close. However, this is a conscious decision for this stage of my life.

In 2023, I decided to leave my full-time, in-person job in café management in Los Angeles to pursue a dream of moving to Spain. I was lucky to already have a relationship with a small marketing agency that hired me as a contractor so I could take on some projects, which I thought would become the full-time remote work that would fund my new lifestyle.

Long story short, I didn’t even end up trying to get the Spanish Visa. Since I didn’t know exactly where I wanted to go, I decided that volunteering in different roles and places abroad would help me make that decision. Now here I am a year and a half later, still traveling as a part-time volunteer, part-time worker.

Essentially, I’ve figured out a “system” for myself in which I choose a country, apply to various volunteer positions there, and I just go through whichever door opens to me. I arrange these positions so that my contributions to the program are in exchange for accommodations, freeing me up to work my remote job a little less. In this way, I have minimized my expenses (no car payments, no rent, no utilities) and maximized the immersive nature of the experience I am having.

I am embracing slow travel — by principle, I stay in a place no less than 1 month. I meet locals, I invest deeply in the projects, I learn new skills. I have now volunteered as a hotel receptionist and breakfast server in a boutique hotel on the seaside in Albania, a dog-sitter in Spain, a content editor and marketing strategist for non-profits in Bosnia & Herzegovina, and a cook and gardener in Guatemala.

I am soaking up every moment, every connection, and every hard and joyful lesson learned through this non-traditional “digital nomad” journey. I aim to squeeze out every drop of potential from my current “young, free, and relatively unattached” situation that allows me to live this way.

Amidst all the adventure, I am still working, just not very much. To me, a week that I have to put 20 full hours in for my own job(s) feels like a ton, which of course reminds me how blessed I am to make this structure work for me, given that small number of hours. I have found a way to balance my contract marketing projects, a startup that my dad and I have been developing, and I continue to craft my personal brand in digital storytelling, capturing the essence of this crazy story I am living through.

All that is to say, I am not earning a full time living, but I am living very fully. I remain responsible, doing the hard work that needs to be done, but sacrificing certain comforts and routines to be able to experience the beauty of the world in a new and exciting way, knowing that eventually I’ll feel called to commit myself to something but that for now, sitting here at my “desk” in the jungle in Gautemala is good and right for my present reality.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am an eclectic mix of projects and passions. As a strategic marketing professional and entrepreneur, I am embracing the adventure of supporting global entrepreneurship through storytelling, intentional engagement, and creative digital campaigns. I am passionate about sustainability, health, innovation, and fostering meaningful connections to inspire growth and impact worldwide.

I am a digital nomad, and right now when people ask me what it is that I do, I typically answer simply that I work in marketing. This is true, but it doesn’t quite capture the totality of the personal brand I am developing and collection of overlapping projects I am taking on.

My background is in small business and food service management; I had a coffee shop and a plant-based meal prep and catering business while living in Los Angeles. When I made the tough decision to leave and begin my digital nomad chapter, I made a big transition from work that could only be done in-person, to having fully remote capabilities. I love the freedom this brings, but I also miss the in-person connection. There’s something special to me about filling a need within a place by literally being physically present in that place, to have an impact there that cannot be replicated elsewhere.

Now, I am for the most part not “needed” in any given place at any given time in order to do my remote work. I have been on client meetings from European cafes, while on a train between cities, at the shore of a lake with an actual volcano as my background, and I can answer this question from a table in the middle of a jungle farmstead. It’s beautiful, and I am grateful for this freedom, but I’ve realized I am someone who sees too much of what is in front of me in the real world to be able to build a career fully in the digital one.

To that end, I’ve adapted and created space to make my travels mean something deeper to myself, the people, and the places I interact with. I have been able to apply my marketing and business development skillset to contribute to organizations around the world that I volunteer with, adding at the same time to my collection of stories to tell and inspiration to share. Essentially, now I spend my time as a part-time in-person volunteer and part-time digital nomad, but I think that both are equally impactful and relevant lines in my own story. I also maintain my personal brand centered around sustainability, farming, and wellness when I am able to during my travels; I host pop-up coffee tasting events in local shops, teach cooking classes, or host events to share locally sourced products.

I also channel my passion for travel and adventure into my work as a retreat coordinator for one of my businesses, Flying with Founders. I curate culturally conscious and immersive experiences for business founders, helping them get out of their comfort zones, connect with the world and one another, and engage in vulnerable workshop sessions to push them forward in both personal and business development. For example, I recently led a trip in the beautiful country of El Salvador, which fulfilled me on so many levels — with my retreats, I can show people the beauty of the world I grow more in love with every day, facilitate meaningful interactions and memories, and help them move forward even more motivated to excel in business and personal life.

I’ve been compiling everything from personal to professional content on my new website, Vignettes by V, which I am eager to begin sharing with more people. I think it is a site that really captures who I am–a creative thinker, lover of words and unforgettable moments, and an ambitious young woman letting my direction figure itself out while I go along collecting all the fragments (the vignettes, if you will) that make my life colorful.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Given the fact that many people (perhaps most) would not look at what I do and call me an artist, I’d say one of the most rewarding things is simply the confidence I feel in calling myself one. Whether it’s a set of graphics I design for a client that I’m particularly happy with, a video I put together to promote my retreats, the mural I just helped paint on a wall at the farm I am volunteering at in Guatemala, photographs I’ve taken of my travels, a short story I wrote to capture the sentiments of a meaningful experience, or a delicious meal I cooked from exotic foods picked up at a local market, I see my whole life as a creative canvas. It’s getting harder and harder to separate personal and professional life as I bounce around the globe working at odd hours and never full-time, but the fact that I can see them both, blurry lines and all, as methods to reflect back to the world the things I care about, learn about, and find joy in, is truly rewarding.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

In my current creative journey, my main goal is to dive as deep as I can into the beauty of the world in my travels by learning new skills, languages, and perspectives while capturing the stories of the inspiring people I meet, the projects they are working on, and what makes some of these lesser-known areas of the globe so incredible. I know that not everyone has the the opportunity to explore and adventure in this way, so I aim to do my best to make the experience impactful for more than myself alone. Additionally, it is my mission to be a light to everyone who’s path I cross. I have so much to learn from others, but I’m also confident in what I have to give, and I hope to share the faith that drives me forward in the way I conduct myself and navigate this great big world–as a creative, a businesswoman, and as just another human trying my best to spread some more love out there!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.vignettesbyv.com
• Instagram: @victoria_rl (personal), @cavikitchen (food and farming), @flyingwithfounders (business retreats and interviews)
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoria-levinsohn-05b800189/
• Youtube: @FlyingWithFounders