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A few weeks ago, my mother came to my house with three pieces of paper stapled together.

"Our itinerary for Vietnam," she said, sticking the papers on my fridge with a magnet. "In case anything should happen, here are all the hotels we're staying with e-mail addresses and phone numbers."

In case anything should happen. It's one of those things people say when they actually mean "car accident" or "cancer" or "a tree falling through the roof."

Maybe it's because I prefer not to think about those things that I often forget to alert my friends and family to my whereabouts from one day to the next. Some have accused me of being an international vagrant, moving gypsy-like from one place to the next with little rhyme or reason (apart from my own). I mostly travel for work, but if work doesn't warrant it, I travel for play. My life isn't glamorous - lots of economy red-eyes, cheap chardonnay and airport chicken Caesars - but it suits me fine.

Sometimes I long for home, for stillness, regular mail delivery and a reliable gym routine - but as soon as I have it, my peripatetic heart begins to whirr. "Let's go," it thumps, "we could be doing this in Paris." Or New York. Or Zanzibar. Or Tallahassee.

And off I go.

Not so my mother, who started packing days before her trip and even spent the night before in the city so she could be closer to the airport the morning of her flight. This is the way people used to travel: responsibly, with itineraries and pre-bookings, and several pairs of shoes packed in tissue paper.

It is completely antithetical to the way I, and much of my generation, approaches international travel, i.e. with laptops and BlackBerrys and an all-purpose, gender-neutral pair of Converse All-Stars.

This casual approach is largely due to the advent of personal mobile communication devices. Why would I give my family an itinerary? If they want to know where I am and what I'm doing, they can e-mail me.

"But what if your plane goes down in the middle of the Atlantic?" my mother likes to demand. "How would we know?"

I tell her the airline would call her. My name would be on the passenger list, after all, and I've listed her as next of kin.

I mean this to be reassuring, but not everyone agrees.

My grandmother, bless her, still isn't comfortable with the idea of my cellphone. Our conversations when I am travelling usually go like this:

Me: Hi Granny.

Granny: Oh Wait. How did you know it was me?

Me: I have call display. What's up?

Granny: Well I ... oh. Let's see. I was just thinking of it a moment ago. How are you dear?

Me: I'm fine, thanks, how are you?

Granny: Oh Look Here it is. I've got tickets to the theatre on Thursday. Would you like to go to the theatre with your silly old grandmother?

Me: I'd love to, but I'm in London.

Granny: No you're not This must be costing you a fortune.

Me: Actually you called me.

Click - dial tone.

I'm not as bad as some when it comes to international vagrancy. At least I own a house, file taxes and confine my travels to reasonably peaceful, economically stable locales.

Spontaneity among this new breed of middle-class nomads is a way of life. I have one friend who never books an airline ticket more than 24 hours before he is ready to set foot on a plane. He insists it's cheaper that way. Another takes pleasure in showing up in far-flung places (Tokyo, Mumbai, Auckland) with no plans or pre-bookings. He says he prefers to "live in the moment," by which he actually means rely on his iPhone.

And finally, there is the girlfriend I e-mailed a couple of months ago to see whether she wanted to grab a bite. Her response was immediate. "I'm in Kenya," she replied. "It's a riot"

It's a way of life that depends on a few key variables, specifically a lack of dependent children or dogs, a reliable house sitter or roommate, portability of work (i.e. self-employment) and an ingrained - verging on pathological - restlessness.

Works for me, right now anyway. But as a friend - one who is committed to a good life in Toronto - warned me, the danger of moving around too much is you soon may find you don't live anywhere at all. Little bits of you end up scattered here and there, with no crucial concentration to pull you back to one place over another.

The thrill of being an international vagrant is in the ease of movement, rather than the enjoyment of stillness. Change - a terrifying thing for most people - becomes simple, even addictive, to the modern nomad. But change, in and of itself, doesn't bring happiness any more than remaining inert does. That's assuming, of course, that it's happiness you're after.

Don't get me wrong. I see the beauty of settling down. One day, I plan to wake up and think, "It's Tuesday. On Tuesdays, I go to yoga." I'm just not ready to go there yet.

In the meantime, you can reach me by e-mail - in case anything should happen.