Digital Nomad Content: Does It Motivate Me or Make Me Feel Defeated?
An analysis of my feelings towards the content portraying this lifestyle and 3 ways I made it work for me
“Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.” —Arthur Schopenhauer
Hello friends,
This week, I am committed to making the German philosopher turn over in his grave by saying that my life feels quite the same as his, but in relation to content created by or about digital nomads.
Let me explain.
Lately, I've found myself drawn back into the world of digital nomads and their content. I'm diving in with a mix of curiosity, optimism, and yeah, a healthy dose of skepticism and realism.
This approach starkly contrasts with how I used to feel towards it for quite some time, to the extent that I had to stop consuming it.
In fact, when I finally decided to tackle the elephant in the room, I realized that digital nomad content had often left me feeling groggy, dissatisfied, and FOMO-hangovered, while also inducing frequent spikes of social comparison.
If you have been hanging out in this space for a while, you might be wondering why, given that I’ve been a digital nomad myself for the past two and a half years, and prior to that, I lived as an expat in multiple countries for study, work, and volunteering purposes.
From an external perspective, I guess there isn’t that much difference between me and that person on Instagram filming themselves drinking coconut water by a beach very similar to the one above I got to photograph during a stay in Brazil a couple of years ago. So, why would I even experience these “symptoms”?
The simple reason is: the algorithm-based component of Instagram, and social media in general, that makes social comparison almost unavoidable1. I used to open Instagram, immerse myself in a stream of content, and immediately start questioning my own lifestyle and choices.
These questions were doing a remarkable job…
…at twisting the knife in the wounds (or challenges) I faced at every step of my “digital nomad journey”. For example:
When looking for a job that would allow me to work from anywhere, I would start asking myself “Why haven’t I gotten that job yet?” “Why wasn’t I hit with an online business idea so I could avoid applying for remote jobs altogether and become a CEO of Me Inc.?”
Or when I finally obtained said job and got to travel while working, I would doubt myself and my accomplishments, such as “Why am I not earning enough money to also travel to [insert new random location] or stay longer in [insert expensive location]?” “Why do I have geographical freedom but not the time-freedom I desire?” “Why do people online seem to have both, but not me?”
Or when I wanted to leave that job and started looking for another one, my mind would go like “Why does achieving my ideal lifestyle feel so difficult while it seems so effortless for others?”
The line of questioning triggered by comparing myself with the digital nomad content I was exposing myself to seemed endless, to the point that I decided to take a break.
Now, I don’t know exactly how this happened, but I must have read something (again, on Instagram) that made me reflect on the paradox of following pages and content that make you feel, like
from Coach Marketing Sucks says, like shit about yourself.Initially, there was resistance…
…because by unfollowing these pages, I felt as if I was ignoring the presumed “lack of progress” I was making, as if I had to subject myself to this perverse exposure therapy to achieve “more” in my lifestyle.
Thankfully, a random hint of sanity made me understand that this would have been 2x perverse masochism.
From there, things started to flow naturally.
After an undefined detox period that might have lasted a year or so, I recently found myself starting to follow new digital nomads or travel content creators across different platforms, whose content doesn’t trigger the previously mentioned symptoms.
So…
What has changed?
Three phenomena had to occur to transform my experience with digital nomad content:
1. I started gravitating towards more raw and real content
In hindsight, my biggest pain point with relation to the traditional “coconut-water-and-palm tree-based content” on Instagram was the promotion of an annoyingly homogenous, frustratingly easy-looking lifestyle.
In fact, the singular issue highlighted by this type of digital nomads/content creators often seemed to be the loneliness you experience when you embrace this lifestyle, which is a valid concern, especially when your first start out, and one I have experienced myself on numerous occasions.
However, hearing about this concern only often felt rather mundane and limiting when compared to the challenges and anxieties that had been present (and still occasionally are) in my life as a digital nomad and in the lives of many people I talked to during my travels, who were either already pursuing or were thinking about pursuing this lifestyle.
These challenges included:
struggling with supporting oneself on this lifestyle, finding a job that provides at least some satisfaction and room for growth while also offering remote work opportunities, navigating the difficulty of securing a new job due to the current, heavy competition in the remote work space if the current one ended, managing relationships across different countries or continents, just to mention a few.
This frustration began to dissipate when I became more intentional about the people I chose to follow and whose content I consumed.
To provide a couple of examples:
On Instagram, people like:
Kristin Kalad Karin, who tirelessly shares the challenges of traveling and sustaining oneself while on the road, particularly as a woman from a country with a weak passport;
Nikki Delventhal, who share the day-to-day reality of living in a van (for years), including aspects like showering, exercising, and finding parking spots for the night;
On YouTube:
Charline Ribotta, who left her life in Europe to embark on a solo overlanding journey through Africa and the Middle East in her 4x4;
Sorelle Amore, who candidly discusses the challenges of deciding to return "home" as a childless, 35-year-old woman after spending years traveling the world;
And, of course, on Substack:
- , who left her nursing job of 16 years to pursue travel and is currently on a quest to buy a farm in Colombia. If you missed it, you can find my interview with Sara here:
and a recently-found author,
, who openly shares her life doubts after being laid off by Amazon and her subsequent journey to reassess her life and goals while deciding to travel.
By exposing myself to real authors and creators who are transparent about life on the road and all the doubts and worries that it entails (but also the significant benefits it offers!), I started feeling less alone in my own struggles as a digital nomad.
As a result, the feelings of defeat or social comparison that Instagram used to breed in me gradually faded away.
2. I opted out of the pressure to sell this lifestyle
When I mention the FOMO I used to experience when consuming, what felt for me, the wrong digital nomad content, I'm not only referring to the pressure of matching the standards portrayed on social media in my own lifestyle, but also the subconscious pressure to leverage the narrative of the "you can have my lifestyle too if you buy my thing", as someone who was traveling and working.
Time and again, for instance, when I talked myself into posting more pictures of the places I was visiting on my Instagram (which didn’t come and still doesn’t come naturally to me) or when I opened a Freedom Focus Instagram account2, it didn’t feel fully suitable to my personality type.
Now, this doesn’t mean that content creators should create solely for making l'art pour l'art ("art for art's sake") without expecting anything in return.
YouTube videos, Reels, and this very newsletter issue, are crafts into which we pour our hearts, and which consume hours of our week that we often carve out from social or other types of commitments, hoping that they will resonate with at least one person in the vast galaxy of viewers and readers.
Creators rely on and are fueled by the support of the wonderful people who choose to engage with our content, like you.
However, in my journey to share my digital nomad lifestyle, my learnings, and challenges, it was crucial for me to understand that there were other ways to do so that didn’t exclusively rely on burning myself out by creating content on a social media platform that didn’t match my style (i.e., heavily visual and fast, like Instagram, as opposed to writing-based and slow, like Substack).
3. I approached digital nomad content as a form of inspiration as opposed to a judgement of my own (imperfect) lifestyle
The third and last way my approach to digital nomad content changed was when I started seeing digital nomad content as a form of inspiration as opposed to a standard I had to measure my own lifestyle against.
In a nutshell, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, I had to tear apart negative social comparison in order to make space for inspiration.
This is by no means a completed work.
In our time more than ever, we are all subject to social comparison in many different, often subtle ways, which makes this an ongoing effort.
However, like an artist selecting a palette of colors for a painting, I started consuming, savoring, and surrounding myself with content that strictly resonated with me and my personal preferences, another endeavor that required active effort, as opposed to indiscriminate scrolling.
In sum, by:
gravitating towards more raw and real content,
silencing the pressure to sell this lifestyle, and
approaching digital nomad content as a form of inspiration as opposed to a judgement of my own (imperfect) lifestyle,…
… I was able to change my experience with it from one that caused stress, FOMO, and a sense of defeat to one that inspires me and motivates me to progressively fine-tune the life I want to live.
Now, I would LOVE to hear from you:
What’s your overall sentiment towards digital nomad/travel-based content?
Have you ever detected underlying negative feelings?
What motivates you to build a lifestyle that matches your needs and desires?
That’s all from my side this week!
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Thank you to the newsletter issue titled Me, My Teen Self and Instagram that reminded me of the leaked Facebook documents where the company itself stated that “social comparison is worse on Instagram.”
Now closed.
Thanks so much for the shoutout! 🤗 A lot of what you’ve discussed here resonates with me. I felt a lot of pressure to “sell” my sabbatical on Instagram in the first several months (and still have an awkward number of Instagram followers to show for it), but eventually went dormant because I didn’t like the way it was influencing my travel lifestyle and decisions. Now I spend more time on Substack than Instagram, which I love for me. It matches the pace that I’m looking for: thoughtful, in depth, not concerned with appearance, (generally) very honest.
“Silencing the pressure to sell this lifestyle” wraps up wonderfully what I’ve been experiencing this last few months. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should... or something like that.
Great insight here. Humbled to be included 👌🏽