A Nomad Life is NOT What You Really Want

An exercise of personal honesty

Tbilisi, Georgia

A few days ago, I was talking with a younger friend about traveling and living abroad.

At some point, she mentioned that, although she would like to live abroad as an expat or digital nomad, she doesn’t currently have the chance to do so.

I was surprised.

My friend is young, already in a solid career with plenty of savings in the bank, and has no responsibilities beyond her own self-sustenance.

For a moment, I thought about how much more confident I would have felt leaving my mostly office-based job to pursue a remote position years ago if I had had her same level of professional experience.

Or how having that amount in my bank account would have spared me from spending so many nights staring at the ceiling with a sinking feeling in my chest in the days leading up to my resignation.

Nevertheless, despite my less-than-ideal starting conditions, I had thrown myself into the unknown to chase my dream of traveling and working.

As the famous quote goes, “Living at risk is jumping off a cliff and building your wings on the way down.” I had done exactly that, leaping from the glass walls of my company building, much like a superhero in an action movie—minus the superpowers and with a lot more flailing.

Given my friend’s overall situation, her narrative seemed more like a story she was telling herself rather than an objective truth.

In the following hours, I couldn’t stop thinking, "What might have motivated her to craft it?"

Noise factors

A number of factors can can lead us to desire things we ultimately don’t really want, creating noise between us and what we truly seek.

The first one? Surprise, surprise—social media.

Social media constantly exposes us to products, experiences, and standards from across the globe that we might not have considered before, ultimately placing us in a state of constant comparison and self-questioning.

However, while Instagram influencers—or even high school friends’ photos in Paris or on the Amalfi Coast—can trigger sudden desires or feelings of jealousy, the effect seems to be limited.

In “No More Blank Spaces on the Map: Is Adventure Travel Dying?”

Justin S. Bailey

recalls an article by Forbes titled “Why No One Cares About Your Travels,” which argued that people can barely relate to others' travels:

“It isn’t (primarily) about jealousy; the problem is about context. Your adventures are unrelatable. Most people are simply more interested in talking about familiar things than they are curious about the new things that you want to introduce to the conversation. Yes, there is a social cost associated with leaving the herd and having unique experiences.”

So, if friends' or influencers’ experiences showcased on social media affect us only moderately, what else could be at play?

Family

As children, we witness our family’s experiences, internalize their values, and learn what is appreciated or discouraged within our familial ecosystem. When our time comes, we often try to embody those values and meet the standards set by our environment, however they were conceptualized. 

For example, my interlocutor’s older siblings had both spent time abroad doing internships and nomading and had often encouraged her to do the same. It’s no surprise that she might feel compelled to follow suit, even if living abroad might not be her cup of tea.

Ideal self

Finally, our ideal self—the person we aspire to become but are not yet—can sometimes be quite different from our real self or simply unrealistic. 

While the ideal self represents one's hopes, dreams, and goals, embodying attributes we believe would make us our best selves, we sometimes overload this image with things that look good on paper or tick a box, even if we aren’t truly invested in pursuing them.

90% of the work is admitting it

Similar to the conversation with my friend, during my travels as a digital nomad, I often encountered people who expressed a strong desire to travel and work remotely. 

Yet, when I mentioned the grueling hours I had to wake up for months on end to attend meetings in time zones up to seven hours apart from my team, the occasional pay cuts, the challenging choice of prioritizing lifestyle over other career-related aspects such as job satisfaction, the inevitable loneliness, and the discomfort of getting sick far from home, their enthusiasm often quickly fades.

Understanding what we are willing to give up is an exercise of personal honesty.

Similarly, accepting that we might not be willing to give up the comfort of our current life is an act of self-awareness.

What I often say to these people is that one choice isn’t necessarily better than the other—there are just choices that work for some people and not for others.

Maturity lies in recognizing and ultimately admitting what we truly want to ourselves.

While trade-offs aren’t always necessary, the factors involved in a job and lifestyle-related choice are too numerous to realistically tick all the boxes: great salary, the possibility to travel, asynchronous work, work-life balance, a nice boss, career growth—just to name a few.

Based on my experience as someone who has been nomading for the past three years, particularly at a younger age, you can realistically check only two, maybe three, of these boxes at a time.

But if living outside of a conventional lifestyle and seeing the world is your fit, it will be more than worth it.

So, the ultimate question to ask yourself is,

Are you being honest with yourself?

A few reads from this week:

• If a nomad life is what you do want, you might enjoy “A Hilarious Tour Through the Audacious Signs of Seoul” based on my time spent nomading in South Korea;

• I also found comfort, relief and inspiration in reading “Why do we feel so lost in our 20s and 30s?” from

  Anna Reich
  ;

• And reflected on being around tourists (or being a tourist myself) through “I don’t hate tourists anymore” from

  Mateus Camillo
  .

That’s all from me this week. Take care!

Yours,
Caterina