When the digital nomad dream turns sour

Totally agree that moving around too much and not learning the language is where most people fail. We need community to feel happy, you're not going to get it doing multiple countries in one year.

Sure, but that's just emigrating. The whole point of the digital nomad lifestyle is to be able to move around on a whim.

I have meaningful, long-term connections with the place I live, it's people, culture and bureaucratic peculiarities. I've got lifelong friends here, local and foreign.

Not going to pretend my language skills are great, it's a tough language, but they're good enough.

It's a good life and I still love it, though I recognise I'll have to move home at some point for various reasons largely (but not exclusively) unrelated to where I am.

On the economic front, I've seen my host country follow the opposite trajectory of my home country. It's grown whilst home has stagnated. Both countries are turning authoritarian, but please do let me know of any country that isn't descending into shit on the political front right now.

Data points:

- Married, but to someone from my OG country. Met out here, married out here, been together since about year one.

- No kids, one dog.

- Large enough family at home to not need to be around for elders.

- Multiple careers, started of in the aid biz and transitioned to dev work.

- Early doors, I was often in an office, working directly with locals. Did a lot of side gigs, mostly local. These days I barely work here, haven't for about a decade.

For a few years I was mostly just a hermit, spending time in nature, reading, writing, taking care of myself, talking to whoever I met. But not forming lasting connections or putting down roots.

Eventually I started reintegrating with society, mostly focusing on talking to homeless men and others on the margins. My plan was to drive to Patagonia and do photo journalism about important issues and people doing something about it. I stopped in central America 7ish years ago due to a combination of fatigue, it becoming far more difficult to just roam and park in public lands, and, most of all, due to seeing just an immense amount of unnecessary suffering.

I tried to help various non profit orgs, but found them ALL to be some combination of inept or corrupt. So, decided to stay, learn more about everything, and form my own project.

For a couple years I roamed around the region, living in communities of extreme poverty that I was introduced to. After covid started, I've been rooted in a couple towns here, but remain mostly a hermit while I work on building my vision for a sort of digital educational platform to help people better help themselves and each other. But I became fluent in Spanish years ago and talk to everyone - from peasant farmers, to "professionals", to wealthy people.

6 months ago I started coaching youth soccer because the guy being paid by the town was a complete fucking loser and I couldn't bear to see the kids just following aimlessly in his footsteps. Another local guy, who I admire a lot, also started volunteering around the same time and between the two of us, the two teams reached the regional semifinals for the first time in 20+ years. The loser got fired a few months ago (though it was for family political reasons, not for being worthless for 6 years). I'm also planning to start introducing kids to computer programming, as the town got a computer lab donated recently. Waiting for internet to get installed, as I'll have to offload most of the effort to existing courses, tools etc - plus they'll need internet to install packages etc. I also help with organizing dog sterilization campaigns.

I don't feel "integrated" into town, and don't necessarily even want to be while I remain in this sort of limbo while I develop my project. But it is nice to be interacting with people, making a difference, etc. Surely some goodwill will help me as well, especially when corrupt people who I've interacted with previously almost certainly will try to slander me when I "go public".

Through my travels, I've come across A LOT of digital nomads and similar types - non-digital nomads, wanderlusters, retirees, expats etc. I generally try to avoid them all as I find them all to be enormously out of touch with the world and, more importantly, themselves. They rarely know or even try to learn Spanish. They just exist in an alternate reality of hedonism, all while often espousing "community" - if you can pay to be part of the cool kids club. I'd much rather spend time talking to (or helping) a peasant.

The saddest person I met was maybe 8 or 9 years ago in western Canada. He was maybe late 40s and had been travelling the world since early 20s. Had been everywhere. Had no family and felt too old to even try. Worse, he had no real friends - even the acquaintances he had made along the way disappeared because he didn't have anything like Facebook and lost his notebook with emails and phone numbers in it. And, I suppose, worst of all is that there was no purpose or meaning to his life.

Even in my earliest years of pure wandering, when I had no tangible goal, I had the explicit goal of discovering what a meaningful life was both in the abstract and for me personally. And when I found that for myself, was more than happy to "sacrifice" the arbitrary goal of Patagonia.

The real test for my maturation etc will be when I finally launch my project and likely be met with indifference, tribulations, and probably worse. Will I still be content? Will I double down to do what I need to to "succeed"? Will I compromise on anything? Should I compromise? Etc

All I know is that I live in what could be considered poverty, even by local standards, but am happy, healthy, fulfilled, tranquil, and sleep well. I don't think you could pay me any amount to go work on anything else, let alone just some "job". Even if I received an immense salary, I'd just do it for a few months and come back to this.

To anyone who finds any of this interesting, or is considering something like quitting their job to travel (digital nomad or otherwise), I'll just say that wherever you go, there you are. You have to learn to be content on your own. Moreover the secret to life is to get involved with the sorrows of the world, with joy.

I'm happy to answer questions if anyone has any

Since then I've been living abroad and have often referred to myself and by others as a digital nomad, though some people might disagree.

I think the main thing that I did differently from a typical digital nomad described in the article is to not pursue continuous travel to new locations (that's what I take vacations for) but instead spend significant time each year in a few places around the world that you like, and come back to those places.

This allowed me to get to know a couple of cities pretty well. I got to know people and places, and it made it easier to get back in the flow when you come back, as you already know your way around, and you understand how things like money, groceries, transport and other services work.

Besides that I optimized for productivity. So I try to minimize the amount of time I need to depend on a coffeeshop by getting Airbnb's that have a desk or rent a desk in a co-working. I always bring a laptop stand, keyboard and mouse and sometimes use my tablet as a second screen to get max ergonomics.

I met my wife during one of these trips and we have been living and traveling together since 2018.

For the last 5 years we've rented several places for longer time that we call home. I typically spend around 6 months per year there, the rest I'm still traveling, my wife tends to spend a bit more time at home.

End of this year we'll move to SE Asia, we'll travel around for like 2 months before we decide where we want to rent a place to call home.

From there, we'll continue to explore the region and hopefully get to know some more amazing spots.

We feel we're not exhausted yet and are looking forward to what the next years will bring us