Outpourings in Paradise

The Four Seasons of Life as a Nomad

“If you think you’re free, there’s no escape possible.” - Ram Dass

IT DOESN’T MATTER where you go or how long you stay in each place, being a digital nomad always starts with the initial thrills of novelty.

These sparks eventually get smothered by the comfort blanket of nirvana.

Then, just when you’ve got your feet up and you’re wondering how life ever got so good, you get the niggles and you’re suddenly full of irritation and self-loathing.

You live with a low-key existential dread until your departure date emerges on the horizon and the glowing warmth of nostalgia wraps you in a restorative cocoon.

Novelty, nirvana, niggles and nostalgia.

It’s a ragbag emotional rollercoaster and not the carefree fantasy you see in your feeds. Here are the four fervent seasons of life as a nomad, starting with the shock of the new.

Novelty

In a new place, it’s always the oddest stuff you see first.

In India, it’s the women in saris riding side-saddle on scooters. In Mexico, it’s the man rolling deodorant on the back of his neck. In Thailand, it’s the taxi driver who has his sat-nav positioned at a complete right-angle and drives with his head tipped to one side.

The ways of wait staff differ everywhere. In the Dominican Republic, they leave the end of the paper sleeve on the top of your straw to protect it. In Indonesia, everyone—absolutely everyone—repeats your order back to you.

Why hasn’t the world embraced cold wet towels in restaurants like they have in Japan?! You can use them to freshen up before your meal, as a coaster for your dripping cup, as a napkin that doesn't disintegrate, and as a way to wipe the table at the end. Get with the program, people!

The pressing question during novelty is: How well does this place meet our expectations¹? My partner and I are evaluating this immediately—consciously and unconsciously—scrutinising the proximity of trees and beaches, the feather-or-foam pillow situation and the width of the bed, the general "feng shui" of the nearest high street. We don’t even know what that means but we say it all the time and somehow understand each other.

We’re seeking a progressive remote work culture and the search is on for coffee shops and co-works with all the bells and whistles. Never the same place twice. Local people treat us like we're just whizzing through, which we are.

Our brains are on fire while we’re busy mapping the territory. We don't venture far; we go deep and discuss our discoveries over noodles at night. “What is it they’re saying over the loudspeakers on those trucks?!”

We’re raiding the recs given to us by other nomads, plus the results spat out by Google Maps, travel blogs, Reddit, Slack and Discord groups.

We cannot stop thinking about that place where they hand-carve your ice cubes that go in your Highballs!

We don’t unpack; we live out of our bags till we know for sure we're staying. When it comes to accommodation, what was advertised online just isn't often the reality. The room's too dark and it’s full of wily mosquitoes. Or there’s a constant ear-bashing from the road outside and the closest restaurants are all a bit dreary.

We spend the first two days plotting our escape by locating a safer, cleaner, cosier spot. For this, we’ve devised a clever strategy: We only book places upfront that have 24-hour cancellation. I book two nights and Corina books the next 28. If, on arrival, we know we need to evacuate, then Corina cancels her booking and we get away scot-free.

This has saved us thousands of pounds and weeks of regret. It’s try-before-you-buy for the nomadic generation.

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Nirvana

Our new place is gorgeous. You can smell the sea salt from the balcony and hear the Longtail engines chugging in and out of the bay.

Plus, it’s a hotel so we can have our room cleaned and our towels changed every day if we like. We hang our clothes in the wardrobe and place our sun cream by the mirror where we’re least likely to forget it.

We have a meeting to align our work schedules and start to plan some activities for the upcoming weeks. We've hired a scooter and figured out how to get around.

Those mystery loudspeaker announcements are now comprehensible owing to some intel from the bartender. They’re peddling vegetables, or scrap metal, or front-row-stools at Saturday’s kickboxing bonanza.

We’ve acquired specific knowledge about our neighbourhood and we know why we prefer certain spots over others. That place has a lot of outlets and their chairs are comfy. You can sit down and stand up to work and they do those really nice pancakes.

We get to do our deepest work now because we've found our nooks and hideouts and learned how to prune most interruptions.

We've also figured out which posh hotels let us in for free. It’d cost us two-hundred-a-night to stay there as guests but we can just spend the day, eat their food, swim in their pool and sit at that mahogany desk looking out at the jumping fish and the unspeakable sunset that turns the surface of the sea into a lustrous mirror.

Our calendars are becoming enriched with points of interest like parks, wine bars and less touristy beaches, as well as events like that tennis tournament, those two open mic nights, that cooking class and that nomad meet up (booze up).

We've found our laundry place, our meditation spot, our chemist and our jogging routes. We know where our nearest supermarket is and which aisle the oat milk is on.

The faces we see become more welcoming; warmer smiles and fuller greetings from the people whose coffee we drink the most.

We also make more effort to talk to local people and other travellers—and even the cats and dogs recognise us and roll over so we can get to their belly fur.

People ask us if we don’t miss our friends and family. But, honestly, friends and fam are just a text away, as close as they were when we were in England. Closer, even, since when we do talk to them, the conversations are special because there’s more curiosity and less familiarity.

Nirvana creates the confidence for adventures further afield and that means we discover more hangouts not previously on our radar.

We go on sunrise road trips to neighbouring towns like that Spanish village where they make Sherry and that sake-tasting tour in Kyoto. These “trips within the trip" are one of our favourite things to do.

The stability and serenity of nirvana allow conversations to unfurl and become more speculative. We start looking, listening and even thinking like residents, wondering about hospital waiting times, classrooms and teaching styles, dentists, visas, local politics and land ownership.

We start calling the hotel “home.”

We sit at the high table in the ritzy resort next door, me with a beer over ice (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it), Corina with a vino tinto. It’s so easy to connect and co-author your future when every day feels like the first day of your summer holiday.

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Niggles

But the next morning, something’s different.

“Have you heard that bird outside our window that sounds like a child being strangled?!”

“I wish we’d known they were building shit right opposite! They never advertise that shit!”

“Check this out! I found out the reason UberEats won't work is just because our phones can’t receive the 2-factor-authentication text message that we need to validate our account!”

These are the restless winds of the niggles; the mid-way season of moral verdicts and creeping regrets.

It’s a time when I’m as likely to be overcome with outpourings of panic about the temperamental Wi-Fi as I am to question the very legitimacy of the nomad lifestyle itself.

What’s my end goal with digital nomadism?

Who or what am I running away from?

And how am I even deciding where to travel?! For something so important, my decisions feel recklessly random.

It’s like I’m being controlled by some invisible, powerful nomad marketing company dangling me carrots. Who’s actually pulling the strings, really? Because it’s not me!

It is true what they say, you do miss your friends and family. All the texts and Zooms in the world are no substitute for actually being together.

I think about certain people back home battling under their great cosmic pain and loss. And then there’s me, in my fucking flip flops, getting angry that there’s sugar in my latte.

Who the hell do I think I am?! A digital nomad?!

I’m just avoiding responsibility—the one thing that I should be seeking more than anything else.

Ever since I met Maxim, that Belarusian guy forced to become a nomad because of the war in the Ukraine, I can’t help but feel like a privileged little brat.

And every time I get served by someone—a beer, a taco—I can feel myself over-thanking them and smiling too much. It’s like I’m trying to atone for being in my position—free to live wherever I want—while they’re stuck here with a weak passport and a corrupt government and roads with no fucking traffic lights.

Are they looking at me like I’m scum? I bet they are. I would be if I was them. This world is disgusting.

Not surprisingly, the niggles period sees us do most of our admin for onward travel. Boat tickets, buses, flights and apartments.

The irony is that we're often thinking most about someplace else precisely when we've started being settled in the place we're in.

Not very “zen,” but, that's the niggles for you.

The hardest thing about the niggles when you’re a nomad—about any lazy or disappointed or guilty feelings at all—is that you don’t think you deserve to be having them. Nomads are the lucky winners of globalisation, so far up Maslow’s pyramid that you’re practically in outer orbit and nobody—not even you—wants to hear about your first-world problems.

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Nostalgia

But like a river carving a new path after the flood, I’m rescued from the niggles by the fact of our imminent departure. It’s funny how predictably leaving a place makes you appreciate it.

In contrast to novelty where everything’s a one-night-stand, nostalgia's a time for old flames. We send our last email from our favourite roaster. We eat the dishes we fell in love with back when. We compensate ourselves for all the research, risks, dead-ends and face-plants that happened during our sketchy novelty period.

One last coffee, one last Som Tam, one last Highball, one last swim.

I notice how much more I notice. The clarity of my thoughts. The lethargy of my thoughts. The eagle circling high above, watching me more closely than I can watch it.

The speed of the sun. The grey shirt on the guard’s back and the wrinkles by his eyes. Our bed. Our cute little room. The salt-crusted drying rack. The maids who say hello every morning and the corridors strewn with sandals.

There’s more value in each moment because the aching holiday blues tinge every interaction. Kisses, jokes and apologies—they all tremble and glow.

I feel all the feelings I've felt all month, except now I feel them all at the same time. Tears are lurking in the long grass.

On certain occasions, like that time we read Hunter S. Thompson’s suicide note in the pancake cafe, the tears are lurking inside my throat.

We count down the hours till takeoff and agree, "We need to come back. It’s incredible here. We need to bring my mum!"

But we know we won’t. The world’s too big. There’s too much to see.

Finally, it's time. Time to meet with our two familiar commuting buddies: excitement and trepidation.

Together we slip—slip like sand slips through our hand—from one place to the next where, knowing what we’ve done cannot prepare us for what’s to come, we will make ourselves a home again and live a whole lifetime in a month.

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Another idea you might like: Some thoughts on selfishness →

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Thank you to Rahul at

Tigerfeathers

for nudging me to share more about digital nomadism. To Elle at

The Elysian

for giving me further motivation and inspiration. And to Linart at

Better Meant

, Michael at

Savvy Cities

, Lavinia at

Lavinia’s Substack

, Kyle at

Kyle’s Substack

, CansaFis at

Thee CansaFis Foote Show

, Georg at

Treeckster's Substack

, Amit at

The Awareness Catalyst

and Priya at

Priya’s Substack

for reading drafts of this. You’re the best!

1. Our way of travelling (ie, with clear needs and expectations) is different to travelling without any expectations at all (AKA backpacking or “vagabonding”). Both are great ways to travel but we’ve found that because we’re working, we’re too reliant on Wi-Fi, quiet spaces, supermarkets and plenty of nearby food and drink options. Without this, nomad life gets too unpredictable, stressful and ultimately unenjoyable.