I debated typing up this post for a while. I am an advocate for finding the positive in life always, but also an advocate for humanity. I want to always find the joy and see the cup half full, but let’s be real… sometimes shitty things happen in life. Life throws you for a curve ball and you don’t know how to get back up.
After Andrew and I made it a mission in life to see the world, but not just to see the world, to live a life of Indefinite Travel. Trips with no end, trips that had a one way ticket and a whole lot of heart behind them. We made the decision that we would bring a business along with us, let me tell you this… Building a business is the most wild self development journey of them all.
I dove into personal development, and became obsessed with optimizing your life. So much so that I became a certified life coach, and have helped hundreds of women all around the globe unlock their full potential and live a life on purpose.
After studying happiness for years, here are the two things I know for sure:
- The deepest joy doesn’t come from only experiencing positivity, in fact the most wild joy I’ve experienced has come from experiencing the depths of contrast of happiness.
= - No one else’s happiness will fit you. No matter how hard you try to fit your life into someone else’s picture, it will never feel right. And this is a growing problem I see with the rise of social media. You see these perfectly crafted lives on a screen, and you forget that the perfectly crafted square is just a small snapshot. You don’t know what the before or after of the shot amounted to.
But this isn’t a post against social media, in fact, I don’t think social media is the problem. I think it’s our own boundaries and self awareness… but I digress, another post for another time.
In anything you do, no matter how good, great, or extraordinary there will be roadbumps and trials to face.
Sometimes knowing you’re not alone in it is the best healing.
So if you’re going through a road bump on your journey, I hope you can find some solace in this…
Here are 4 downsides of the digital nomad life:
1. Community
This was the hardest pull for me planning a second Indefinite trip, don’t get me wrong we’ve met some AWESOME people on the road. It’s one of my favorite aspects of travel, meeting new friends around the globe.
But the thing about the digital nomad life, is that people are always on the go. So just as soon as you let a new friend in, they are on the road again. Sometimes you get crazy lucky and find a friend or group that you can travel with for an extended period of time, like we did in Thailand, but more often than not it’s a quick adventure and then goodbye.
Having community in your life has so many benefits, so when we moved back to a home base for a bit and cultivated an amazing community, that was definitely one of the hardest things for me to choose to leave behind.
Not only do you find this downside in traveling the globe, but in working as your own boss which don’t get me wrong has a million benefits, but you don’t get that connection like you do in a job and it can be a downside.
2. Family emergencies are hard enough…
It’s hard enough to deal with unexpected family emergencies and loss, but when you are abroad it adds an extra barrier and processing to this.
We’ve experienced this twice now in different capacities and it definitely made us rethink this lifestyle.
I lost my big brother in March of 2018, I can still remember when I got the first text from my mom about things getting bad. I was sitting on a rooftop in Thailand and I read “Kirk has a new tumor on his spine.” The rush of emotions that came through was intense. And dealing with the death uprooted our entire plan.
Andrew lost his grandpa when we were in Italy 2019. It kind of stops you in your tracks and makes you wonder if you’re doing life right.
When his grandpa passed it was such an interesting experience… First of all we were in Italy, some of Andrew’s fondest memories were stories his grandpa told about traveling in Italy. And secondly we had a tour that day, but both slept in, which we never do. If we had left any earlier we would have missed the call that he had passed.
Family emergencies as a digital nomad make you think about your priorities and if they are truly aligned where you’d like them.
People have asked us, doesn’t the fear of losing someone else stop you from traveling… Ultimately we choose this travel life again and again, and we do it knowing we have new angels on our wings every trip.
3 No roots
This is one of those wins and downs when you get down to it.
Not having a homebase is an incredibly freeing experience. It is the ultimate life outside your comfort zone. It wasn’t until I lost my big brother that the wild life of travel felt like too much. I felt like I needed grounded space to process a loss like this. My brother was inspiration for my travel, he was someone that understood this crazy lifestyle, and just like that he was gone.
No longer here to share stories, or spread stories to his little girls.
I needed a place to feel safe, I needed some roots.
I’ve learned through this that freedom can be both rooted and wild. I am so in love with every side of this freedom lifestyle.
4. Can be exhausting
Traveling is (clearly) one of my favorite things on earth. But bouncing from place to place, time zone to time can really weigh down on you.
This is what made us change from seeing EVERYTHING, to really immersing ourselves in one culture for a longer period of time.
The digital nomad life looks easy upon quick inspection but it takes work to sustain it, and you have to find your own travel flow.
When were not playing were business building, it’s hard to shut off your brain in this kind of lifestyle. You have to intentionally create space.
All in all…
The truth about it all, these things were hard, some harder than others, some of the hardest experiences of our lives… But the real truth is, we had to stretch ourselves to think of these 4 downsides of the digital nomad lifestyle and could think of 100+ upsides.
This is your once in a lifetime reality, any path you take will have ups and downs. Know you are not alone, you are never alone in your bumps. Learn to listen to yourself because you are your best guide in life. And always follow what is right to you, your happiness will ripple out to the world.
“It’s not death that most people are afraid of, it’s getting to the end of life only to realize you never truly lived.”
– Prince EA
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