I just came across this really interesting thread on Hacker News, talking about the ups, downs, and tricks of digital nomadism.

Here are some excerpts:

I’ve done it from 2013-2016, on and off.

What many people do is travel then think “this is it, I want to do this forever”, then travel, isolate themselves from their home communities, live in cheap places, make some money, share cocktail by the pool photos on Instagram with a hashtag #nomadlife and then get clinically depressed. Then they return to their home countries after 3 years, but they’ve lost touch with their old communities. And everything is expensive. And it’s cold. Now they’re worse off than before they left! That’s not the way to go.

The issue is that most people present the digital nomad lifestyle it as a black and white thing. You’re either a 9 to 5 wage slave who hasn’t escaped the system yet, OR you’re a “broken-free” digital nomad and then you have to give up your home life completely, keep moving around from place to place for years and it’ll supposedly be awesome. I did it, and it was fun for about a year until it got VERY tiring.

It shouldn’t be black and white. Digital nomad stuff should show us that we can have more freedom in terms of location. That means, deciding “I want to live/work in X for the next 3 months”. And going for it. Then coming back home. If you live in a cold place, you might want to skip the winter altogether. If you have a particular hobby you’d like to immerse yourself in, move to the place in the world where you can do that (like tango in South America or learn about sushi in Japan) for a few weeks. Then go back.

The feeling of being in a strange place is amazing. New smells, tastes, people etc. That’s why travel i ...

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