Being a digital nomad is hard, but certainly worth it. That being said, there are a lot of downsides to being a digital nomad. The biggest area of your life that being a digital nomad might affect are your relationships. When you move abroad, you leave behind a lot. Current events won’t mean as much. You might find yourself disconnected from your local culture. This can be hard for both you and your friends and family. This is why I wanted to touch on one of the most weird and annoying downsides of being a digital nomad: other people’s anger.
When I started this blog, everybody around me was weird at best. People didn’t really understand what I was doing, and I had a long road before reaching 100 posts. In hindsight, this makes no sense. Blogging is one of the most guaranteed businesses on planet Earth. If you write a lot of high-quality content, you’re almost bound to get traffic and money. Sure, some blogs do fail. They don’t get the traffic they need, or the content sucks. But this is pretty avoidable if you work the right way. You can get good at writing by either diving headfirst into a blog, publishing 200 posts without looking at anything besides examples in your niche, or you can write other things until people say that you’re good at writing. It’s pretty simple. Just takes a bit of discipline. And yet people act as though blogging is a massive risk. Doesn’t make a ton of sense when you think about it, which means this line of thinking is probably derived from anger.
When you start finding some success as a digital nomad, people will become hostile. They’ll accuse you of running away from home, of scamming people, or other nefarious things. Perhaps it’s because I’m running my own business from a poor country, but that’s been my experience. This has even happened with strangers.
Regardless of why it happens, rage directed towards digital nomads is real, and a lot of people who move overseas end up experiencing it. I’ve seen people online speculate that it comes from a mix of grief, jealousy, and doubt. This is understandable, especially when somebody moves to a poor country. But you have to press onward. The key to being a digital nomad, or any type of entrepreneur, is knowing your industry. Are you hitting the proper benchmarks, considering the work you’ve done? Make sure you are, and you should be ok. It can be a long, lonely road to financial freedom depending on the country in which you live. Where I’m from, it’s poor and dangerous. I don’t simply have the privilege of hanging out with the average person. Their lives are too precarious, and I actually have something to lose. Sounds cold, but it’s the truth.
People who take other routes towards becoming digital nomads might find their lives become lonely in other ways. Their friends might see them as people who only are looking for fun, or an easy life. Other friends might not appreciate how focused they are and might start to hate on them from the sidelines. Either way, it can be a lonely road to success if you’re looking to be a digital entrepreneur. It’s not easy, but you’re still almost certainly making the correct decision. The more you learn and the longer you live overseas, the clearer that becomes. Things should be ok for you, as long as you work hard and make sure to foster the right relationships.
I haven’t really figured out a great way of keeping in touch with people from back home. On one hand, I do miss a few of them, but on the other hand I can’t upend my life. I’ve done a lot of work to get where I am, and there’s even more to get done. I can’t be distracted for the next few years. It’s the difference between ending up in the upper middle class and experiencing poverty, actually. I honestly think I’ll have to just deal with it later. It’s my life and I’m the only one who can push things forward. I’m not sure if I’m going to get “rich”, but I would like to get comfortable before I worry about what’s changed back “home”. It’s been a really long time since I’ve lived in the US or Canada either way.
I’m not really sure how to close this article. I just wanted to warn people who are into online business, or are interested in moving overseas, about one of the biggest annoyances you might experience while executing your plan and making things happen. It will definitely affect your friendships. But life is what you make of it. There’s simply no point in sitting back and letting life pass you by. Don’t purposefully burn any bridges, but go for what you in life.
Thanks for paying attention.
