Stop Hating Digital Nomads…we aren’t the enemy
Digital Nomads. Are we all just entitled, arrogant millennials?
I am aware that the term ‘digital nomad’ means different things to different people. For some the term is indicative of a decision to free yourself from a more static environment and travel to new places whilst you work. It’s made glamorous by the countless pictures on Instagram and Facebook, of people working from a beach, or a quirky cafe. Pictures are perfectly composed to show the laptop, the coffee and maybe even…an acai bowl.
For others, it’s a term that invites their sneers, and their derision. Naysayers who claim that such a life is unattainable and that as a community we don’t tell the truth about the helping hand we must have had in order to get to a point where we’re able to take pictures of our breakfasts next to our laptops. Others still, have aligned the term with “something only privileged white men get to do”.
Allow me to paint a more…realistic picture.
The Real Truth of it.
I became a digital nomad by accident. Or rather, I never set out to secure this lifestyle for myself. Sure, I’d heard of remote working, and I knew that being able to work from anywhere was possible. But for all my university education and my aspirations of being an HR professional, I was broke, working part time for a youth charity and working part time in a supermarket to make ends meet.
The ends were not meeting. I am still to this day, in debt. I like to call myself “The Worst Digital Nomad Ever” from time to time. In answer to articles I’ve seen about the ‘colour’ of digital nomads, I’m a black female as well. There’s no ‘white privilege’ to fall back on here.
I’m an affront to the usual stereotype. I am terrible at using social media. Couldn’t put an Instagram story together for the life of me. I upload to Facebook sometimes. I’ve never had a Twitter account. I am a chubby human being who is exceedingly fond of a good pie. Exercise is not my forte. I’ve never tried…yoga.
Pictures of acai bowls make me laugh and I can tell you for free, that if you see a picture of me on the beach with my laptop, it was taken just before I ran up that same beach screaming because some kind of scary creature touched my foot.
I have a job now working for a global coliving community. Quite frequently I live in a different location for a month with a group of people just like me. Graphic designers, writers, software developers, university lecturers, entrepreneurs. I got said job because out of the blue, an old friend walked back into my life and asked me to write a few blog posts. The few blog posts turned into blog management, marketing and admin tasks, until eventually I became full time.
Before you freak out that I’ve landed on my feet and proved privilege yet again, take a deep breath and drink some tea. He knew I enjoyed writing from our university days when I used to publish articles about things like sheer tights for darker skin tones…Don’t ask.
Even when I abandoned my dream of becoming a writer in favour of climbing the graduate ladder, he hadn’t abandoned it.
At that point in my life, I was already thinking “There must be more out there for me than working on a till”. I don’t look down on people that do that job by any means, but it wasn’t where I had envisioned myself y’know? I certainly wanted more than that. I didn’t know where this would lead, but here we are.
There wasn’t a high flying job before that had given me a savings buffer to live off in case things were slow. There wasn’t a transformation of an existing career. I have yet to make it to payday without crying with relief. I’m just trying to make it like everyone else, no foul play in sight.
Social Media Distortion
Like with all things, social media doesn’t EVER paint the full picture or give us the full spectrum of the human experience. That is true of every aspect of life, right down to your own friends announcing that they’ve been together 8 years only to split up two weeks later.
You’re there thinking everything is fine and guess what? It was all a facade. They’d actually hated each other 8 months before that post and yet, you believed on the basis of their anniversary announcement that they were happy.
What that means is that I write this article and let you know, that despite the douchebaggy photos online, that make you feel some kind of way about this elusive, dodgy group of people, the digital nomads I spend time with, are conscientious, inspiring, warm, inclusive and brilliant.
We aren’t the enemy.
We work hard. We want to find love like the rest of the planet. We care about our impact on the environment. We care about the fact that our presence can cause problems for the local community and are open to solutions to make this balance right. We are respectful of cultures. We do believe in paying tax — we are not as well versed in tax avoidance as some of you may believe. We would love to be contributing to the places where we stay like the other residents, and have a stake in improving the places where we feel most at home.
We don’t all ‘do what we love’. We work towards it, but for most of us we settle for doing what we’re good at until such a time as transitioning to something more agreeable. We hustle for our next contract, we don’t all party on yachts. Highly cramped and overrated. Particularly if you can’t swim.
Over-tourism rubs everybody up the wrong way, but it is not in our power to regulate it. I mean, yes we could choose not to travel there. But when we go to quieter areas and share how much fun we had online, the whole process starts again. We can’t win on either front. Are we now saying that all travel is bad?
We group together in particular places, because we are human beings with a common interest and a common need to have people around us who understand this life we’ve chosen to live.
It’s not an exclusive club with a finite number of memberships. All are welcome here. Bring your wit and a laptop.
The Inevitability of Remote Work and Digital Nomadism.
Digital nomads are the forerunners of a reality that is coming whether you like it or not. At the moment, location independence is a choice. We have gotten jobs or created businesses that allow us to work and move for the pleasure of it. But with remote work on the increase and house prices on the rise in cities all over the world, people are already being displaced. Even the areas outside major cities are becoming unaffordable for people with normal, “regular” jobs, so what is the answer going to be?
For some, it’ll have to be getting a job in London that allows you to live in a small, sleepy town in Scotland so that you don’t have the displeasure of spending two thirds of your salary trying to have four walls around your person.
It’s all well and good to blame digital nomads for rising house prices; let me assure you they were rising before being a digital nomad was a ‘thing’. It was already expensive to live in places like London and Sydney and New York BEFORE Airbnb even existed. Even now when we take our gaze off small areas right in the heart of a city, Airbnb actually has a marginal impact on house prices in the area.
People stay in these already overpriced cities whilst waiting for the infrastructure that will allow you to earn an inner city salary without the 2 hour commute or the sky high rent. Once it becomes common knowledge that it’s more lucrative for our employers to leave us all at home in our pyjamas at least a few days every week, it’s not too far-fetched to imagine a reality where a lot of us will be forced to join the remote work party. Customer service agent. You can do that at home. Telesales. Do that at home.
All of you in favour of starting loungewear businesses…now’s the time.
So…Let’s get real and point the finger at the people who are responsible for regulating house prices and controlling the impact of visitors within their jurisdiction. We should all be working together to find a solution seeing as over tourism affects major cities the world over. Heck, a lot of why digital nomads move on from their hometowns is because they can’t afford to live there either!
I do get it though. We’re easy to ridicule right now as the minority; we’re a sitting duck of a target with our seemingly carefree lifestyles.
“Stupid, bloody nomads with their morning green juice and their obsession with Indonesian islands!”
I admit that perhaps many of us have done ourselves a disservice being so flippant with the presentation of how we live. But just take a look. The only difference between us and all the suspicious people who think we’re freeloaders, is that we’ve chosen to get the early train.
You might hate the thought, but I don’t think you are going to be far behind us.
So give us a break.
