Return of the
Digital Nomad
Three years. 19 countries. Two surfboards. One baby.
Enough has been written about becoming a digital nomad. All you need is a laptop, an internet connection, a passport and a plan.
It’s true. I’ve worked on beaches from Biarritz to Bangladesh. I’ve dined in restaurants from Seminyak to San Sebastian. I’ve surfed the Baltic Sea and climbed the Himalayas. Being a digital nomad is as close as a normal person gets to being a rock star. You live in places where people go on holiday and find good company in everyone from backpackers to the jet set.
With every new meeting comes the inevitable question, “So when do you go home?”
To which you reply, “This is home. For now.”
“This is home. For now.”
It’s a dream.
But for all the hype, there’s not much out there about the comedown, the aftermath, the funnel that awaits every wanderer when their start-up fails or their clients go quiet.
Or when they simply get tired of living out of a suitcase and not being able to drink the tap water.
Where do all the nomads go when the lights go down?
It happens. Even Tim Ferriss, messiah to the nomadic, has been doing home renovations. But the transition from beaches and hotel rooms to a sedentary lifestyle is not easy, especially when it’s unplanned. I’ll write a practical guide to returning home for those of you who don’t fancy a story.
But for those who do, let’s rewind to 2011, to the night before I departed with a one way ticket to India. Drunk at 3:30am packing a suitcase on the floor of my friend’s lounge room. Thinking I’d actually needed the shit I was packing. How life changes when you learn the art of long-term travel.
I landed with a shock in Mumbai. The howling of dogs kept me awake all night and in the morning I discovered my hotel room looked out over Armageddon.
Another flight and taxi ride found me beneath a canopy of palms during a monsoon deluge in Goa. Electricity crackled up wires tacked to wooden poles. Thunder like I’ve never heard before followed splinters of white light that revealed a small frog sitting on top of my mosquito net. My quest wasn’t so much spiritual as it was to escape and recover. I slept for days. Sometimes in life you don’t realise how tired you are until you stop. And when you finally do stop, you crash and burn. Most of us are timebombs in one way or other.
I’ll spare you the travel monologue but, needless to say, things got better. I rode a scooter along snaking black streets between rice paddies, screaming. I grew a beard. I worked on web projects, wrote stories for magazines and wrote a book. I rode fast on motorbikes and took girls to watch sunsets in secret places. I always find secret places. I drank river water by mistake in Nepal and contracted a parasite that left me hospitalised. Then I nurtured myself back to health in Bali and Europe. I sat in cafés sipping latte, met Kung Fu masters in Vietnam and surfed waves so perfect that they still reel off inside my mind.
Fast forward two and a half years to the island of Tenerife, where I spent a couple of months with a Russian girl I’d met in Indonesia. After two months apart things started off awkward. I used David Deida’s philosophies to help me be assertive against the raw power of her beauty. I needed whatever I could get. She loved my book. We surfed and shared our passion for health food, taking turns preparing elaborate breakfasts, always topped with fresh papaya. We made passionate love and followed the winds and tides.
Then her visa ran out so she left and we had vague plans to meet again in the USA. Unexpectedly — or maybe I didn’t see the signs — my main client went quiet and I found myself scrabbling for four hours work per week. I was offering discounts. I reduced my hourly rate. I was intent on doing this US thing, maybe by greyhound rather than hire car. Fuck, I sold her a dream and now what?
I didn’t save anything during my travels. If there was an opportunity to write a story somewhere intrepid I’d do it, even at a loss. But I never expected this. One of the hardest things in life is to know your own potential yet have nothing to show for it.
I was sitting there lamenting my situation when next thing you know ding deeng ding (that’s the Skype ringtone). It was Miss Russia.
“Darleeng, we have a problem. I haven’t had woman’s day.”
I know I play a risky game but this rattled every part of me. My first instinct was to go and destroy myself in Playa las Americas, the nearby party town. Another part of me wanted to see if I could fly from a ledge off nearby Montana Roja. But, instead, I ran up that mountain and meditated. And there, as the sun dripped gold into the Atlantic, I had a vision. Oh god you squirm, this just got uncomfortable. Yep, it did. Through the silence a young man looked at me, smiled, and said, “Thanks Dad, for everything.”
I ran down that mountain in the darkness, flexing my abs as I passed the cafés, wondering if anyone noticed. I opened the door of my cheap apartment, got on Skype and told her that I would do it. I wanted the baby. We’d need to find a place to live, to make plans, to work out the details.
Hold up. Screech. Yeah, I said I wanted the baby. I chose a birth mother. Why? Because she offered model good looks and a gentle temperament. Did I trust her? Hardly. Did I love her? I was trying hard not to. Did she love me? No, but she couldn’t bear the thought of not having the baby. We’d been physically together for two months. But it felt right.
Finding a way back
Let’s not even get into visas and whatnot. I knew I needed to go home and either find new clients or get a j-word. Two things piss me off:
a) When people tell me, “oh you need to get a [j-word]”; and
b) when people tell me that I’ll be expected to “muck in” — usually at interviews for a j-word
So there I was in Tenerife spending around five hours a day on Skyscanner, searching for flights to anywhere on the European mainland. From a transport hub I could get a cheaper flight to Australia. I couldn’t book ahead as I had only between 50 — 300 dollars in my account at any one time. When I finally had enough cash I booked a last-minute ticket to Bremen, Germany on Ryanair. Landing with my surfboard and a smile I checked into a hotel, ate a cheap meal and went directly to the Irish pub. There I drank six Guinness, scrawled across a wad of serviettes, met some locals, danced in an underground bar, got hit on by a gay hipster, followed by some blonde girls and ate a kebab. Not an unusual night, by my standards.
I woke up fresh but missed my bus to Berlin. The next day I arrived and dropped my stuff at the Airbnb house where I would never actually sleep. I went sightseeing and and was interrogated by riot police after wandering onto the wrong side of a protest. Then I partied hard, knowing it would be my last blast. Met a Brazilian who offered me a night at hers, but politely declined and danced at Berghain until 5pm the next day. Met a cool group of locals who showed me the way back to Kruzberg. Later I caught a train to Prague, made some more friends and got wrecked. A haze of plane food and movies later and I descended over the red rooves of Sydney, in more than one piece. Probably the emptiest thing about travel is that you drop down into other people’s worlds and observe them like curiosities. If you don’t like the place you get to leave. They don’t.
In Sydney I had one last chance to get obliterated with friends before my Russian beauty arrived and my new life began. I picked her up from the airport and it was awkward for a moment but our secret coalesced like the warmth of springtime Sydney, to bring us together.
We flew to New Zealand and I got a j-word. Fuck. Yep, a 9-5. I interviewed in skinny jeans because I had nothing else but fast talk to wear. Those first days hurt me in ways I couldn’t believe. Like reverse cold turkey. Like being dipped directly into a cauldron of everything I dislike in the world. KPIs, support tickets, pretending to look busy, then being too busy to pretend.
My darling grew bigger, a bud unfolding inside of her. I’ll never forget how beautiful she was. I’d come home in the heat of summer and she’d be waiting for me in her bikini on our bed on the 13th floor. The flat would be sweltering and was hardly big enough to find a place for our new singing and dancing food blender. I wanted health for her and my baby. I spent all of my money on chia seeds, cacao nibs, organic fruit and vegetables. We made smoothies with nutrient-rich green powder and LSA. I was so afraid. I had cold sweats sometimes. We went on a holiday and for periods I couldn’t speak because my mind was swimming in what ifs and what did she really do. My jealous side. People said it would all vanish and they were right.
Then I went from contract to permanent staff and had to deal with alternate carrot dangling and whip management. Grinding corporate structures designed to keep progress in check. Bought better cheap trousers, medium-priced shirts. New shoes. Got a car. Went on a road trip. Surfed beaches with silica-white sand and water so clear you’d see a shark before it saw you. Came back to work and dealt with a shitstorm of politics and projects and proving my worth.
We bought things and nested and she blossomed and the thought of it brings me to tears. How she cared for me. Woke up early every day to make me superfood breakfasts, always topped with fresh papaya. She spent all day working on a cookbook which is finally almost ready for publication. It’s taken so long because I’ve realised I’m a bad editor or maybe I’m lazy. Or maybe just tired.
I’ll never forget how we’d put our hands on her belly and feel the tap tap tap, then jabs that poked all the way out. Then the day came. A week and a half past due date and contractions started. The surf was good and she said we should go to the beach. I got a few waves. By 9pm she was hunched over, sitting on the floor beside the bed, saying she’d have an epidural, no matter what. The midwife stalled us until 3am and when we got to hospital she was already 10cm dilated. She looked so beautiful against the white sheets and grey hospital walls, hair crashing in blonde waves down her shoulders and back. Only her face, tanned and in agony, could look so beautiful under strip lighting.
We were transferred to the birthing pool and, not long after, what looked like a tuft of hair burst from her, then the rest. A purple baby sat on her shoulder looking at me as the pool filled with blood. I ripped off my shirt and held the baby tight against my chest. Later at the birth care centre my darling and I lay down and sobbed into each others faces. I told her I loved her for the second time (the first she never replied) and she told me she loved me too. And we cried again, then the baby wailed through the night.
The next day our baby daughter opened her eyes properly. I’ll never forget that moment, for it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Dark blue eyes beneath wispy long lashes. Empty, yet knowing of everything. I welcomed her and said I know she’s from somewhere else and that she’s safe here and to take her time and that I’ll do everything I can to make her transition comfortable. I’ve betrayed her already, for the wailing puts me on edge sometimes, but I love her more than life itself. And now she is 12 weeks old and smiles and says “agoo” and smirks when I talk about silly things or stick my tongue out or show her ducky or froggy. She’s already a little girl and I’ll do anything for her smile.
And Miss Russia? She’s the most natural mother. She exudes lightness. The thought of us not being together makes me well up, right now as I type this. The thought of us dying one day and me not seeing her ever again.
Death and sleeping
I am not afraid of death. I learnt so much on my travels, through my teachers and guides. I know that we are just leaves on a tree and that when we die the tree remains. And the tree is not even the human species, it is life itself. And life is not just what we consider to be biological life, but the whole damn thing. The fabric of the universe is life and we experience a thin band within the spectrum of our fragile consciousness. Yet I weep for us not to be physically close someday. Not to feel her near. Not to see our baby’s smile. Not to hold hands or watch her watch me try a new recipe. Or see her face when I bring home a surprise. I always bring surprises.
For isn’t that all life is? A kaleidoscope of surprises. Yet we try to disassemble the kaleidoscope and give the component parts names and categories and define their functions. Then when they sneak up behind us in some brilliant new form we can’t understand why it all has to change. So it’s futile to be sentimental. I should just go and climb into bed beside her now. Put a hand on her side and lie awake, waiting for the baby to scream for her next feed. Wonder how many times I’ll get woken up before having to go to work tomorrow for another shitstorm of needing to validate my performance to assess whether I really do need an assistant.
But I play a smart game and have some tricks up my sleeve. Make myself indispensable. Keep personal projects ticking over. Write a post for Medium. I’ve been meaning to for some time now.
Not sure what it all means or the purpose, but someone, somewhere out there will face this dilemma too. It’s not easy coming back from being a digital nomad. But I want to let you know: it’s all going to be fine.
Footnote: I’m not sure who the young man that I saw during meditation is. Perhaps he’s still in the ether, waiting for his turn to choose us as parents.
