How I Cultivated The Digital Nomad Lifestyle From The Comfort Of My Home

How To Live Like A Nomad Even If You Work Full-Time Or Have A Family

Image created using Midjourny by Landon Poburan

The laptop lifestyle is mesmerizing.

It captures your attention as you scroll through Instagram.

People working from beach clubs in Bali, Thailand, and Mexico. Sipping green juice and cold brew with their feet in the sand.

This life was the deciding factor in the first $2,000 course I bought, and the photos were pinned on my vision board.

Years later these lifestyle selfies are still used to market online business courses, especially to those who feel chained to a 9-to-5. And it’s an easy sell to the person scrolling IG counting down the seconds until they can leave work.

But…

What if there was a way to engineer the digital nomad lifestyle?

A way that didn’t require moving or even a career change—unless that’s what you want.

The reality is that not everyone can pack up their lives into a storage locker and set out to Bali, and many who have, found themselves craving stability after years of being nomadic, including myself.

I made an unsettling realization after living nomadically for almost 2 years.

All I wanted was a bookshelf.

I still remember texting my wife while living in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico.

After nomadding through the United States, Mexico, and Bali I found myself craving routine. I wanted a place for my things and I desperately wanted an actual vacation.

I know this sounds a little crazy…

My friends and family didn’t understand, so it’s Ok if you don’t either ;-)

Living out of a suitcase was wearing me down. Switching AirBnbs, unreliable Wifi, and questionable drinking water lose their novelty after 2 years.

Except two things stood out.

First, I was craving a place for my things. A bookshelf. A desk. A place to put a stack of notebooks. A home for my sticky notes. A whiteboard—my things.

Second, I was craving a vacation. I used to think digital nomads were on vacation every day, but the novelty quickly faded, and then it was just work—somewhere hotter.

That’s when I started to dig into what I truly wanted.

The things I thought the digital nomad lifestyle was going to give me.

And once I uncovered this?

I realized that I didn’t need to spend $100/Day at beach clubs or take calls at 3 am to get it—it could be cultivated at home.

Living nomadically at home.

It’s a philosophy. A way of life.

Being a digital nomad is held within your heart.

While the social feeds portray it as beach clubs and foam parties, Nomad List shows some of the most popular destinations aren’t even on a beach.

My experience taught me that what I sought was autonomy.

I wanted to be location-independent, work remotely, and have control over my working hours. I wanted to experience the beauty of the world through travel. I wanted to watch the sunrise on the beach. Take a walk along the beach in the afternoon.

For me, the words that encompass it best is choice.

The truth behind the digital nomad lifestyle is that my expectations didn’t meet reality. A quick search on TikTok will leave you laughing out loud at how the highlight reel is curated to skew the truth.

The places I visited were beautiful.

Except, I wish I could have actually experienced them.

I’d love to go back to Bali—for a vacation—because what I rarely tell people is that I didn’t enjoy my time there.

The food was amazing and the people were some of the kindest I’ve ever met. But none of our Airbnbs had working WiFi, we had to take calls at 3 am and 10 pm, and there wasn’t a gym nearby so I was unable to workout.

The dopamine would flood throughout my body as the humid air embraced my body then quickly faded as routine set in and I yearned for the luxuries of home.

It left me halfway happy, and to be honest, feeling guilty. Here I was in these beautiful locations except my days were spent working—and not experiencing them.

I discovered we could cultivate the nomad lifestyle at home.

We had a blank slate.

We were living in Mexico, our ‘home’ was inside a storage locker back in Canada, and we had serious considerations to make as we plotted our next move.

We asked ourselves…

“What if we lived a life we didn’t feel like we needed to escape.”

It had been around 5 years since we’d been in a single location for over 12 months and this time provided valuable insights into what we valued within our lives. It was time to design a life around these values.

This became a journey of personal and professional changes.

We eventually downsized and moved to Vancouver Island putting us near the ocean, nature, and the warmest city in Canada.

We sat down and reviewed our finances creating a budget that allowed us to designate a percentage of our income for travel and experiences.

We settled in a city that was so walkable it didn’t require a car allowing us to cultivate another value of the nomad lifestyle we loved—walkability.

Slowly, these minor shifts began to build a life we thoroughly enjoyed.

I began making changes in my business as well. Setting boundaries around phone calls, working on alternative revenue streams like digital products, and building a personal brand that provided me with more of the professional autonomy I craved.

These changes allowed us to pull in the elements of the nomadic life we loved while capturing much of what it left us desiring.

It allowed my wife the confidence and clarity to make a large career change, going back to school. Something she may not have been able to do while living abroad. Another micro adjustment to improve our quality of life.

Here’s the thing.

I have friends who enjoy being a nomad. That might be you, too.

Except I have even more who thought they wanted to be a nomad and realized, just like me, they craved a home base, structure, and routine but wanted the choice and autonomy that lifestyle provided.

But, we have to acknowledge that not everyone has the privilege to be nomadic, regardless of how aligned it might be.

Whether we can’t or have found it wasn’t for us, we can cultivate the philosophy of a nomadic heart at home.

We must first explore what our values are. What freedom, choice, and autonomy mean to us—then find or seek accommodations and the environment that can provide it.

What do we value personally and how can we begin to cultivate this inside our day-to-day lives? This can take some time, maybe even years, to discover. That’s Ok. It’s about the intentionality of making incremental improvements.

My journey involved numerous heart-to-heart and teary-eyed conversations with my wife. But we began making lists of the things we valued and the environment we desired to live in. While we don’t have them all—like the “perfect apartment” (yet) we’ve created many like living in a warmer city, having high walkability scores, and being close to the ocean. As the months and years progress we will keep moving in the right direction and also acknowledging that these things can evolve as we do.

What autonomy do you seek professionally? And what is realistic within your existing circumstances? These are incredibly unique to each individual person but I don’t think that changes the fact that we can all explore what we value and explore ways in which we can bring it into existence.

I run my own business which affords me location freedom but I was still bound to things that felt constricting. I’ve ended contracts, turned down work, and shifted revenue sources (a multi-year process) as I’ve created new boundaries that provide me more freedom with my schedule and working hours.

Not everyone has the same situation but we can still explore positive changes. Can we negotiate a hybrid work-from-home environment in our job? Even 1 day a week? Seeking location independence. Can we freelance, build a side hustle, or work for ourselves—or work towards working for ourselves?

Maybe there are alternative jobs in better alignment or other boundaries or accommodations we can make/set that improve our working hours or overall quality of life.

And on a bigger note, do we feel fulfilled with what we’re doing? Do we feel like what we’re doing is expanding on contracting us?

My wife turned in her life as a successful entrepreneur as she no longer felt fulfilled and felt called to bigger work. She’s currently finishing her Master’s in Psychology and will be starting a new chapter in her life.

One of the big mindset shifts for us was realizing we valued experiences—domestically and abroad—and wanted to be fully present in those experiences rather than thinking about work constantly like we did while working nomadically.

For us, we downsized to decrease our living expenses and began budgeting for experiences, to allow ourselves the ability to travel and taste new cultures. I feel that when we really sit with it, there is always something we can do to make change while often being scary like going back to school, downsizing, or moving to a new city—if it’s expansive to your quality of life it could be one step to embracing the nomadic philosophy of life.

Embracing a new mindset.

It took me years to uncover why I became a nomad.

It wasn’t just a desire to feel my toes in the sand, instead, I was running away from unhappiness, seeking external validation, and chasing cheap dopamine.

Through self-exploration, I was able to begin making positive progress in these areas. And in the years since, I started finding ways to pull in the elements of the nomadic life that I enjoyed, while leaving the rest behind.

These aren’t changes that happened overnight for me.

But I found my way to a life and career that I love and provides me with autonomy.

While I acknowledge this journey will be different for everyone I think there’s a level of agency we have who be able to make incremental improvements to cultivate this as a philosophy for living a life we love.

Landon

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