nomad burnout

I’m tired of nomading. I’ve spent the past ~3 years almost spending every 3-4 months in a different city, sometimes across continents (mostly repeat cities, including my hometown, but still).

I did this majorly because I wasn’t born in one of the main hubs for my topics of interest and career, and I’m “locked out” of the 2-3 top ones because I don’t have a UK or US passport. So I have to visit sparingly enough to not have issues, but frequently enough to “be part of the conversation” and engage with some of the only communities of people I have found in the world who share my vision, mission and worldview.

This also applies to pop-up cities, which are some of the only pockets where I have found a portion of the types of communities you find in US/UK.

Nomading for a bit can be great, especially across such focused/topical communities, and can unlock opportunities for personal and professional growth you wouldn’t even get a sniff of otherwise.

I don’t fully regret having moved around so much, because now I have a solid international network of friends spread out across the globe, so I feel like I can easily find support and communities almost anywhere I go. I know what’s happening “everywhere”.

But the toll on my focus and myself, which obviously impact my personal/professional outcomes, has been enormous.

You can get the best of that type of nomading if you have the resources to very comfortably afford all the flights, rent, transport, events, and other CoL costs, and a cushy remainder for when things go wrong, or for last minute changes (both quite frequent).

But if you don’t, or you are in a more exploratory stage of your career where you need to maximize or preserve your runway, then you will be putting yourself through a permanent state of “survival mode”.

You will tell yourself that it’s okay, that you can do it, you’re strong, resilient to stress, that this is just a test and that it’s temporary. And maybe you will (like I did), maybe you will push through and figure things out by being very scrappy.

But this mode of living gets in the way of mastering a craft, of diving deep into anything, of “giving it your all”, because your attention will be inevitably divided, and frequently diverted into critical but mundane things, that you will solve in one place and then have to deal with again in a few months when switching places again.

The cost of not having a stable homebase will permeate every dimension of your life. Consider deeply how compatible the lifestyle is with your career goals, and make sure to have a solid financial plan. Also account for more than you initially expect.

My advice: “nomad, but responsibly”