Wherever the WiFi Leads You: What’s it Really Like to be a Digital Nomad?

Would you believe me if I told you the first digital nomad was travelling and working as long ago as the early 80s? We might think of it as a relatively recent phenomenon: governments have recently started to offer digital nomad visas to attract young professionals to their shores, but traditional media outlets are still regularly publishing hand-wringing articles arguing the popularity of remote work proves that young people these days have no work ethic. But, it turns out, creatives with wanderlust have been finding ways to get their travel kicks without sacrificing their source of income for decades now.

Steven K. Roberts was a journalist and traveller who pioneered the digital nomad lifestyle. Between 1983 and 1991 he cycled around the USA on a computerised, recumbent bicycle decked out with a radio and satellite equipment which gave him access to email and a paging system. He travelled over 10,000 miles as a “high-tech nomad”, talking and typing during the day and setting up camp each night.

As someone who could be called a digital nomad myself, some of my best memories are from the six-odd months I spent travelling solo and writing personal essays about the experience for a website. I emailed in stories from hostels in Brazil, a night bus in Chile, and a trailer park in Peru where I was living for free in exchange for scrubbing toilets. We may no longer have to jerry-rig a robo-bike to wire in our articles, but the fundamental needs of the digital nomad aren’t all that different from 40 years ago. I wouldn’t have my current career and life without three things: 1) a laptop, 2) a wifi connection, and 3) getting my EU residency application approved by the skin of my teeth just days before Brexit went into effect.

I’ve always been drawn to stories of the different ways people have figured out how to work and explore new countries and cultures at the same time. Ege is a graphic designer from Izmir who has lived in seven countries, each for more than two years at a time. “I have lived and worked in cities including Berlin, Stockholm, Barcelona, and Florence,” he says. “This is definitely thanks to the digital age, which perhaps allows me to label myself as a digital nomad.” Without the tech that makes it possible, many of us would never have dreamed of working from home, let alone from a different city or country.

The rising number of people who want to live and work in unconventional ways, away from both offices and their support systems of friends and family, has created a demand for spaces that meet all these needs at once. Hybrid places like Mason & Fifth buildings, which offer accommodation, coworking, creative studios, and socialising, are designed for this exact purpose. They foster community and social connection, while giving guests and visitors enough breathing room to catch their breath and get their heads down into some work.

Ege is a resident of Mason & Fifth, Bermondsey. He’s always looking to live and work in places which offer him both a comfortable office space to work from and the chance to form connections with people. “I have always preferred living with others and being part of communities. I have been part of communities such as K9 in Stockholm and Happy Pigeons in Berlin.” Beyond somewhere to lay your head at night, these hybrid spaces allow you to form fast connections and put down roots in a new and unfamiliar place quickly. “Mason & Fifth has greatly assisted me in establishing my life here,” Ege says, “especially since I moved to London less than a year ago. I stay in a beautiful, well-located building in Bermondsey, filled with lovely people.”

Dominic is a Senior Project Manager and co-founder of a creative agency based in Cyprus, REM Studios. He’s a former resident of Mason & Fifth, Primrose Hill, and has previously spent years bouncing from one place to the next while working remotely with his partner. “When we were travelling a lot, we made an effort to stay sane by staying in places that felt a bit like home and had a community feel to them” he says: When you’re spending a lot of time on the go, your sense of belonging shifts; feeling ‘at home’ becomes less about having your own private space and more about the community around you.

“The people who stay at M&F are people like us,” Dominic says. “The people we met around the house gravitated to the same things we do, and received all the same “benefits” as us: the community, the staff, the well-thought-out rooms. It was nice to instantly feel like you’ve made friends.” Even though they’re now ready to move somewhere more permanent, Dominic and his partner enjoyed their experience at the Primrose Hill building so much that they’re “chasing the feeling” of still living there by moving to a flat just around the corner: “we’re now part of the furniture and we plan on having a revolving door of friends and family at M&F so we can continue to enjoy the community there.”

The digital nomad lifestyle often appeals to people who are drawn to a slower form of travel. Rather than speeding through dozens of countries in a few months, cramming as much sightseeing and activity into each day as possible, slow travellers want to spend long periods of time in one place – sometimes so long it looks less like ‘travel’ and more like ‘moving in.’ “I like to stay in each location for a long time, ideally more than a year or two,” Ege says. “I truly enjoy learning about the local culture and customs, immersing myself in the city, and travelling in ways that tourists often don’t have time for.”

It’s less about travel as an isolated experience – a holiday that takes you away from your ‘real life’ for a week or two – and more about structuring your career and living arrangements in a way that allows for adventure and novelty to be built into every day. And it might seem obvious, but if you want to spend a long time living or travelling in a new place, most people will need to find a way to support themselves while they’re at it.

Dominic made the choice to spend a few years living as a digital nomad in response to burnout. “I made the firm decision to leave the UK, head to Cyprus, start my business, and travel while working.” He says the decision enabled him to recoup from burnout while “keeping the creative juices flowing.” For Ege, the best part about being a digital nomad is exploring new locations and working in a wide variety of environments while travelling. “When you live in a community for an extended time,” he says, “you begin to form deeper connections that are hard to establish when you’re just travelling through various locations.”

As someone who has now spent the majority of my adulthood living and working abroad, my life would look completely different without the flexibility technology and remote work allows me. At 23, I was able to move to Spain on a whim with no job and no Spanish skills to speak of, and somehow I’ve made it seven years without looking back once. I knew I wanted to write for a living, and I knew from experience that I did my best work when I was allowed to create my own schedule and switch up my working environment regularly. I’ve always fed off the energy of new places, cultures, and scenery, and I could never imagine trying to write creatively while stuck in the same office day-in-day out. Since landing my first full-time remote job in 2018, I’ve  been lucky enough to work from at least 10 cities and towns all over Spain and in multiple European countries. I might have been naive in how blindly I ran headfirst into this lifestyle without a plan, but my instincts weren’t wrong. It turns out it is possible to travel regularly, work from far-flung places, and impulsively move to a new country – you just have to build the worklife and community to support it.