Digital Nomadism is sold to us as the “dream”.
We are told we are buying “freedom”.
But here’s my honest take after living this life for over 2 years:
In reality, prolonged nomadism is often social suicide.
We are trading deep connection for visual novelty.
We are trading intimacy for dopamine.
Here is the brutal audit of what actually happens when you leave everyone you love behind.
1. The Erasure of Relevance
You think you can maintain friendships via WhatsApp? You are delusional. Friendship is built onproximity and shared context.
It is built on showing up for the boring Tuesdays, and exciting Saturdays.
When you leave, you don’t just miss out on events. You become irrelevant.z
You turn into a content creator for your friends, not a participant in their lives.
They stop updating you.
You are being archived.
2. Social Fast Food (The Atrophy)
You may meet 30+ people a month. And you have the same script:
“Where are you from?” “How long are you here?” “What do you do?”
It is a script. It is robotic.
You are binge-eating empty calories of human interaction.
You feel full because you are talking to people all day, but you are starving for nutrition.
You haven’t had a conversation that didn’t involve a travel tip in six months.
It is social atrophy disguised as popularity.
3. Zero Redundancy (The Safety Net)
In engineering, redundancy saves systems from catastrophic failure.
If Engine A fails, Engine B can take over.
As a nomad, you have zero redundancy. It’s only youu
If you break your leg in Tulum, who comes to the hospital?
If you have a mental breakdown in Bali, who holds you?
The people you met at the cafe yesterday? No.
They are leaving tomorrow.
You are one bad day away from realising that “independence” is just a fancy word for vulnerability.
There is no safety net. There is just you and a travel insurance hotline.
4. The Dopamine Tolerance
Travel is a drug. At first, a new city feels like magic. The colors are brighter. The food tastes better.
By Year 2, it feels like a backdrop.
You become desensitised to beauty.
You need a “higher dose” of novelty just to feel normal.
You start moving faster, chasing a high that no longer hits.
You aren’t exploring the world anymore.
You are running away from the void.
5. The Dating Graveyard
Dating as a nomad is a lesson in futility.
You are building sandcastles near the tide.
You fall in love with an expiration date attached to your forehead.
Eventually, you train your heart to detach. You learn to say goodbye so efficiently that you forget how to say “stay.” You are engineering yourself to be unlovable because you are functionally unavailable. You become a ghost passing through people’s lives. Haunting them for a week, then vanishing.
The Verdict: The Cost of Freedom
Go ahead. Travel. See the world. But don’t lie to yourself about the cost.
You are liquidating your relationships to buy experiences. Eventually, the experiences fade into memory. And you are left with a full passport and an empty table.
Freedom is expensive. And you are paying for it with your loneliness.
(a letter to myself, and why I am choosing to settle now 🙂 )
