What is your experience as a Digital Nomad? originally appeared on Quora, the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus.

What is your experience as a Digital Nomad?

An amazing one, that’s for sure.

Back in June 2014, I’d just graduated university, I was scared, unsure of what to do, and applying like crazy for an insane amount of local jobs.

One of the jobs I applied for was working remotely for a local environmental entrepreneur. He hired me, and in doing so, started this incredible whirlwind of an adult life that I respect and cherish every day.

Without the gift of remote work, I would never have tasted fresh oranges in Sevilla, learned to speak Spanish and open my mind to a whole new culture, played live shows and busk with my ukulele in cities around Europe and watched a football game at the Bernabéu (Zidane and Roberto Carlos played in a legends game!)

That was my first experience of digital nomad life, being a remote worker on 35 hours a week and a fair salary.

Then I started my own environmental copywriting agency.

It has been nearly two years since I made that move, and transitioning from remote worker to location independent consultant (replace with whatever term you wish to use) has allowed me to pursue other dreams. Since February 2016 I have:

* Volunteered as an English teacher in the Navarrese mountains.

* Volunteered on an eco retreat and olive orchard in Andalusia.

* Wrote a book called Stingy Nomad, sold 50 copies, gave away more than 50 and built a community of 1000+ people.

* Spent three months in Thailand and Cambodia, learning about a culture so different to my own.

* Learned a second language.

* Worked as an English teacher in Tarifa, Spain, for 8 months.

* Lived in a small town in Morocco called Essaouira where I learned to surf.

* Played concerts in Madrid, Lisbon, Coimbra, Essaouira and around Andalusia with my ukulele (which I always travel with), and my lovely friend and musician Matt Rivers.

* Released a ukulele album with a backpacker I met! (I’m the duke of uke).

* Climbed Mt Toubkal, the tallest mountain in North Africa.

* Walked the Camino de Santiago.

* Visited loads of amazing countries on short trips.

* Been able to visit my hometown and enjoy my friends and family without having to live there!

* Moved to Brno, Czech Republic, where I currently live, rent a gorgeous apartment, have great friends and consult for various business.

* Been able to live a travel lifestyle working <20 hours a week, giving me more time for the things I love, like reading, sunbathing and tinder dates!

Now, some of the challenges

* Language barriers pop up occasionally, but most people know enough English to get help you get what you need.

* Being away from home for a long time can disconnect you from friends and family. As a side-note, it’s important to remain humble when you go home, so that your family will still love you!

* A lot of people won’t understand what you do, just say ‘I have an online business’ or ‘I work from my computer’. It’s usually enough.

* Taxes.

* Love and romance. It’s easy to find hookups when you travel, but it’s hard to find someone to join your adventure, that’s for sure!

* Losing income sources. I get stressed about money if a client says they don’t want to work together anymore (rare, I’m hard to let go), or if a project or contract finishes.

* Reaching a new place, not knowing anybody, not having a place to stay, and not speaking the lingo. I find this exciting now, but there was a time when it scared the bejeezers out of me!

* Being surrounded by a turnstile of new people, and not enough long term buddies who you can reminisce and have private jokes with.

* Forming attachments, and then saying goodbye. Some of the people I miss the most are not home friends and family (I do miss them of course), but inspirational travelers I met on my way!

* FOMO. Missing out on important events back home. It doesn’t bother me as much now as it used to. I’m carving my own memories.

* You can’t go everywhere at once. I’ve lost sleep deciding whether to fly to Morocco or Malta, Turkey or Colombia.

* Working on the beach like you see in #digitalnomad posts on instagram is unrealistic. Your laptop overheats, you have glare on the screen, sand everywhere and sun in your eyes!

* There’s no path or map to success, like you’d have with a traditional career. There’s a great deal of uncertainty when you ponder longevity.

* If you aren’t committed to this lifestyle and to putting in the hard work, you can buy a return flight now. This way of life is not as easy and simple as people think.

* Just because digital nomads go there, doesn’t mean it’s paradise, usually it’s just cheap. Honestly, I thought Chiang Mai was pretty lame, and the DNs I met were a bit obnoxious. It’s humid, polluted, noisy and the bars shut at midnight. But I paid 77 baht (£1.75) a night in a capsule hostel, so it was dirt cheap.

* You have to budget for transport, accommodations and the settling in period.

* You can’t have an amazing wardrobe of clothes, unless you’re willing to carry them like a donkey! You have to be efficient. I wear almost all black, have one strong pair of trainers that I replace when they wear down, and another pair of trainers for exercise. In hot countries I have flip flops, in cold countries I have leather boots.

* You have to do your work, even if the cool group you just met are going to wash elephants.

* Lifestyle design is hard and pointless if you don’t know what your goals are.

* Being a digital nomad is cool, but don’t show off about it. I was in a hostel in Chiang Mai, and there was this American guy working 60 hours a week for a company, for $1000 a month, and whenever someone asked what he was working on, he’d say loudly ‘I’M A DIGTAL NOMAD’, like it was a badge of honor. Don’t be this guy. The aim is to work as few hours as possible for the most amount of money.

* Get used to collecting memories and experience, not things.

* Learning what to do with all your freedom and independence.

* If you can’t embrace minimalism and simplicity, you might struggle. I went to SE Asia with 6Kg, including my laptop and chargers, and I still had too much stuff.

* If you move too much, you struggle for stability. If you don’t move enough, you get too used to your comfort zone (again).

* It can be hard to stay fit when delicious foreign gourmet is all around you, and joining a gym seems like a chore.

* WiFi in rentals can be awful or nonexistent, and co-working spaces can eat up a huge chunk of your monthly budget. (Good tip for freelancers, if you are thinking of staying in place for 3+ months, get a local client ASAP, offer reduced rates in exchange for hot-desking in their office. If you’re there in the building, they’re likely to give you more work).

* Be prepared for long journeys - if you use Google Docs, get some work prepared to do offline on that 7 hour bus trip. Your battery might go halfway through, but the work has paid for your bus and more.

Conclusion

My personal experience has been amazing. Most of these negatives I haven’t faced personally, and if I have, they didn’t bother me much. There were some awful moments, like breaking up with my girlfriend two and half months into a year long trip, my cat dying back home, and running out of money 7 months after going self employed and living like a monk until I got my savings back together.

What I’ve learned most about myself is that I love living in other cultures more than I love being nomadic. My current stint in the Czech Republic is 3–4 months, but I’ll stay for a year if I like, I just know that I enjoy being a foreigner in foreign lands.

This question originally appeared on Quora. More questions on Quora:

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* Digital Nomads: What are the best revenue streams for a young digital nomad?

* Lifestyle: Has your income changed since you started the digital nomad lifestyle?

Photo Credit: Yui Yu Hoi/Getty Images