The Reality of Digital Nomads: Defying Sight and Sound

If you haven’t read The Reality of Digital Nomads: Chasing Highs, Finding What? (Part 1), it delves into the challenges I faced as a digital nomad — the lack of stability, absence of community, and the constant stress and fatigue. A key takeaway is my suggestion that “digital homeless” might be a more fitting term for digital nomads. I end by comparing today’s nomads to historical figures like Mountain Hermits and Monastic Wanderers, who also led lives of solitude and self-reliance.

Read <Part 1> The Reality of Digital Nomads: Chasing Adventure, Finding What? on Hackernoon! [Click Here.]

<Part 2>

The common thread that ties digital nomads, Christian monks, and Buddhist monks together is that they all leave their hometowns in pursuit of greater enlightenment and growth.

For someone like my parents, watching their daughter constantly pursue challenges can be concerning. Yet, traveling as a digital nomad has been incredibly meaningful for self-discovery and personal growth. Before beginning this journey, I struggled with anxiety rooted in self-consciousness. I was the type of girl who loved popcorn but would skip it when at the theater alone, worried about what strangers might think if they saw me in line by myself. I’d even wait until the theater emptied out to shyly grab a bag on my way out.

One unexpected advantage of having to work full-time while traveling is that you don’t really have the leisure to get swept up in all the local tourist attractions. Instead, you find small joys in visiting cafes where you can quietly observe locals while working, or by changing neighborhoods for an evening stroll each day to experience subtle differences in scenery. Contrary to the high-pitched dialogue often heard in Japanese anime, residential neighborhoods in Tokyo are always astonishingly quiet. In Siem Reap, children rummage through trash cans in search of necessities just a few kilometers away from one of the largest and most impressive religious monuments. In Asia’s most liberal city, Bangkok, located in the only country to have legalized cannabis, a less hipster and more capitalistic, and self-conscious scene can be observed, with people waiting their turn at beauty clinics as late as 9 PM. Meanwhile, in Bali, locals begin and end their day with religious rituals, with every store and accommodation advertising their fast Wi-Fi speeds. In Philadelphia, some cafes do not provide Wi-Fi or even allow laptop use, yet still manage to thrive.

Seeing such differences in real-life cultures all over the world leads to the questioning of how much of who I am was shaped by the culture and environment I grew up in, this journey becomes a time of introspection. Traveling is the culture and community that shaped a significant part of my identity disappearing right before my eyes. I start asking myself, “Who am I without my culture?” and “What are my fundamental traits?” And from city to the next, the answers to these questions about myself slowly unveil.

Who am I without my culture?

There’s a unique liberation that comes with exploring “me” in a foreign country. Here, everyone sheds their familiar identity and becomes a foreigner, free from their usual roles and expectations. The term “foreigner” means “a person who does not belong to a particular group or community.” You’re not the hometown girl, recognized by her daily iced black coffee, or the guy who’s known for his DIY car washes since he moved in last year. Instead, you’re simply you, stripped down to the essentials, unbound by the routines and labels from home.

One of the greatest advantages of traveling to many places is adopting the mindset of “I am a foreigner anyway.” This mentality of inherently “being different” is freeing. Although we are always unique individuals, experiencing multiple cultures and their contrasts makes this truth resonate deeply. Realizing that no two communities are identical and that we don’t need to conform to any single one allows us to uncover our true nature and personality.

As innate social animals, we’ve grown accustomed to communal life over thousands of years. In Eastern cultures, where communal living is especially valued, we sometimes overlook a key fact: communities are composed of individuals, each with unique traits. Often, we subconsciously prioritize the identity of the community over our own, hesitating to adopt beliefs or behaviors that set us apart. As a foreigner passing through an area briefly, it’s rare to get much attention from locals, apart from the enthusiastic promotions of bar promoters. This freedom of not being seen, to simply blend into the background, is liberating and accelerates your self-discovery by giving you more space to allow yourself to be who you are.

This is entirely different from wearing a bikini on the streets in Southeast Asia after wearing Confucian-style clothing in your home country. The initial adventurous spirit of arriving in a new place fades, and it’s in the period when you’ve grown somewhat familiar with the place but still don’t belong to the community that you start to see your authentic self emerge.

In various cities across the world, I encountered my intrinsic kindness. Even when I didn’t care about how I might be seen to others, and was under a massive amount of stress, I remained kind to others. My shyness was replaced with lengthy conversations with cab drivers. This new found self became a source of strength and uplifted me in ways I hadn’t expected.

Language barrier was surprisingly not much of a discomfort, but a factor that helped with self-discovery. How much do the words and sounds we hear around us everyday influence our thoughts? Even last weekend, while hiking in the utter peace of nature, I passed by a group discussing the housing prices of Seoul. Under the clear sky, their conversation made blurred my future into darkness. Koreans, as a whole, seem particularly focused on wealth and the economy, with a strong drive toward accumulating wealth. Since my only financial planning involves saving whatever is left after impulsively spending my salary, hearing these conversations makes me feel on the verge of a panic attack. Additionally, I’m often greeted by a YouTube ad playing the moment I get in although I pay for each ride.

Just how much do the words and sounds around us in daily life influence our state of mind

In this day and age, exposure to materialistic and consumerist attitudes and media isn’t an experience exclusive to my home country. However, in a foreign country, all advertisements and other people’s conversations just come across as noise, so even if I was exposed to them, I wasn’t really impacted by them. Of course, just because I can’t understand the language around me doesn’t mean that the influence of the culture I’ve lived in for decades simply disappears. Even in the laid-back atmosphere of Southeast Asia, I still found myself prioritizing efficiency and speed — like a true Korean. But when the surrounding noise faded, I began to hear an authentic voice within me — a voice I couldn’t hear as clearly back in Korea. It was the desire to pursue art and creative work, so I began writing again.

Traveling to different places felt almost like being free of a past, and therefore your age. Perhaps it’s because, as a foreigner, you’re somewhat invisible, not part of that community’s recorded history — only by staying long enough, by becoming a familiar face, might you start to leave a mark. Or maybe it’s because the places woven into the history of my life are out of sight, and all I see is ‘new’ around me. Anyways, with the emergence of the unique voice inside me, I also stopped feeling so self-conscious of my age. The self-doubt that normally would have risen with the emergence of my authentic voice subdued in the seeming absence of the history it was born from.

But the best part of being a digital nomad didn’t strike me until it was over..

I’ll tell you guys everything about it in Part 3, next week.. Thanks for reading