Why I ditched being a digital nomad

And why there's a lot to be said for keeping work and play separate

Photo by Ishan @seefromthesky on Unsplash

When I got on a flight from the grey perma-drizzle of London in February for the steamy heat of Mumbai in 2010, I wasn’t thinking of myself as a digital nomad (the millennial term for someone who travels the world, laptop in hand).

Instead, I was fleeing New York to escape the crushing pain of a collapsing marriage, and had, like a homing pigeon, returned to London. Except my ex husband and I had lived in the city for nine years together and it was so choked with memories that every time I turned a corner I seemed to dry-heave on the nostalgia. I needed to exit London and fast, and so went to my other home. The one my ancestors were born in: India.

In Mumbai, I hung out in gorgeous spaces that fused East and West in terms of design and ambience, made friends both British-Indian and Indian-Indian, and used the city as a base to explore Delhi, Jaipur, Kerala and Goa. Not groundbreaking in terms of India travel I know, but I needed fast wifi right? After this year of drinking cocktails till 5am and working just enough to pay my bills, I settled back in England again, and would spend the following few years as a freelance writer mixing travel with work.

I’d pitch features about scientific research in Brazil and go and report from there while also sunning myself on the beaches of Rio. Then I went to Thailand to look at how the country was ahead of the game in biomedical research compared to neighbouring countries. For a while, this was incredibly fun. But once I had a husband and kid, and skated into my 40s, the appeal of this constant, boundaryless mixing of work and play started to wear thin.