I left my last office job in 2017, spent the first year and a half or so traveling, and then started working remotely, making more money than I was at my office job in high cost of living city. Had the time of my life, met a lot of people, learned a lot about the world, myself, etc.
Now living as a digital nomad for over a year now I'm used to it so it's not really a big deal anymore. I care more about the people I surround myself with than the specific location. Once you've been to major cities around the world, the city/country itself stops mattering as much. I'd love to do some more exotic travel, going to really remote locations, but then you don't have usable Wifi, and even if you did the last thing you'd probably want to be doing is sitting in front of your laptop all day.
I could definitely never go back to an office job. My current employer has a small office so I've gone back every now and then for "fun", but after working remotely I don't see how anyone can go back to office life. It's not just that I don't enjoy offices, I don't think they're time efficient since there's no incentive to complete your work faster since you know you have to be there until 5:30pm or however late everyone stays. When I work out of a coffee shop, I want to be as time efficient as possible and finish my work quickly because I want to get the hell out of there and go live life.
The biggest downside of the digital nomad lifestyle I'd say is that loneliness can be a real problem, all the more compounded by government COVID restrictions (eg. limited social gatherings, curfews, etc). That's still something I don't have a great system for. Of course there are language barriers too - I'm currently in a South American country where most people don't speak any English, so as someone with very bad Spanish it's a lot harder to meet people (obviously I knew this flying here, the tradeoff for the perfect weather was worth it for me). And that being said, I definitely don't consider offices as any cure to loneliness, in fact quite the opposite.
Now living as a digital nomad for over a year now I'm used to it so it's not really a big deal anymore. I care more about the people I surround myself with than the specific location. Once you've been to major cities around the world, the city/country itself stops mattering as much. I'd love to do some more exotic travel, going to really remote locations, but then you don't have usable Wifi, and even if you did the last thing you'd probably want to be doing is sitting in front of your laptop all day.
I could definitely never go back to an office job. My current employer has a small office so I've gone back every now and then for "fun", but after working remotely I don't see how anyone can go back to office life. It's not just that I don't enjoy offices, I don't think they're time efficient since there's no incentive to complete your work faster since you know you have to be there until 5:30pm or however late everyone stays. When I work out of a coffee shop, I want to be as time efficient as possible and finish my work quickly because I want to get the hell out of there and go live life.
The biggest downside of the digital nomad lifestyle I'd say is that loneliness can be a real problem, all the more compounded by government COVID restrictions (eg. limited social gatherings, curfews, etc). That's still something I don't have a great system for. Of course there are language barriers too - I'm currently in a South American country where most people don't speak any English, so as someone with very bad Spanish it's a lot harder to meet people (obviously I knew this flying here, the tradeoff for the perfect weather was worth it for me). And that being said, I definitely don't consider offices as any cure to loneliness, in fact quite the opposite.