The digital nomads did not prepare for this
They moved to exotic locales to work through the pandemic in style. But now break-ups and COVID guilt are setting in
For a certain kind of worker, the pandemic presented a rupture in the space-time-career continuum. Many were stuck, tied down by children or lost income or obligations to take care of the sick. But for those who were unencumbered, with steady jobs that were doable from anywhere, it was a moment to grab destiny and bend employment to their favour. Their logic was as enviable as it was unattainable for everyone else: If you are going to work from home indefinitely, why not make a new home in an exotic place? This tiny cohort gathered their MacBooks, passports and N95 masks and became digital nomads.
They Instagrammed their workdays from empty beach resorts in Bali and took Zoom meetings from tricked-out camper vans. They made balcony offices at cheap Tulum Airbnbs and booked state park campsites with Wi-Fi. They were the kind of people who actually applied to those remote worker visa programmes heavily advertised by Caribbean countries. And occasionally they were deflated. David Malka, an entrepreneur in Los Angeles, had heard from friends who were living their best work-abroad lives. In June, he created a plan: He and his girlfriend would work from Amsterdam, with a quick stop at a discounted resort in Mexico along the way.
The first snag happened almost immediately. In Cabo San Lucas, Malka and his girlfriend realised that the European Union wasn’t about to reopen its borders to American travellers, as they had hoped. Returning to the US wasn’t an option: Malka’s girlfriend was from the UK, and her visa wouldn’t allow it. The two decided to stay in Mexico a bit longer. At first it was glamorous, Malka said. Working by laptop‚ he manages a portfolio of vacation rental properties ‚ they had the resort to themselves. But by the second week, their situation began to feel like Groundhog Day. The city and the beach were closed, so the couple never left the resort. Meanwhile, the travel shutdown was hammering his business. All we could do is sit by the pool or go to the gym, Malka said. The repetition, boredom and isolation all wore on them. Eventually, the couple took a 28-hour, two-layover trip to Amsterdam, where Malka was indeed turned away at customs. They retreated to London, where they promptly broke up. He has been there since. Cold, raining, depressing, he said. “Those are the first three adjectives that come to mind.” Now Malka is trying to figure out how to get to Bali‚ it’s technically closed to visitors, but he heard about a special visa that can be rushed for $800‚ or use his ancestry to obtain Portuguese citizenship. It’s a lot of logistics. “I have PTSD planning my next month,” he said.
Malka is far from the only Covid nomad to stumble on the road. It turns out there are drawbacks the trend stories and Instagram posts didn’t share. Tax things. Red-tape things. Wi-Fi rage things. Closed border things. The kinds of things one might gloss over when making an emotional, quarantine-addled decision to pack up an apartment and book a one-way ticket to Panama or Montreal or Kathmandu.
The worst of both worlds
Americans have never been especially good at vacation. Before Covid-19, they were leaving unused hundreds of millions of paid days off. They even created a work-vacation hybrid‚ the workation. The idea: Travel to a nice place, work during the day and then, in theory, enjoy the scenery in the off hours. In pandemic times, the digital nomads have simply made workation a permanent state.
The bad news is it’s the worst of both worlds. They should be enjoying themselves in their new, beautiful surroundings. But they can’t enjoy themselves, because work beckons. The anxious self-optimisation pingpongs between ‘Why aren’t I living my best life?’ and ‘Why aren’t I killing it at work?’ Katie Smith-Adair and her husband run PlaceInvaders, an event company in Los Alamos, Calif. When the pandemic halted business, they packed up their Volvo with a tent and an outdoor shower for a monthlong camping road trip around the West. All the while, she worked 40 hours a week trying to set up PlaceInvaders for virtual events.
The first lesson learned? Never trust campground Wi-Fi. The second? Expect judgment from campground workers for needing the WiFi. “They make you feel bad because you’re not unplugging and getting into nature,” Smith-Adair said. “This is my job. I want to unplug, but I also have to get on that Zoom call real quick.” At an RV park near Boise, Idaho, she noticed a Wi-Fi hot spot whose name was the equivalent of a middle finger directed at all Californians.
Smith-Adair’s office became a folding chair on the sidewalk outside whatever McDonald’s or Starbucks was nearby. It wasn’t exactly a peaceful commune with the redwoods. During one curbside conference call in Eugene, Ore., a nearby man with a weed whacker began roaring his motor. Adair-Smith told him that she was trying to salvage her career. He didn’t care. When digital nomads do manage to indulge in the splendours of their new homes, they can experience another, more psychic toll: the haters. Austin Mao, a short-term-rental operator in Las Vegas, posted on Facebook about escaping to Costa Rica with his wife in March, and was surprised to receive a flood of angry comments. People accused him of spreading COVID. They were outraged that he had abandoned his country. One person even unfriended him.
After the haters, Mao said, came the guilt. During the pandemic, he and some friends have kept in touch via monthly Zoom calls. The conversations have a structure: The friends take turns describing what’s going well and not so well in their lives, which they refer to as their top 5 per cent and bottom 5 per cent. In Costa Rica, Mao would share tales of eating fish he had caught himself and diving with whales and sharks. He was living in a beach-front jungle villa where monkeys would knock coconuts from the trees, and he would chop them open with a machete, savouring the fresh juice.
His friends, who were quarantining in the US, had no such wealth of material. Their stories rarely changed. They would frequently say, I don’t have a top 5 or bottom 5. My life is kind of blase, Mao said. “It felt like I was cheating.” After six months, Mao and his wife, Chuchu Wang, needed to return to the United States for her to keep her green card. He noticed a change: The Facebook friends who had taken out their coronavirus-rage on him came around. Now, Mao said, they’re asking him how they can pull off a similar escape.
It is a reminder of the steep risks taken by the COVID Carpe Diem set. The reason this once-a-generation moment exists is the same reason most of us can’t go into the office or take a real vacation or eat inside a restaurant. Travelling risks sickness. Seizing the day risks sickness.