What no one tells you about being a digital nomad is that the freedom comes with a cost ..

Today I’m flipping the mic and sharing a very real, very unfiltered conversation I had on James Hammond’s Winging It Travel Podcast. If you’ve ever dreamed about getting paid to travel, building a business from your laptop, or living the digital nomad life heading into digital nomad 2026… this one’s for you.

This isn’t the romanticized “work from a beach in Bali” version. This is the behind-the-scenes reality — the burnout, the loneliness, the identity shifts, and the hard lessons I learned after traveling for nearly 10 months straight while running my business.

In this episode, we talk about:

Why I left the U.S. to become a digital nomad — and why I came back
The difference between backpacking vs. being paid to travel with a business
How travel burnout sneaks up on you (even when you “love travel”)
The hidden loneliness of long-term travel
Why co-living can make or break your digital nomad experience
The truth about popular nomad hubs (and why Bali wasn’t it for me)
How traveling too fast nearly wrecked my nervous system
Why I believe most people shouldn’t be nomads forever
What I’d do differently if I started again in digital nomad 2026

🌍 Check out James Hammond:

This episode originally aired on Winging It Travel Podcast hosted by James Hammond, where he shares honest travel stories, digital nomad realities, and global adventures from around the world.

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🎧 Listen to Winging It Travel Podcast with James Hammond
📸 Follow James on Instagram for travel + nomad insights
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My (Very) Honest Digital Nomad Story: How I Became a Full Time Traveller and the Realities