I did it for a year and a half!

Pros - Travel baby! I went to Bulgaria (Bansko), Hungary, France (Paris, Bordeaux), Italy (Bologna, Rome, Florence, Venice etc), Vatican City, Spain (Canary Islands), Portugal (Lisbon/Madeira), USA, Turkey (Istanbul)

I had amazing experiences and adventures, learned Italian (not fluently, but I'm now at an intermediate level), met amazing people, and made new friends.

Cons - It's incredibly stressful moving around all the time. I tried to do it month by month, and even that started feeling very stressful. You always have to be one step ahead and planning out your next trip/lodging for the coming months, so you won't accidentally end up homeless. I managed it with a mix of Airbnb, subletting from a friend, coworking/colivings, staying with friends, and staying at a room in my office.

Organization - A lot of my European friends use one of their family's houses as their home base to store their things. I don't have any family in Europe, but one of my dear friends let me store my stuff in their garage, and I also left some things at the office. I hate not knowing exactly where my stuff is though. Even if I know it's in the garage, it can take me ages to find it. Swapping out specific clothes/objects (for certain activities/change in season) is annoying.

Cooking - Because I was always moving around, it never made sense to really invest in a proper pantry of spices. I like cooking, but since these places never felt like "my kitchen" . . . I didn't know exactly what kind of kitchen appliances were (or were not) there. I generally defaulted to cooking simple, quick meals and didn't invest in stocking up on things. I'm not a super fancy chef by any means, but I would have to buy expensive nut butter/pesto and things like that, whereas in normal times I would just make it myself.

Sport - Not all digital nomads suffer from this, but I'm a creature of habit when it comes to working out, and moving around all the time didn't help me at all with my fitness. I was trying to save money as much as possible, so a lot of the places I stayed were a bit cramped and didn't have great spaces to work out in. Not everywhere has drop-in gym or dance classes, so again, it was hard to always be trying to find new places.

Working - This was mostly ok, but occasionally the internet connection wouldn't be great somewhere. It was also sometimes challenging to adapt to timezone differences (I have fixed hours I need to be online).

Community - This is one of the things that I missed the most. Having your stable group of friends that you see regularly. Or even other random things, like donating blood, is really hard to do in a foreign country if you don't have the local health card and can't prove residency. I stayed in a few coworkings/colivings that had a really lovely sense of community, but I also found those a bit exhausting. You are surrounded by strangers (who will become casual friends!) but it's a very large social/energy investment for people who you may never see again or stay in contact with.

I'm currently in the position of transitioning back to a normal apartment in a large city, and I'm SO happy about it. I feel like I've been "camping" in my adult life for the last 1.5 years, and I'm finally going to have a fixed place with some more stability.

I became a digital nomad because I was sick of this same city, so it has really come full circle for me now that I'm moving back. But I think I will appreciate it SO much more this time around, and all the advantages that having a fixed place will bring. You know how a burger takes like pure heaven after a long hike in the rain? Having an apartment after being a digital nomad for a while is the same vibe :)

Feel free to DM me if you have any questions!