The Hardest Part of Being a Nomad…That No One Talks About

This lifestyle can stretch you in ways you never expected. It reflects your doubts, magnifies your fears, and tests your limits. But it also shapes you, softens you, and teaches you what really matters.

The Hidden Struggles of Nomad Life: What No One Tells You

The nomad lifestyle often gets sold as a dream. But behind the edited photos and scenic backdrops is a more complicated truth—one that we and I suspect many long-term travelers quietly wrestle with.

Sure, we signed up for the trade-offs: less comfort, more uncertainty, and a healthy dose of paperwork and border bureaucracy.

But the truth is, the hardest part about a nomadic lifestyle isn’t anything we’ve encountered on the road. It’s the baggage we brought with us.

Guilt. Shame. Envy. Jealousy. Self-doubt. The emotional carry-on no one warns you about.

These are some of the toughest parts about dealing with a nomadic lifestyle that don’t always get mentioned.

The Guilt

“Oh, so…you won’t be coming to Christmas again…well…next year maybe…”

Missing birthdays, weddings, or just dinner with family can come with frequent pangs of guilt. You’re choosing this life—and sometimes that comes with the uncomfortable feeling that you’re choosing it instead of the people you love.

It sneaks in after a laggy video call that wraps up awkwardly or when you watch your best friend’s engagement through a screen. It’s feeling helpless during a family crisis. It’s knowing you enjoy a profound privilege—and still find yourself quietly wondering if it’s come at too high a cost.

Things start to add up—a weekend trip here, a retirement dinner there, a friend’s band playing a gig. You tell yourself you’ll make it up to them… but the debt keeps piling up.

And then one day, missing things becomes the norm. The twinge of guilt doesn’t hit as often—or as hard. Major life moments start to blur into background noise. People adjust to you not being there. And that’s when you start to wonder what kind of presence you’ve really been at all.

Self-Doubt and Shame

Travel is fulfilling, right? So what does it say about you if you don’t always feel fulfilled living the life that so many dream of?

It’s impossible to keep the stoke alive 24/7—but when you can’t, it feels like you’re doing it wrong. There’s a surprising amount of shame in admitting that life on the road isn’t always a dream.

That’s when the impostor syndrome creeps in. You’re not the chill world traveler you’re trying to emulate—or present to the world. But you can’t let anyone know. There’s pressure to make it look effortless, to appear like you’re constantly living your best life—even when you’re barely holding it together.

And when the doubts start piling up, it’s hard to quiet them. If I’m not 100% in it, am I wasting our time? Are we doing the right thing for our kid? Will we regret this later? These thoughts hit hardest on slow days between travel, days when you find yourself comparing your life to the highlight reels of others.

Stay stuck in this vortex too long, and you start to experience identity drift. Without a location to ground you, a job title to define you, or a community to reflect you back to yourself, you’re left with bigger, scarier questions: Who am I? What am I working toward? Where do I belong?

If being a nomad is all that you are—what happens if you stop? Maybe you can’t stop. Maybe you’ve built a life that only works while your planning the next destination.

Jealousy & Envy

How great is technology? Simply log on to Instagram and Facebook to stay connected to friends and family back home.

Follow along on social media and watch them as they settle into steady careers, buy homes, and build close-knit communities.

Wait, why is this triggering a sense that I’m being left behind—as I spend my morning figuring out ferry schedules from a rickety fold-out table.

But it’s not just their milestones, is it—it’s who they’re sharing them with. You see photos of barbecues and holidays with people you’ve never met. New friends. New experiences. A new life, you’re no longer a part of.

They still call, and they still care—but it can sting to watch them move forward while you’re on the outside, observing from a distance.

It’s hard not to feel left out and left behind. That’s enough Facebook for today.

Restlessness & Decision Fatigue

Where to next? Where to eat? Where to stay tonight? What about six months from now? Life without a home base or familiar routine means constant decision-making.

Even small choices start to add up and feel exhausting when nothing is pre-determined. And that mental fatigue leads to avoidance—putting off decisions until tomorrow, or the next day, or the next.

Suddenly, you realize you’ve been parked at the same RV site or moored in the same marina for two weeks, not because you love it, but because you couldn’t summon the energy to figure out what’s next.

When the motivation finally returns, you dive into the next step—days spent researching transport options, accommodations, and visa requirements. You think you’ve cracked it, and then a last-minute change in the weather sends you right back to square one.

What’s the point? I’ll deal with it tomorrow.

Lack of Stability

Life on the move can sometimes feel like you’re walking on shifting sand. Just when you find your footing—learning the local customs, finding your favorite grocery store, figuring out public transport—it changes again. You’re starting from scratch in a new place, over and over.

That instability can wear you down. Maybe you’ve just figured out how to greet the cashier in Croatian and weigh your own produce, only to find yourself getting scolded in Greek for touching the scales. Or you order a “peperoni” pizza in Italy and get a soggy plate of bell peppers instead of the spicy salami you were after.

Or it could be something big, a trip to the hospital in the dead of night in a country where you can’t speak the language or read the forms.

When you feel that footing slip, everything can start to feel a little surreal and you can start to wonder just what exactly you’re doing in such a strange place so far from home.

Rootlessness

Everyone you know seems to be putting down roots. They’ve bought homes. Their businesses are booming. The family dog just had surgery after eating a bucket of golf balls. They’re looking at new schools for the kids, planning renovations, and harvesting vegetables from gardens.

And you?

You have a cactus. It lives in the bathroom of your 30-foot boat. It might be dying.

It’s not that you want their life—but seeing people build foundations can trigger a creeping sense of unease. You start to wonder: Will it be too late for us to catch up? Have we traded too much to muck around in boats and vans now?

Rootlessness is more than wanting somewhere to hang your hat. It’s the feeling that while others are building something permanent, you’re drifting. A lot of the time, it can be freeing—but it can also be confronting.

Loneliness and Isolation

You can meet a lot of people while traveling, but forming and maintaining deeper friendships can be challenging. Especially as you move into slower, more family-focused travel, connection becomes trickier.

When you’re parenting on the road or running a business from a boat, there’s less space for spontaneous socializing. We might go weeks without a real conversation that isn’t work-related or about provisioning.

We have moments where we desperately crave adult connection—just someone to talk to who doesn’t need context, who already knows us, especially when we want to celebrate or commiserate.

The freedom can feel less romantic when there are no friends to share it with.

And if it persists for too long, the feeling of loneliness festers into isolation. Not part of any local community, not quite rooted in your old one either. It’s a strange kind of in-between that gets heavier the longer you carry it.

Burnout

Travel is work: logistics, packing, visas, problem-solving. Add work-work, and it’s a recipe for burnout—especially when you never feel truly “off.”

Now that we’re parents as well, even the weekends have disappeared. Those slow, mornings spent with a coffee and nothing to do are rare. There are no true days off—just days where the work is different.

Trying to maintain a lifestyle that balances work, travel, and parenting can sometimes take up every available second. And when every day is full—of movement, childcare, deadlines, and to-do lists—it becomes incredibly difficult to find time to truly rest. Not just physically, but mentally.

You keep pushing, thinking you’ll rest at the next stop, the next anchorage, the next quiet moment. And sometimes you do. But other times, that moment never really arrives.

Financial Anxiety

Even with good financial planning and careful budgeting (which we pride ourselves on), living without a truly stable income or long-term financial safety net can be stressful. No employer benefits, no national healthcare, no certainty.

Ultimately, we recognize that we’re in a privileged position. But that doesn’t always stop the navel-gazing—the wondering if we should have done things differently. And if we traded too little security for too much adventure. Those anxieties don’t dominate our days, but they do pop up—especially when questions of money arise.

What Can You Do?

There’s no magic solution to the normal anxieties that come with living life, but an awareness that they exist on the road too is an important step. Recognizing that these feelings are normal (and common!) helps lighten the load.

Finding community, setting routines, building support systems—even virtually—can help bring balance to life on the move.

And if you’re feeling any of this? You’re not alone.

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It’s easy to feel conflicted about these challenges—because we choose them. We continue to commit to this lifestyle, with all its freedom and all its uncertainty. And when it’s hard, that truth can make it even harder to talk about.

Most people only see the highlight reel. They tell us we’re lucky. That we’re living the dream. And we are—just not every moment, and not without cost.

This lifestyle can stretch you in ways you never expected. It reflects your doubts, magnifies your fears, and tests your limits. But it also shapes you, softens you, and teaches you what really matters.

So yes—we’re still living the dream. Just one that asks more of us than we expected—and gives back in ways we’re still learning to appreciate.

We’d love to hear from you: What’s been the most challenging part of your travel life? Hit reply or leave a comment.

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