read this before you quit your 9-5

This one’s for everyone dreaming of quitting their 9-5 to go full-time nomad.

It’s 3pm on a Tuesday, you’re at your desk eating junk you found in the office kitchen, watching some influencer do yoga on a cliff in Bali, and they look deliriously happy. So you think, okay, I need to quit and move to Bali and it’ll fix everything.

Because nobody on Instagram would ever lie. Right? 🌴

I traveled non-stop for 3 years, almost 30 countries, 89 total. And let me tell ya, I was the miserablest. Not a word, I know. Still true, though.

Here are the 4 lies Instagram sells hardest.

Lie 1. Nomading is a vacation, 365 days a year.

So I’m on the Galápagos 🐢, one of those bucket-list places people save up their whole lives for. Giant tortoises outside the window, sea lions asleep at the bus stop, the whole thing.

And I cannot make myself leave the hotel room. Not sick, not tired, I just didn’t want to.

Turns out there are only so many waterfalls a person can be excited about, and honestly nomading is just your normal life with a better view 🏝️ . If you’re miserable, a better view won’t save you.

Lie 2. You’re never lonely, you meet people everywhere.

Colombia. Sunset. A beach restaurant famous for its lobster. So I order the lobster, and the waiter tells me I can’t have it, it’s for two people only.

Then he takes the second chair away, so I can’t even pretend I’m waiting for my imaginary boyfriend.

I know how stupid this sounds, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt lonelier in my life. I tried to play it cool, and let me tell you, it was not working.

Because in the end they dug up a tiny lobster for one. I sat there eating my sad little lobster 🦞 in front of the most beautiful sunset of my life, with nobody to say “look at this” to.

You meet people fast on the road, real friendship starts, and then someone leaves and it’s back to zero. After a while you “know” a hundred people all over the world and there’s almost nobody you can call at 2am 🥲**.** Not very instagrammable.

Lie 3. You’re free because you own nothing.

One carry-on, three years. You do learn how little you actually need, and that part is genuinely real. But here’s the one that got me: for three years, not a single person gave me a physical gift 🎁 Not one birthday present, not one souvenir.

Everyone just knew, it’s Kristina, she can’t carry anything, so at some point they all stopped.

I did not expect that to land as hard as it did.

Sometimes you just want the cute pyjamas, but useful always wins, and that’s how a grown woman ends up choosing a second pair of hiking socks 🧦 over anything with personality.

Lie 4. You’ll build your dream team from a hammock. 💻

Sure you will. Except finding good people while you’re changing cities every two weeks is a full-time job on its own, and the road eats every spare hour you’ve got.

So when I finally needed to hire and had exactly zero time to look, Mellow did it for me.

Their AI Scout tool finds and shortlists freelancers for you, so you’re not sending cold DMs from a hostel bunk at midnight. 🆓 A genuinely free tool that does something useful, I know, I was suspicious too. But no, actually free. Wild.

→ mellow.io

Kris

P.S. What’s your version of the sad little lobster? Reply, misery loves company.