Why I Quit My Job, Sold All My Stuff, Moved Out of My NYC Apartment, and Became a Digital Nomad

Nicole Dominguez
6 min readJan 2, 2017

More than a year ago, I began seriously considering changing my life and becoming a digital nomad. At the time I had a cool full-time job and lived in the highly sought-out neighborhood of Williamsburg Brooklyn.

From the outside, I had it all and my life was great. But on the inside, I wanted more; I wanted something else. I felt stagnant and lost. Settling was never and will never keep me engaged and content. I couldn’t move forward with a life that was predictable and on autopilot. That’s just not the kind of person I am. Plus, having lived in NYC for four years, it was starting to grow stale for me. Noisy, smelly, crowded, expensive? No thanks.

At the time, digital nomadism was on the rise and becoming more and more feasible. I knew some friends who traveled constantly and who had already made the jump into the nomad lifestyle. So in late 2015 and early 2016 I began seriously planning for my own jump.

If you’re not sure what “digital nomad” means; it’s a person who works and earns a living remotely from their laptop via the internet, and uses that opportunity to live abroad/traveling/on the road. People make this feasible by getting rid of expenses and things that tie them down to a specific place, like full-time jobs and mortgages.

I was able to consider this lifestyle as a viable option because I’m young — 22 — and these next few years are probably the only years I’ll have uncommitted to a spouse, kids, or mortgage. I was financially stable and romantically unattached. It was the perfect combination to be able to take advantage of this rare opportunity to explore the world and create a more enjoyable meaningful life.

Coworking spaces, coffee shops, restaurants

The Job

The digital nomad lifestyle stood out for me mainly because I knew it wasn’t so far out of reach. Most questions I see online about the lifestyle pertain to work and how to find jobs that allow for a remote lifestyle. My job at the time was very pro-remote work. I got to practice working remotely from coffee shops, my apartment and other…

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Nicole Dominguez

Independent passionate freelance designer/developer based in Brooklyn. Extroverted introvert. I love code, travel, curls & yoga.