Back in April, I wrote about becoming a digital nomad at 54 and leaving the UK for South America.

At the time, I was still fairly close to the beginning of the story.

A lot has happened since then.

I’ve lived in Bolivia, moved into the middle of the Brazilian Amazon, discovered that living in the Amazon wasn’t quite the adventure we’d imagined, returned to Wales, gone back to Bolivia and somehow ended up living beside one of Europe’s great forests in Poland.

I’m 56 now.

And sometimes, when I actually stop and think about everything that’s happened over the last 18 months or so, it still feels slightly surreal.

A couple of years ago, I wouldn’t have imagined I’d be living in another country.

I certainly wouldn’t have imagined this.

So, knowing everything I know now, was leaving the UK at 54 actually the right decision?

The short answer is yes.

Absolutely.

But the longer answer is a little more complicated.

Why I really left the UK

I could probably come up with all sorts of exciting reasons for becoming a digital nomad in my 50s.

Adventure. Freedom. Travel. Reinvention.

And all of those things have become part of it.

But the real reason I left was much simpler.

Vanesa.

We’d already spent six months together in South America during 2023, travelling through Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil.

Then, during 2024, I returned to the UK and took on a 12-month contract.

By January 2025, that contract had finished and I wanted to be back with Vanesa.

Her work as a wildlife researcher also meant that opportunities could take her to different parts of the world.

My work was different.

As long as I had a laptop and a decent internet connection, there was no particular reason I had to be sitting in an office in Swansea.

So we decided to make that work for us.

I was going back to being fully self-employed. I could rent my house in Mumbles as an Airbnb, I’d saved money during 2024, and I had skills I knew I could use to earn an income remotely.

That doesn’t mean I knew exactly how I was going to do it.

Far from it.

For once, I didn’t have a plan

I’ve always been somebody who plans things.

Probably too much.

I like knowing what’s happening next. I like lists. I like projects. I like having some idea of where I’m going.

When I left the UK in January 2025, for perhaps the first time in my adult life, I didn’t really have a plan.

I knew where I was going initially.

I was flying to Bolivia to be with Vanesa.

Beyond that?

Not much.

I didn’t know where we’d be living longer term because that would depend partly on where Vanesa’s work took her.

I didn’t know where my own work would come from.

I’d just finished a salaried contract, so I was going from having money reliably arriving in my bank account every month to being self-employed again and starting almost from scratch.

That was scary.

But strangely, it was exciting too.

For most of my life, I’d known roughly what came next.

Now I didn’t.

Digital nomad life doesn’t really look like Instagram

Search for digital nomad life online and you’ll probably find somebody sitting beside a swimming pool with a MacBook.

There will probably be a coffee involved.

Possibly a palm tree.

They’ll apparently work for about 45 minutes before going to the gym, surfing and watching the sunset from a rooftop bar.

My experience has been slightly different.

You still have to work.

Sometimes you have to work really hard.

The difference is that I’ve had much more control over when and where I do it.

When I first arrived back in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Vanesa and I had an office at her house. We’d sit next to each other working, her doing her research and me trying to build up my own work again.

The broadband was excellent, which is something I’ve subsequently learned never to take for granted.

And there were definitely moments when I realised how different my life had become.

A few minutes’ walk from Vanesa’s house is a lake.

There were caiman there.

And capybaras.

For somebody from Mumbles, walking out of a residential house and casually encountering wildlife like that takes some getting used to.

Those are the moments you don’t get from sitting in the same office every day.

But there was another side to it.

Freedom still comes with bills

One thing I want to be honest about is money.

I didn’t leave the UK with a hugely successful online business generating passive income while I travelled around the world.

I wish I had.

I had savings.

I had my house.

I had skills.

And I believed I could make it work.

The Airbnb in Mumbles has been important, but perhaps not in the way people might assume.

It doesn’t fund my travels.

For the most part, the income from Airbnb sustains the property itself. There are bills, maintenance costs and all the other expenses that come with owning a house.

During the busy summer months it can generate more, but some of that money needs to be kept aside for quieter periods and inevitable expenses.

What Airbnb has done is allow me to keep my home in Mumbles without having an empty house sitting there costing me money.

I still need to earn an income.

And there have absolutely been moments when I’ve watched the balance in my savings account going down and thought, I’d quite like some money to start travelling in the opposite direction now.

That’s the bit of digital nomad life that doesn’t make such a good Instagram photograph.

Then came the Amazon

Our next major move was to Tefé in the Brazilian Amazon after Vanesa accepted a research position there.

Originally, we expected to stay for around 12 months.

It didn’t work out that way.

I’ve written separately about our experience in Tefé, but living there was much harder than we’d expected.

The internet was unreliable. We had power cuts. The noise was relentless. We didn’t always feel comfortable when we were out, and trying to work online became incredibly frustrating.

Eventually, we made the difficult decision to leave.

That period taught me quite a lot about this lifestyle.

Sometimes an opportunity can look incredible on paper and still not be right for you.

Living in the Amazon sounds amazing.

And parts of the experience genuinely were.

But visiting somewhere and building an everyday life there are two completely different things.

There were also a few experiences I could probably have done without.

I was bitten by a dog.

Twice.

You travel thousands of miles to the Amazon, surrounded by some of the most extraordinary wildlife on the planet, and what gets you?

A dog.

That resulted in rabies vaccinations, which wasn’t exactly on my digital nomad bucket list.

Still, it makes a good story afterwards.

There are things I miss

The hardest part of leaving the UK has nothing to do with work, money, bureaucracy or finding decent broadband.

It’s family.

I miss my children.

They’re adults now and have their own lives, and thankfully technology means we’re able to keep in touch easily.

But that’s not the same as being there.

I miss other people too.

My friends and my neighbours in Mumbles who had also become friends. They were people I’d see regularly, have a drink with and chat to.

I miss that familiarity and sense of community.

And occasionally I miss ridiculously ordinary things.

A proper cup of tea, for example.

You would think tea and milk would be fairly difficult things to get wrong.

Apparently not.

There were times in South America when I would have paid an unreasonable amount of money for a decent cup of tea.

I also miss knowing how everything works.

When you live in your own country, you don’t realise how much knowledge you carry around without thinking about it.

You know where to go.

You understand the language.

You know how to sort out paperwork.

You know what somebody behind a counter is asking you.

Suddenly take that away and simple things can become surprisingly complicated.

Nobody warns you about the paperwork

If there is one thing capable of removing the glamour from international travel remarkably quickly, it’s bureaucracy.

Visas have been one of the most frustrating parts of the whole experience.

Forms.

Appointments.

Documents.

More documents.

Waiting.

Queuing.

Discovering you need another document.

Going back again.

In Bolivia particularly, so many things had to be done in person rather than online.

Being self-employed gave me the flexibility to deal with that, but flexibility doesn’t make standing in a queue for hours particularly exciting.

Language adds another layer.

Very few people we encountered in Bolivia or Tefé spoke English, and my Spanish or Portuguese is certainly not fluent.

At first, that could feel quite intimidating.

Over time, though, I’ve learned that you find ways around it.

You pick up words.

You use technology.

You gesture.

You occasionally look completely confused (well, most of the time).

And somehow you get there.

Going home felt stranger than I expected

In February this year, we unexpectedly returned to Mumbles after my auntie passed away.

We went back for her funeral and stayed for around a month.

It was lovely seeing my family again, despite the sad reason for returning.

But something surprised me.

Being back in my own house felt strange.

Because the house is now used for Airbnb, I almost felt like a visitor in my own home.

I found myself being ridiculously careful about keeping everything tidy, almost as though I was staying in somebody else’s property.

It was still home.

But my relationship with it had changed.

And perhaps I’d changed too.

At the end of February, we packed our bags again and returned to Bolivia.

Then, a few weeks later, we packed them again.

This time we were heading to Poland.

Poland has changed the equation again

We’re now living in Białowieża in eastern Poland, and this chapter has turned out far better than either of us expected.

We’ve settled remarkably quickly.

We have a beautiful apartment. Vanesa’s institute is a five-minute walk away. We’re surrounded by forest and wildlife.

And I have extraordinarily fast broadband.

Never underestimate how exciting fast broadband becomes when your entire livelihood depends on it.

For the first three months after arriving here, I made a deliberate decision not to take on new client work.

Instead, I gave myself time to develop some of my own projects that I’d been talking about building for more than a year.

Financially, that meant dipping into my savings.

I’ve probably used a couple of thousand pounds that I now want to replace.

But I don’t regret doing it.

I’ve started taking client work again, new projects are coming in, and the things I’ve spent those months building are beginning to move in the right direction.

For the first time, I feel I’m getting closer to the kind of working life I originally imagined.

Not one where I don’t work.

One where I have more choice about the work I do.

My idea of success has changed

I don’t particularly want to build a business that means sitting behind a laptop for 12 hours a day just so I can say I’ve built a successful business.

What’s the point?

What I want now is enough.

Enough income to live comfortably.

Enough income to travel.

Enough freedom to spend time with Vanesa.

Enough flexibility to disappear into the forest on my bike occasionally.

And enough security that I don’t have to worry every time I look at my bank account.

That’s what I’m working towards.

My goal over the next 12 months is to build my income to the point where our everyday living costs aren’t the main consideration.

Vanesa’s income currently covers much of our life here, while I build things back up.

I’d like my income to increasingly give us the freedom to travel and experience more without worrying about the cost every time.

That feels far more meaningful to me now than chasing some arbitrary income target.

Have I changed?

I’m not sure.

I don’t think I’ve suddenly become a completely different person because I’ve lived in a few different countries.

I’m probably more relaxed.

I’m definitely better at dealing with uncertainty.

I’ve become more confident in what I can offer through my work because I’ve had to rely on myself to make it happen.

I’m still cautious about financial risks.

Some things never change.

But I’m much more willing to take a chance on life.

I’ve also had more time to learn.

Not just new technology, business skills or another few badly pronounced words in a foreign language.

I’ve had time to learn about myself.

That’s something I probably didn’t give myself enough space to do before.

At 56, I’m still learning what I want the next part of my life to look like.

And I’m increasingly comfortable with the fact that I don’t have all the answers.

So, did I make the right decision?

Yes.

Without question.

That doesn’t mean it’s always been easy.

I’ve worried about money.

I’ve missed my children.

I’ve missed friends.

I’ve battled bureaucracy, struggled with languages, lived somewhere that didn’t work out and been bitten by a dog in the Amazon.

Twice.

But I’ve also lived in Bolivia.

I’ve seen caiman and capybara minutes from our front door.

I’ve experienced the Amazon.

I’ve travelled through South America.

I’ve spent more time with Vanesa.

I’ve learned that I can work from another country.

I’ve discovered that plans can completely fall apart and life carries on anyway.

And now, somehow, I’m writing this from Poland.

If I could go back to January 2025 and walk into my house in Mumbles while 54-year-old me was packing his bags, I don’t think I’d give him much advice.

I’d probably just tell him to go.

Don’t wait until everything is perfectly planned.

Don’t expect everything to work out exactly as you imagine.

Some of it won’t.

But that’s part of it.

For most of my life, I wanted to travel and experience living somewhere different.

I just never quite got around to doing it.

Perhaps I wasn’t ready.

Meeting Vanesa changed that.

She gave me a reason to finally get on the plane.

And looking back now, I think the biggest risk wouldn’t have been leaving the UK at 54.

It would have been staying because it was easier.

I don’t know where we’ll be living five years from now.

For once, I’m quite happy not knowing.