Every week, social media feeds us the same sunny illusion: 20-somethings typing from infinity pools, preaching “quit your 9-to-5 and live free.”
Freedom, they say.
But as Ruby Borg wrote in The Sunday Telegraph, that’s not freedom — that’s packaging.
She tried it: left her hybrid office job, moved to Spain, became her own boss.
Flexible hours, decent money, no one to report to.
The Gen Z dream.
Until the dream started asking for overtime: no boundaries, constant guilt, and a creeping loneliness that no beach sunset could fix.
Now she’s back in an office, five days a week, and oddly enough — she’s happier.
Because structure, it turns out, isn’t the enemy of freedom.
It’s the framework that makes it possible.
Being a digital nomad doesn’t mean escaping work.
It means building a new kind of discipline — one that doesn’t rely on a boss or a clock.
It’s about turning freedom into responsibility, autonomy into consistency, and movement into meaning.
The problem isn’t remote work.
It’s the illusion that “freedom” means doing nothing.
Real nomads don’t run from the system; they build their own — tougher, smarter, and more personal.
So maybe the slogan shouldn’t be “quit your job.”
It should be own your work.
Because quitting isn’t freedom.
Ownership is.