I’m writing this while camping out here at Mati, Davao Oriental, with a glass of wine beside me, as I plan my next trip to Vietnam this coming April.
It sounds dreamy, right?
Sometimes I catch myself in moments like this and wonder how I even got here.
Years ago, I thought digital nomads were people earning six figures while hopping countries every month. The kind of people who had everything figured out. I didn’t think someone like me, from the Philippines, could become one, too.
But I guess life has a strange way of taking you somewhere you never planned to be.
I used to think my dream life looked like an office
Before this life, before the travels and random work setups in coffee shops or airport lobbies, I was a corporate girly working as an executive assistant to a vice president. And if I’m being honest, that used to be my dream job.
I’ve always wanted to be that girl in classic movies. You know, dressing up for work, attending meetings, taking calls, carrying a planner around like she had her whole life together.
I loved that job. At least until I didn’t.
Not because I was burned out. Not because I hated waking up for work (although I do sometimes). But, I think I was just… too comfortable.
After two years of the same routine, I kept thinking: maybe there’s more for me outside this. I didn’t know what “more” looked like. I just knew I wanted to find out.
So without much planning, I quit.
Looking back now, quitting a stable corporate job without a clear plan sounds terrifying. I should probably say I had everything figured out, but I didn’t.
I didn’t mean to build a life online
Even while I was studying IT and later working in corporate, I had already been doing freelance projects — graphic design, basic web development, business branding, and just any digital stuff.
I even ended up creating the website for the company I worked for and helped them build their digital presence. I remember explaining why businesses needed websites, branding, and social media presence long before people around me talked about digital marketing as casually as they do today.
That became one of my first high-paying projects. And for the first time, I thought, “Maybe I can actually do this.”
So after leaving my job in 2018, I started building my own digital marketing brand called Virtualsetter Asia.
I pitched to local businesses. I explained branding, websites, social media, and business emails. I worked from cafés and hotel restaurants around Dipolog City.
I also quietly started this blog. Back then, I wrote about cafés and restaurants mostly because I wanted to support local businesses.
I didn’t know those small posts would become years of documenting my life.
WHAT DO DIGITAL NOMADS DO: A Day in the Life of a Digital Nomad
Building a business while figuring things out
The messy truth is that freelancing wasn’t romantic. I lost clients.
One client ghosted me completely and never paid me. I remember staring at unread messages, wondering if I had done something wrong.
There was a period where I had no income for three straight months, and I still had outsourced people to pay.
I closed my checking account because I thought I wouldn’t maintain the required balance anymore.
I questioned whether quitting had been irresponsible.
But you know, they happened. Still, I kept going.
The trip to Siargao that changed something in me
Then Siargao Island happened in 2019.
The company I used to work for gave me a trip there as a parting gift. I still think that was one of the most thoughtful gifts I’ve ever received.
I thought it was simply a vacation. I didn’t know it would become my first nomadic workplace.
I stayed on the island longer than expected, worked online, opened my laptop somewhere beautiful instead of inside an office, and I remember something shifting in me during that trip.
My mind and body felt strangely aligned with that lifestyle. Like maybe, this was the version of life I had been looking for without realizing it.
I remember thinking, “I want this!”. Not as an escape, not temporarily, but as a life.
When the world stopped, I started learning
But then the pandemic happened. The world slowed down for a while in 2019. Oddly enough, I didn’t feel completely stuck. I used that time to learn.
I took online courses, including Google Garage, because I realized working hard wasn’t enough. At that time, I needed direction.
For over a year, I balanced blogging, freelancing, learning, and building Virtualsetter, like, serious enough to register with BIR.
Slowly, things started working. The business grew, and I earned enough to finally explore.
When work and travel started becoming the same thing
In 2021, I landed some of the biggest projects of my content creation journey.
I became a creative partner of the #MasPachadaDapitan campaign with Dapitan City Tourism and was later chosen as one of the key travel influencers for the #OnceAgainZAMPEN campaign with the Department of Tourism Region 9.
If you had told my younger self, the corporate girl dreaming of office meetings and carrying planners around, that one day I’d be creating travel content and collaborating with tourism campaigns, I probably wouldn’t have believed you.
And somewhere in between creating content and taking freelance projects, I also found myself sharing what I had learned over the years.
I collaborated with Dapitan City Tourism for their Blog and Vlog Workshop, and later with Dipolog City Tourism for a Content Creation Workshop.
I still think about those moments sometimes because it felt strange, in a good way, to be standing in front of people and sharing knowledge I once learned by myself through trial and error.
Most of what I know about blogging, content creation, branding, and building an online presence didn’t come from a perfect roadmap.
A lot of it came from figuring things out, making mistakes, and trying again.
So being invited to teach and share those experiences with other creators felt like a reminder that maybe I had already come farther than I realized.
Travel became part of my work, and my work suddenly became part of travel.
I didn’t realize I was already a digital nomad
Then in 2022, I started freediving.
At first, it was simply curiosity. I wanted to try something new. I didn’t know then that freediving would eventually become one of the biggest reasons I’d travel more, explore more, and somehow understand myself better, too.
Because suddenly, I found myself going to places like Batangas, Panglao, Siquijor, Moalboal, and Coron. I planned trips around the ocean while bringing my work wherever I went.
FREEDIVE TRIBE PH: Camp, Dive, Yoga, and Work from the Beach in Batangas
My laptop was always with me.
So were deadlines, client meetings, blog drafts waiting to be finished, and freelance work squeezed in between travel days.
I remember there were moments I’d finish work in the morning and spend the afternoon underwater.
Or work late because I chose to watch the sunset somewhere unfamiliar.
Back then, I didn’t think much about it. I was simply living, working, traveling, and repeating it. Maybe that’s why I never noticed when the lifestyle I once admired from afar had quietly become my own.
Looking back, I realized being a digital nomad was never about working beside beaches or booking flights every month. For me, it became the ability to build work around the life I wanted instead of building life around work.
I love the freedom to stay longer somewhere I love, to leave when I needed change, and to work online while chasing experiences that make me feel alive.
The hardest part wasn’t unstable income
People think the hardest part is unstable income. For me, it was watching people my age settle down while I was still trying to understand who I wanted to become.
I questioned everything. I wondered if I was behind, and wondered if choosing freedom meant sacrificing stability.
Then someone would suddenly tell me, “I wish I had your life.” And I’d remember, I worked hard for this too.
Maybe I spent too much time comparing my timeline to everyone else’s that I forgot how much courage it took to build this one.
Learning how to slow down
Today, I’m still a digital nomad at heart. But these days I travel differently.
I do it more intentionally, less like collecting destinations, and more like building a sustainable life I enjoy waking up to.
I still choose this life, forever will be choosing this life, and it’s not perfect, but somewhere along the way, I built a life that feels more like mine.
So tonight, as I sit here on the beach of Samal Island, planning another trip, I’m thinking about the girl who dreamed of office buildings.
I wish I could tell her that the life she ends up loving won’t look anything like what she imagined.
I realized that’s the beautiful thing. The life meant for you arrives quietly while you’re busy trying to build something else.
