Why I Said No to Full-Time… But Yes to Leading Remotely

I push my laptop across a small wooden table, feeling sea breeze and caffeine collide.

The header of my Notion board reads: “Week: Remote Sprints — Tokyo → Lisbon”. My AirPods are in. My VPN is on. My calendar shows three async standups and a timezone juggling act.

I’m officially a digital nomad now — location-independent, laptop-first, and obsessed with coworking spaces that have reliable high-speed internet.

I text my mom: “Yes, I ate. No, I wasn’t swimming with the laptop.”

She sends back a crying-laugh emoji and, predictably, “When are you coming home?”

Cut to: me smiling, typing in Slack, pinging the distributed team:

“Morning from Porto! I’ll be offline 1–2pm GMT for a workation surf sesh. Async updates in #project-red.”

SEO keywords I’m naturally using on my blog post draft: remote work tips, digital nomad essentials, productivity hacks, work-life balance.

Close-up on my fingers flying over the keyboard — Trello cards moving, a Zoom waiting room, and a notebook filled with time zone conversion scribbles. People around me are on laptops with stickers that scream “freelance hustle” and “build in public.”

I narrate: “If you’re reading this, here’s the condensed checklist I didn’t know I needed the first month: nomad visa options, cloud storage backups, a solid VPN for cybersecurity, a portable hotspot, coworking memberships, and a sanity-safe schedule.”

Barista: “You’re new. Where are you from?”

Me: “Home’s complicated. Today I’m from my laptop.”

Barista: “Then you’ll fit right in.”

I’d been chasing cheap flights and better Internet — from Bali to Lisbon to a mountain town with one cafe and a miracle router. My freelance income is steady — passive income streams, a few retainer clients, a digital product launched on Gumroad. Still… something felt off.

The camera zooms in: my laptop battery at 6%. The hostel’s router flickers. My team needs a hotfix now. My inbox pings: “Client: urgent — site down.”

I bolt to the hallway. A fellow nomad, Mila, slides a power bank into my hand. She’s a remote UX designer who has been my unofficial mentor on this trip.

Me: “You saved my job.”

Mila (shrugging): “We save each other. That’s the secret of remote-first life. Community > isolation.”

I patch the site via cloud IDE, deploy a rollback, and rant in the #ops channel: “FYI — never trust hostel wifi for production.” The team reacts with empathy — because remote teams live in shared pain.

Keywords used naturally: remote-first, distributed team, cloud storage, SaaS, remote jobs.

I thought the twist would be a stolen laptop or a con artist selling fake coworking passes. Instead, the twist was quieter and sharper.

I got a video call from my old manager back home — someone I hadn’t seen in two years. The company I’d freelance for paused hiring during my nomad leap. I had ghosted an onboarding email months ago (silly, naive me). Now she was telling me something I didn’t expect:

Manager (on-screen): “We’d like you back. Full-time. Remote-first. Salary, benefits, and—”

She paused.

Manager: “—we’re moving our regional team to Lagos. We want you to lead it. You don’t have to roam if you don’t want to.”

My chest pulsed. For two years I’d been running toward freedom. For two months I’d been running away from ties that I didn’t know were still solid. The offer promised stability — health benefits, a real pension, people who remembered birthdays.

Me (murmuring): “I thought I wanted to be everywhere. Maybe I just wanted to avoid something.”

Mila nudged me. “What are you going to do?”

I realized the plot twist wasn’t about geography — it was about choice. The remote life taught me I could choose where loyalty and roots fit into my location-independent story.

I decline the full-time offer— not forever — but I propose a hybrid plan: lead the Lagos hub remotely two weeks a month, keep the digital product active, and schedule office sprints to build culture. They accept.

The camera pulls back: me sipping iced tea, typing a blog post titled: “How I Built Stability While Staying A Nomad: VPNs, Visas & Heartstrings”

MILA: “You okay? You’ve been zoning out more than the router lately.”

ME: “I’m thinking… can I actually have both — freedom and roots?”

MILA: “You don’t pick one. You design it. That’s the whole point of being location-independent.”

ME: “Design it… I like that.”