There are a lot of misconceptions and stereotypes about the lifestyle of “digital nomads” and “travelers.” Often enough, there’s that one fantasy image that people tend to conjure up when approaching the topic of “digital nomads.” You know, that one image of a white guy or girl, perhaps a young couple, sitting at a cafe with their Macbooks, looking out at a beautiful beach somewhere in South America or Asia. Of course they are doing work, perhaps he’s a web developer and she works in digital marketing, and they enjoy a life of luxury, of crystal clear beaches during the day and wild nights out hitting up different bars and restaurants at night. Of course, their monthly expenses are cheap because they make dollars online while spending them in countries where people only see a dollar.

I’m not here to criticize those people. In fact, I’m becoming on of those people. I’m here to shatter some of the misconceptions that you may have about the group that I am becoming more and more entangled with.

Before you call me the next Christopher Columbus, colonizing lands and exploiting other cultures on my parents’ dime, let me tell you a bit about myself.

I am the daughter of immigrants. When I say daughter of immigrants, I don’t mean they immigrated, figured out their lives, and then had me. No, I mean I was on the plane to the US with my parents and have that memory forever burnished in my mind. I’ve seen my parents struggle to put two words together in English and often times I am still left to be the translator for family members that have not yet achieved fluency in this newly adopted language. My parents have done well in the United States, certainly, but they aren’t wealthy by any measure and they certainly, as much as they offer and beg me, aren’t paying for my trips.

So I’m not that person. I’m an immigrant of Azerbaijani-Jewish descent. My boyfriend comes from a humble Iraqi-Israeli family, so he’s not that kind of person either. We are fans of Apple products though, so go ahead and judge. That’s our privilege out on the table for you all to inspect.

I’ve spent the better part of the previous year in a sort of travel-state. I’ve been in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Greece, and the Netherlands for a hot minute. I went back to the US twice, and I’ll be off to Vietnam and Thailand soon enough. It all sounds and is exciting enough, but with the excitement comes a lot of pressure. While the lifestyle isn’t exactly expensive (the cost of airfare is usually balanced out by cheap food and accommodations), there is a lot of anxiety that comes with simultaneously living and traveling at the same time.

Procrastination is perhaps that thing I noticed that happens quite often when living in this lifestyle. Now I’m not talking about the kind of procrastination in which you forget to study for a test until the last minute and then you fail and move on with your life. I’m talking about procrastination that actually affects your livelihood and money-making capabilities. I’m not outright broke, but I have my bills to pay, and without some form of steady paycheck, it becomes difficult and quite scary to think about when the next time you’ll get paid is.

Now I do a lot of small jobs here and there. I teach English, write, and do some social media work to make my lifestyle possible. A lot of things happen when you’re essentially self-employed. You really have to motivate yourself to wake up every morning and set your own schedule, and actually stick to your routines in order to make sure that you’re optimizing your time in the proper ways to work well and efficiently. It goes without saying that you need a go-getter attitude to even attempt to live like this.

This is easy enough to do, especially when you have an equally-motivated significant other. You tend to use one another as a crutch to uplift the other person. It’s a nice, mutualistic relationship in many ways. I highly recommend it!

The place where I really feel procrastination hit me is the actual traveling bit. Like all of the anxiety that comes with airline travel: the packing, the unpacking, the repacking, the endless waiting, the security lines, the hostility and questioning at border controls…then there’s the actual Airline Travel, and once you’ve finally arrived at your destination, you have the entire anxiety-inducing experience of waiting at baggage claim (which I no longer do, carry-on only!). When the whole process is finished, you’ve arrived at your destination, and bam, you’re given the gift of jet-lag and figuring out how the hell you’re going to get from the airport to wherever it is you’re staying. Then there’s the constant reminder that you’re an outsider in your new destination coupled with the fact that you’re not likely to understand the native languages of most places you’re traveling to.

Of course you get used to these things as you travel more and more, and these experiences are all rather small and meaningless on their own. They do add up though! The summation of all of the above is an overall feeling of anxiety and fatigue. Of course jet-lag naturally occurs as you cross timezones, but all the events leading up to the ultimate jet-lag don’t help. You end up in this state where your mind and body are in a constant battle. New environments, new climates, new seasons, new toxins, new languages, new people, new culture, new policies. You force yourself to adjust, adjust, adjust! Of course, you end up making do and succeeding in your ultimate mission, but the mental effects take their toll, and the mental and physical exhaustion can be overwhelming!

I’m currently visiting my parents for a month before meeting my boyfriend in Vietnam. After two weeks at my parents’ home, I have finally gotten myself to a schedule where I can form some form of routine in order to start working again. There’s no beach here, no new languages, just my regular life where my parents picked me up at the airport. Despite all this, I spent two weeks just struggling to keep myself mentally and physically adjusting to my own mere existence in a new place. Then I have the fortune of doing it all over again in another three weeks! Not to mention the 30 hours of travel it’ll take to get to where I need to go…

So how do you deal? Well, I haven’t exactly figured out that part yet. I’ve read a lot from websites like the World Health Organization (WHO) and have read advice from other digital nomads on how they combat and make the most of their jet lag and overall fatigue. There are no easy answers. It all comes down to planning and execution before traveling to different destinations.

The WHO website states the following:

“Individuals react in different ways to time zone changes. Frequent flyers should learn how their own bodies respond and adopt habits accordingly. Advice from a travel medicine clinic may help in formulating an effective coping strategy.” Source.

If you’re somebody like me, the idea of even formulating a “coping strategy” is yet another task I need to complete on my to-do list.

Some digital nomads also recommend taking supplements and high doses of antioxidants. “Drink plenty of water” is advice that almost everybody gives for every situation in life, but it has its own significance in the world of airline travel, where the level of humidity in the air is known to be unnatural, much dryer than most humans are used to.

There are no simple methods to really combat the unnaturalness that is airline travel. There is no quick-fix to unconfuse your very-confused circadian rhythm. The changes of light and dark are enough to mess your entire system off. In fact, it has messed me up, I’ve been sick two weeks before traveling back to the US and I’m still sick now (coughing with a runny nose, mostly) with the remains of whatever viral infection decided that my body was a nice house for a prolonged stay.

Travel is hard. Travel isn’t always fun. Travel can be amazing for your mental and physical health, but it also can be incredibly taxing.

I haven’t seriously worked in over two weeks. Like I said, I’m a middle-of-the-road millennial. I don’t have my life figured out and I work very hard for the little money that I earn. I can’t really afford, with my student loans and my bills, to live without working for two weeks. What this downtime will end up doing is getting me ready enough to overly exert my productivity in the following weeks until my trip, causing me to sleep at strange hours and “make up” for lost time in which I was letting myself recuperate.

The jet-lag and fatigue will kick in again upon my arrival in Southeast Asia, and I’ll have to learn to work through it all over again.

Travel, live, and learn, but always remember that things are not always as they seem when it comes to a lifestyle of travel.

The inevitable exhaustion that travel brings was originally published in The Ascent on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.