My year as a digital nomad looked perfect online. The reality? Lost luggage and no days off | Francesca Specter

A country-hopping career is the worst of all worlds. Now, I view those laptop-on-the-beach snaps with knowing scepticism

You can't run away from your problems, so the old adage goes. Yet in March last year, boarding a one-way flight from London to Bogota, I gave it my best shot. I had just turned 30 and was feeling the societal pressure to settle down, like my coupled-up friends whose lives seemed to be bifurcating away from mine, and to progress in my career. But I wasn't ready.

Two years earlier, I had left my office job to became a freelance writer, moved into a one-bed flat and split up with my long-term partner. Any one of these things might have been cause for celebration - each was a positive step for me - but the unexpected successive Covid lockdowns that followed rendered my new lifestyle lonely and stagnant, rather than exciting and opportunity-filled. And so, after the lost years of the pandemic, and with no dependants, I wanted to embrace the freedom I had failed to make the most of.