- I started working remotely in 2017 to combine international travel with my career.
- My parents thought the decision was reckless and unsustainable.
- But my mom just decided to quit her job, so she has more flexibility like me.
When I started working remotely in 2017 in hopes of advancing my career while traveling, my parents thought I was throwing away a successful life for no reason. For them, success meant the stability of a job that required them to stay in one place, work traditional hours, and show up in person.
By the time I graduated from college, I was pursuing what I thought was the ideal career: a job in finance in Washington, DC. I was 22 years old, working hard and on track to achieve everything I had been told would make me happy. But after almost a year of back-to-back days at the office, unnecessary happy hours and a long bus ride, I was completely burnt out.
One morning, while on my way to work, I fainted and waking up surrounded by strangers, I realized how unstable my life had become. Many things were going through my head, but the thought that I was losing my health and was so far from my life to travel the world made me question everything I was working for.
The burnout made me realize that I needed to do things differently
I knew something had to change. I wanted to travel, but I also wanted to continue to advance in my career, so I began looking for graduate studies that would allow me to do both. A few months later, I was accepted into a program in Auckland, New Zealand. But instead of moving around the world and looking for a new job, I decided to keep doing the job I was doing in DC remotely.
Convincing my employer was not easy. Remote work was not popular at the time, and I had to negotiate extensively and justify my productivity, but after months of duplicate documents and discussions, they finally agreed.
When I broke the news to my parents, they were shocked. My dad thought I was being reckless and risking something I shouldn’t, and my mom couldn’t understand why I would leave a stable job for an uncertain opportunity halfway around the world. However, I knew I had to go.
At the end of 2017, I moved to New Zealand, where I studied and worked remotely for over two years, visiting countries such as Zimbabwe, Colombia and the Netherlands. I learned to balance work and life in a way that felt fulfilled.
Everything changed during the pandemic
My parents relied heavily on personal interactions to manage their accounting business. Meeting customers face-to-face and maintaining a personal connection built trust and kept their business running.
Like many others, they were forced to adapt when the pandemic hit in 2020. Suddenly, remote tools like video calls and cloud-based software became necessary. While the change wasn’t easy at first, it showed them that it was possible to be productive, maintain relationships, and do their work entirely online.
However, when things began to return to “normal” in 2022, my parents returned to meeting with clients in person. My mother, in particular, began to feel the burden of her old routine. Her client list included people scattered across different areas, and she often had to spend long hours in traffic, juggling an inflexible schedule that rarely worked in her favor. Constant car trips to meet clients left him exhausted.
My mother has decided to go long distance forever
This year, everything came to a head. I had my daughter – my mother’s first granddaughter – and she traveled to the Netherlands to visit us. That trip completely changed her perspective. Spending time with her granddaughter made her realize how much she valued family time and how the rigors of her work schedule was personally getting in the way.
When she returned home, she boldly decided to quit her personal job and switched entirely to remote work.
It was not an easy process; at first, she had to work by negotiating with some of her clients and finding others who would already accept this way of working. But she persevered, building a remote practice that allowed her to spend more time with her family and even travel with my daughter and me.
