Everyone’s selling the dream:
MacBook on a terrace. Ocean waves. Zoom in swim shorts.
"Work from anywhere!" they scream, while sipping overpriced lattes and posting filtered sunsets.
Let’s kill the fantasy.
Freedom Didn’t Set You Free. It Just Removed the Walls Around Your Burnout.
I didn’t choose to go remote from Crete. I just had to get out of the UK - no plan, no cushion, no grand sabbatical. Just a passport, a laptop, and the kind of existential dread you don’t post about.
For the first 48 hours, it was dreamy.
By Day 3, it was dystopian.
Your office is a bed. Your calls are at midnight.
You’re working from paradise while slowly rotting inside.
No commute. No boss. No rhythm. Just Slack pings, broken Wi-Fi, and existential questions like:
“Is it Monday?”
“Have I eaten today?”
“Why do I feel like I’m failing while staring at the ocean?”
Remote Work Doesn’t Blur the Lines. It Nukes Them.
You don’t notice it at first. That’s the dangerous part.
Time zones turn into traps.
Your calendar collapses into chaos.
Days bleed into nights and weekends vanish into one long, low-grade panic attack.
And no one notices.
Because there’s no office. No team. No external pressure.
Just you.
Alone.
Pretending to “live the dream” while doomscrolling through productivity hacks you’ll never use.
The Discipline Tax
Remote work doesn’t demand less. It demands more.
More structure. More boundaries. More emotional resilience than most people are trained for.
Here’s what saved me:
- Sacred hours. Mornings = deep work. Afternoons = paddleboard or rot in silence. Pick your poison.
- Hard stops. No calls after 6pm. If it’s urgent, it’s probably not.
- Daily resets. Walks in the sun. Fresh food. No tech. Just movement and stillness.
- Gear that works. Yes, I packed a 27-inch monitor in a suitcase. I looked ridiculous. But I got shit done.
- Real connection. Co-working, FaceTime, texting people who give a damn.
The people chasing “freedom” forget that unstructured time is a luxury only if you know how to handle it.
If not? It’s just soft chaos.
Everyone Loves the Idea of Freedom - Until They Meet Themselves
Let’s be honest: the 9-5 was a cage. But it was a stable one.
- You had rails.
- You had rhythm.
- You had someone else caring whether you showed up.
- You had a steady Paycheck (Perhaps)
Remote work removes the rails. And then asks you to drive faster.
Most people don’t crash because of location. They crash because they never learned how to self-manage when no one’s watching.
You know what freedom actually is?
It’s a mirror.
It shows you all the bullshit the office helped you hide:
Your lack of priorities.
Your terrible energy management.
Your addiction to feedback and supervision.
Remote life strips away the scaffolding - and reveals the flinch.
“You Can Work From Anywhere” - Sure, And You Can Also Get Lost Faster
Technically true.
Tactically dangerous.
Here’s the truth:
Most people are just working from different backdrops while slowly unraveling.
- Their calendars are chaos.
- Their outputs are scattered.
- Their “freedom” is just an excuse to never build structure.
Because structure isn’t sexy.
But it’s what separates the builders from the burnout tourists.
The Harsh Truth? You’re Not Stuck. You’re Undisciplined.
If you’re drifting, it’s not the fault of your location.
It’s the fault of your systems - or lack thereof.
Remote work is a stress test.
If your ops suck, remote just exposes it faster.
It doesn’t make you lazy. It shows you always were.
It doesn’t steal your time. It reveals you never protected it.
And it won’t save you. That’s your job now.
The Real Remote Work Flex?
Discipline.
- Quiet hours.
- Clear rituals.
- Focused output.
- Boring routines that compound like hell.
If you want vibes, keep scrolling LinkedIn.
If you want freedom, start building systems.
Because nobody’s coming to save you.
No boss. No HR. No “structure.”
Just you - with or without your shit together.
So next time you see someone posting their laptop-and-latte pic with “living the dream” in the caption…
Don’t get jealous.
Get suspicious.
Freedom isn’t fun. It’s earned.
And you pay for it with structure.