I'm writing this for anyone under the spell of the digital nomad highlight reel, and for my younger self, who confused suffering with adventure. This is the story of when I stopped asking, "Where should I go next?" and started asking, "What do I need to thrive?" Siargao, a surf island in the southern Philippines, gave me two of the best pandemic years of my life, until it started telling me it was time to leave. I arrived there in 2020 after traveling across Asia and the US. I was living out of