I’ve traveled and worked remotely for years. My parents thought it was reckless, but my mom just quit her job to do the same.

The author (left) works remotely, and now her mom (right) does too.

Courtesy of Alejandra Rojas

I started working remotely in 2017 to combine international travel with my career.My parents thought that decision was reckless and unstable.But my mom has just decided to quit her job so she has more flexibility like me.

When I started working remotely in 2017 with the hopes of advancing in my career while traveling, my parents thought I was throwing away a successful life for no reason. To them, success meant the stability of a job that required staying in one place, working traditional hours, and showing up in person.

By the time I graduated from college, I was chasing what I thought was the ideal career: a finance job in Washington, DC. I was 22, working hard, and on track to achieve everything I’d been told would make me happy. But after almost a year of back-to-back office days, needless happy hours, and a long bus commute, I burned out completely.

One morning, as I was on my way to work, I fainted, and waking up surrounded by strangers, I realized how unsustainable my life had become. Many things went through my head, but the thought that I was losing my health and I was so far from living my dream of traveling the world made me question everything I was working for.

Burnout made me realize I had to do things differently

I knew something had to change. I wanted to travel, but I also wanted to keep advancing in my career, so I started to look for postgraduate 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 across the world and looking for a new job, I decided to continue doing the job I was doing in DC remotely.

Convincing my employer was not easy. Remote work wasn’t popular back then, and I had to negotiate extensively and justify my productivity, but after months of paperwork and back-and-forth discussions, they finally agreed.

When I broke the news to my parents, they were shocked. My dad thought I was being reckless and putting at risk something that I didn’t have to, and my mom couldn’t understand why I’d leave a stable job for an uncertain opportunity halfway across the world. Still, I knew I had to go.

In late 2017, I moved to New Zealand, where I studied and worked remotely for over two years, visiting places like Zimbabwe, Colombia, and the Netherlands. I learned to balance work and life in a way that felt fulfilling.

Everything changed during the pandemic

My parents relied heavily on in-person interactions to manage their accounting business. Meeting clients face-to-face and maintaining a personal connection built trust and kept their business running.

Like so many others, they were forced to adapt when the pandemic hit in 2020. Suddenly, remote tools like video calls and cloud-based software became necessities. While the shift wasn’t easy at first, it proved to them that it was possible to be productive, maintain relationships, and do their work entirely online.

However, when things started returning to “normal” in 2022, my parents returned to seeing clients in person. My mom, in particular, started feeling 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. The constant back-and-forth of driving to meet clients left her exhausted.

My mom has decided to go remote for good

This year, everything came to a head. I had my daughter — my mom’s first granddaughter — and she traveled to the Netherlands to visit us. That trip changed her perspective completely. Spending time with her granddaughter made her realize just how much she valued family time and how the rigidity of her in-person work schedule was holding her back.

When she returned home, she boldly decided to quit her in-person job and transitioned entirely to remote work.

It wasn’t an easy process; at first, she had to work through negotiating with some of her clients and find others who would already accept this way of working. But she pushed through, building a remote practice that allowed her to spend more time with her family and even travel with my daughter and me.