{"id":14296,"date":"2026-08-21T16:41:44","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T14:41:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/workingremotely.nl\/from-burnout-to-living-and-working-in-my-camper-for-9-months-a-year\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T12:44:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T10:44:28","slug":"from-burnout-to-living-and-working-in-my-camper-for-9-months-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/workingremotely.nl\/en\/from-burnout-to-living-and-working-in-my-camper-for-9-months-a-year\/","title":{"rendered":"From burnout to living and working in my camper for 9 months a year"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you had told me 15 years ago that I\u2019d end up living in a camper van for 9 months a year while still doing my job as a marketing manager, I probably wouldn\u2019t have believed you. I\u2019m Henno van de Hee, a marketer and van lifter. For a long time, traveling and working were two completely different worlds for me: whenever I wanted to travel, I would literally quit my job.<\/p>\n

Things have changed quite a bit since then. My RV is my home and office 9 months a year; I work 4 days a week for my clients and, in the meantime, I regularly move my \u201cfront door.\u201d That might sound like a very carefully thought-out plan, but it definitely wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Quitting my job to travel<\/strong><\/h2>\n

My career began during my vocational training at the MultiMedia Academy in Amersfoort. For my internship, I ended up at e-Village, an online marketing agency, and I ended up staying there. I worked there part-time throughout my entire bachelor\u2019s degree program in Interactive Media at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. In the end, I worked there for about eleven years and progressed from intern to junior, mid-level, and senior marketer, and later to marketing manager.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, I was also really eager to see the world, but remote work wasn\u2019t really a thing back then. This was well before the pandemic, and working from Mexico or India for a few months wasn\u2019t something you could just suggest to HR. So my solution was pretty simple: I quit my job, went backpacking for a few months, and as soon as I started running out of money, I reached out again with , \u201cHi, I\u2019m back. Do you happen to need anyone?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The great thing was that I could just come back several times; I think I even got a promotion once after I\u2019d resigned. Not exactly a conventional career path, but it worked for me.<\/p>\n

\"Henno, \"Hennno's<\/p>\n

No more traveling\u2014just buying a house and working<\/strong><\/h2>\n

At some point, that changed. I bought a house, started my own business, and threw myself into it completely. I found the first few years as a freelancer especially exciting: I wanted to land projects, build up financial reserves, and grow my business. So I worked. A lot.<\/p>\n

Travel, something that always gave me a tremendous amount of energy, had meanwhile all but disappeared from my life. For about seven years, I hardly took any long trips at all, until my body signaled about 3.5 years ago that it had had enough and I was on the verge of burnout. Fortunately, I caught it in time, but it still took me about 8 months to recover. My client at the time\u2014ironically, an occupational health and safety service\u2014helped me tremendously with that, even though, as a client of a freelancer, they weren\u2019t at all obligated to do so.<\/p>\n

I tried several times to get my career back on track. It didn\u2019t work out twice, and I ended up taking another break. The third time, I succeeded. At the same time, with the help of a psychologist and others, I began to take a critical look at my life.<\/p>\n