I might live rurally, but the last thing I wants is to feel is disconnected

telegraph.co.uk:

#cottagecore on Instagram?Country life was perhaps once synonymous with living off-grid, a hippy idyll for people who wanted to opt out of the system.

But for my generation of digital natives, living in nature doesn’t mean dropping out. It can be quite the ­opposite. For many of us, leaving the city isn’t a way to shun work but to focus on it, as US tech entrepreneurs in their ranches suggest.I am part of a generation who entered the workforce when remote working was already the norm.

We were used to freelancing from our beds in our PJs, running a remote office from our homes using Slack, Teams and Zoom long before the pandemic made such platforms widespread.Many of the people who come to stay with me in Somerset to help do up my cottage – people I found on the Workaway website where travellers exchange labour for accommodation – are subsidising their journeys by working online, and were doing so long before Covid appeared.

Those staying in my caravan have so far included a woman working in online book marketing, a freelance illustrator and a man trading cryptocurrencies.The internet hasn’t just revolutionised the workplace but changed every aspect of our lives, and this has never been so apparent in the country.