I've had a similar experience. I have a lightweight laptop that I carry with me to use wherever I feel most comfortable, be that at a desk (plugged into a monitor, or not), in an easy chair, on a couch, on the beach, in the woods... depends on where I feel most comfortable at the time.

For CPU intensive tasks, I've set up virtual remote desktops [1] that run on a heavy-duty machine or VPS, which I connect to over SSH or Chrome Remote Desktop. I can even connect to them using my phone in a pinch.

[1] https://github.com/kstenerud/virtual-builders/tree/master/ma...