The best and worst things about moving across the country.

In 2021 I moved 3,000 miles away from my hometown.

If I could give any piece of advice to someone who feels like their hometown is just not living up to your childhood potential, venture out and move to a place that you never thought you'd move to. By the summer of 2021, almost all my friends had moved either out of state, or out of the country, to pursue school or their dream job. I obviously felt very alone, but I honestly felt more "behind" than ever. I can't tell if it's just me, but I've always felt a little bit behind the curve. People around me are getting engaged or married, they're buying property, or they're living out their life's dream of living abroad. And I'm just me. I'm your average person. I'm working my boring 9-5, not knowing at all what I want to do with my life. I still have no idea what I want to be. I sort of hate that. Sometimes I wish that I had that childhood dream of being a nurse, or a doctor, or a teacher. Why can't I have that, that knowledge, that assurance that the path to success is just paved out for me? I've never had that epiphany of Oh wow! I've found my calling! I don't even know if that's how it happens, but I guess I wouldn't even know. You know when you know what you like, and you know what you don't like, but you don't know what you love yet? Yeah, that's me. Anyway, due to my experience in my hometown becoming exponentially more boring, I decided to search out my next destination.

I met Maddie in college, I think in the year 2018. I met her through a friend, and I can honestly say that I had doubts about this girl. My friends and I had this tight-knit group that no one had been able to break into. How was a complete stranger, from a completely different background, going to become best friends with us? Well, I had never been so judgemental and so wrong in my life. We instantly clicked with her and the rest is history...

A few years after this, Maddie had moved to North Carolina to pursue her dream of getting her Ph.D. Long story short, we missed being around each other and she convinced me to move out to North Carolina from the West Coast. I can't tell you what brought me to this conclusion but I said to myself, why the hell not? If every other person in the world can move away, why can't I? And you don't really know what's going on when you're talking yourself into these crazy and spontaneous ideas. I think your separate personality, the one that just thinks that nothing can go wrong, just takes over and decides to make all your life decisions on your behalf. Because before I knew it, I was in the truck, trailer full, in the middle of Nebraska, heading to the muggy, hot, east coast.