After appearing in Australia's Foreign Correspondent last week about the political environment evolving in the United States, I received an array of messages. Some were simply supportive and excited about a TV appearance, but quite a number of them involved some version of “why don't you just come home?” — and I don't think it's that easy.
Before I moved to New York in 2017, I had a concept in my mind that I would make friends while living overseas, but they'd be my “overseas friends” or my “New York friends”.
These friends would be lovely and wonderful people, but ultimately they would be a short-term part of my life. They'd exist in a bubble of my adventures abroad and if I ever decided that I'd had enough and wanted to return home, these people would be reduced to characters in stories I tell for years to come—and hopefully we'd meet for drinks every few years to regale the old times.
What I realize now is that I was thinking of moving away like going on extended vacation which is of course not how it is at all.
Making the decision to uproot your life
I tell a version of my story about deciding to move to America where I visited New York once in 2015 and had a yearning to return. This is totally true, but when I think more I realize that I don't remember the exact moment where I decided to pick everything up and make the move.
I know the momentum built and I sold my house, and I wound up my business, but that moment of sitting alone with my thoughts and making the decision to start the process is lost to me.
To add to the context of where my mind was at, I want to introduce a scale I'm calling my “Commitment to Living Abroad”. In this moment I'm someone who's had the idea of moving to a whole new country and has never thought about this before—I'm at a 2/10 on the Commitment to Living Abroad here: It's not nothing, and I want to do it, but it wouldn't take too much to turn me around if things were too hard or didn't fall in my favor.
Ultimately though I knew that I was going to be away at least three months and from there I'd see what happened. I was always very comfortable telling people in Australia that “I might be gone only three months and will come back, and that's completely fine” because I was partially nervous that it might not work, but also nervous that I might not like the direction I'd decided to take. Whatever the outcome though, the decision meant that I had to say goodbye to my family and friends, and had to accept that I wouldn't be as close to them as I was before—at least for a short amount of time.
This is an incredibly difficult decision and does require you to mentally separate yourself (just a little) from one life to make room for the new one. This immediately alters how you see yourself, and where you identify as “home”, something that I still struggle with over seven years later. My good friends will always be my good friends, and the history that we've shared can never be undone, but you start to miss important dates, and stories in common, and despite all your best efforts, maintaining a deep relationship becomes incredibly difficult.
The transition isn't easy but if this is the decision you've made, then you commit and you make the leap.
Setting up a life in a new country
If everything goes well, you'll find that the place you've arrived at is accommodating and exciting and you make the decision to stay beyond the length of a normal holiday or tourist visa. Again, this decision means altering how you think about where you live, and you adjust your mental (and financial) investment to be focused on a new location building yourself a nest.
This is where the Commitment to Living Abroad moves from a 2 to a 4. It's still new but you've now committed to a longer stay and it's not just a flight of fancy anymore. You've laid some groundwork, you've proved it can be done, and now you're really putting in the effort.
As I mentioned earlier, this not only means buying toasters and monthly train passes, it also means making friends. As you may have guessed, these friends don't exist only as far-away friends, because you realize now that you're there living beside them, they're not far away at all.
When you move you reset the size of your social network, and your calendar goes from being abuzz to being clear so you have more time and effort to dedicate to those new people around you who you do meet connect with. This means that your newly minted pals actually leapfrog “new friend” to heartfelt “good friend” in no time at all. They're the ones you might see multiple times a week, and you'll share your experiences and stories with them in real-time.
The bond is fast but tight and you've just suddenly realized that your Commitment to Living Abroad has moved from a 4 to a 5/10. You're no longer tied solely to one country and not the other, you're riding the fence 50/50 and importantly you've made the realization that leaving these new friends isn't as easy as getting on a plane. You will miss them, and they will miss you too.
While it might not happen all at once and for many the trajectory will be different, this shift in the scale will happen for many if not most people who move abroad. If the trip is ultimately a failure like I had worried at the outset you might never make this step and the scale will stay rooted firmly in the home column, but for the rest it's onward and upward.
The considerations for staying overseas
So now the equation shifts. Importantly it's no longer about whether you're just having a good time and think it's worth staying away from your “home”, and you're not just seeking thrills and successes for yourself. It's now about how hard it will be to pull yourself away from the new life you've built yourself. A lot of this building happens through painful and lonely moments as well as triumphs of success in your new location so giving it up comes at a cost.
For some, reaching 5/10 will be enough for them, and they'll always keep one foot planted equally in their home country. They'll never consider staying long-term, and they'll always consider their life abroad to be term-limited. For them this has been a wonderful experience and an exciting part of their lives that they will treasure forever. Some of the friends they've made will stay with them, and others will become characters in their own story; and that's perfectly great too.
When situations arise that they don't like, or personal narratives change, it doesn't take too much to see that the logical decision is to pull up stumps and move back home. This is logical and smart, and is in the best interests for those people and their families.
But that's not for everyone, and wasn't for me.
Why I can't just “move home” when things get bad
So why can't I just move back?
Not only did I make friends with my move, but I also met a partner who's local to New York and not someone who planned to leave her home country (we talked about it, right at the beginning) who I then married. Not only that but I got a dog, and then I had a baby! I started businesses, engaged in the community, and have a vast and wonderful network of very close friends.
I can't just walk away from this anymore, it's who I am, and most significantly I am relied upon by others. That reliance means that disappearing would impact others' lives negatively, and that's not something I ever want to do.
At this point it's clear that my Commitment to Living Abroad moved sharply from a 5/10 to a 10. 6-9 flashed by without even realizing and once again, the momentum that brought me to the US carried me through experiences and a history of its own. This isn't an extended holiday, this is my life now. I couldn't say how many scale points I can attribute to each action, but as life goes, they each flow into one another and it's been amazing.
There are issues that worry me about staying in the US, and there are social and political decisions that I don't agree with. But through all of that, I've built a life that I love and one that can't easily be picked up and moved, no matter how difficult the future might be.
Sure, one day I might move back to the country I grew up in, but that's going to be a decision in and of itself, and not a simple return to status quo.
New York City is one of the more difficult places in the US to get a toehold. If you can… make it there (sing it to me, Frank!) lol. I have a friend who moved from San Francisco to New York City because his wife was going to try her chance at Broadway. San Francisco (and California) are also difficult, due to cost of living and competition (and tech industry money). Anyway, his sentiment was that getting a toehold in NYC is so difficult that when you finally get an ok living space, you don’t want to give it up. That’s a factor for high cost-of-living places – more opportunity; higher cost of living – and if you leave, the prices just keep going up while you’re gone, making it difficult to get back in. Your money can go a lot farther if you move somewhere less expensive, but you’ve also grown accustomed to the amenities and social fabric of the urban environment (if you have acclimated). As far as criticizing a country… it really depends on the audience. Intelligent, well-traveled people will recognize that every place has its plusses and minuses, and potentially enjoy discussing them. The die-hard, dug-in locals will firmly believe that they live in the best place on earth. The more desolate, the more they will defend it, if only to convince themselves.
All so true. Once you leave you will never be a 100% here nor there anymore. There are goods and bads in all off this. I would not ever want to be without the experience of living abroad but it just not always easy.
The problem with your commentary and others is I see a lot of fellow Australians in the US, complain about the US. They focus on the negatives, and fail to mention the positives (the reason they stay here despite the negatives).
It’ll be something like “I hate guns” is the negative, but the positive is the probably top 10 reason someone dies in both Australia and US is Cars, Obesity, Health Reasons, Falling, etc.
We’ll complain about the efficiency of US healthcare, but not mention how we tend to get better care and care faster when we do get care.
And most AusMerican’s will generally fail to mention the key reason they are here, the Economy, often they’ll say it’s too greedy or too capitalistic, but forget that’s the reason America’s economy brought most Australians across and pays us so much more and why we’re never moving back to earn half what we’d earn here.
Thanks for your insights, Michael!
I don’t disagree that there are positives, but I think that’s implied in the fact that I and others are still here at all (and moved here in the first place). My article focuses on the negative elements because that’s what initiates the comments from Australia for me, of “Why don’t you come home?” I feel that the question wouldn’t be asked as readily if there were only positives.