#6: The Cost of Starting Over on My Own Terms

I’ll try to keep this short since the story is far from over. In fact, I’d say the journey has barely begun.

I’m almost never on social media, so I promise I didn’t know it was apparently a trend to quit your job, move away from friends and family, and start over. Anyway, if it wasn’t obvious, that’s now the situation I find myself in.

It certainly hasn’t been all smooth sailing. There have been plenty of ups and downs. Many nights spent bed rotting with no sense of direction, and just as many days wondering if I made the right decision.

I can’t give you a definitive answer as to whether I’d recommend making the same choice if you’re on the fence about it. I can only share my experience and what life has been like for me so far.

Living Alone

This is one thing I actually can recommend.

Provided you’re in a good place financially and mentally, I think everyone should experience living alone at least once as an adult.

One of the biggest changes I’ve noticed since living alone is how much easier it’s become to start simple tasks.

When you’re living with roommates or under your parents’ roof, for one reason or another, I think there’s often less incentive to take full responsibility for your physical space. Maybe it’s because the place doesn’t entirely feel like yours, or you’re too busy hanging out with roommates who might be just as messy as you are. Whatever the reason, it’s easier to put things off when you’re sharing a space.

But when you’re paying your own rent and are solely responsible for everything, you start to develop a certain protectiveness toward your home and, a little more poetically, your inner peace.

You might find yourself occasionally letting small tasks slip. Throwing a sock on the ground, leaving dishes overnight, letting the trash pile up. And when there’s nobody around to clean up after you, the consequences of these habits start stacking up, quite literally.

You get to see the results of your procrastination in real time.

This has been a surprisingly helpful realization for me. Of course, I recognize that maintaining a clean space isn’t equally easy for everyone, especially when mental health is involved. But for me, living alone has been a great way to build better habits around cleanliness, accountability, and personal responsibility.

One rule of thumb I’ve been following is simple: if a task takes less than two minutes, just do it.

And if you think it’ll take longer, like reading a book or working on a project, commit to doing it for just two minutes. Odds are, once you’ve started, you’ll want to keep going.

It’s a small habit, but I’ve found it surprisingly effective.

Relationships

In the short time I’ve been living this lifestyle, my relationships have certainly suffered the most.

When you move away from friends and family, you’re suddenly faced with two responsibilities: maintaining your existing relationships and building new ones in an unfamiliar city.

I’ve been doing a pretty terrible job at both.

It scares me a little to admit this, but I’m starting to think I might be what some people consider a “proximity friend.”

Someone whose friendships exist largely because of physical closeness. Maybe you’re roommates, members of the same club, or part of the same friend group. But once there’s some distance between you, the friendship slowly starts to fizzle out.

For some friendships, that’s probably natural. But when it comes to your closest friends, I think it might be an indication of something deeper.

After realizing this, I’ve been making more of an effort to text my friends back home. I also call my family multiple times a week, even if it’s just to hear their voices or see their faces.

And honestly, I can’t recommend it enough.

Technology has brought plenty of problems into our lives, but being able to stay connected with people thousands of miles away is one of its greatest benefits. It’s something I don’t think we should take for granted.

As for making new friends, well, it turns out I’m not very good at it.

I’ve attended a couple of social events around the city, and I’m a regular at pickleball and mahjong clubs. But I still haven’t really found a friend group that’s stuck.

Nobody I can casually invite out for a drink on a whim or text about how my day went.

It’s still early, so I’m not particularly worried. I guess I’ve just realized I’m not quite the social butterfly I thought I was.

Looking back, most of my friendships throughout life developed naturally through proximity, school, work, or mutual friends. When those circumstances are taken away, making friends suddenly feels like foreign territory.

So, if you’re thinking about following a similar path and you’re anything like me, I’d say relationships might be one of the hardest parts.

Making new friends takes effort, and if you’re not proactive, maintaining your existing friendships can be just as difficult.

I also think the romanticized idea of moving to a new city and suddenly building an entirely new social circle isn’t always realistic.

If you struggled to put yourself out there in your old city, assuming it wasn’t a tiny town of fewer than 1,000 people, it’s probably unrealistic to expect that moving somewhere new will magically fix everything.

As if your hometown was solely responsible for your social life.

The reality is that some of these struggles probably have more to do with how we live our lives and approach relationships than where we happen to live.

A change of scenery doesn’t automatically change your habits.

So, that’s something worth keeping in mind.

Career

Even though I haven’t exactly found success off the beaten path yet, surprisingly, this is the part I’m least worried about.

It’s not that I don’t think about my career or finances. I certainly do.

But it’s still early, and I’m fortunate enough to have a financial cushion that allows me to take my time figuring out what actually fulfills me.

Check back in a year, and maybe you’ll hear a little more urgency in my words.

For now, though, I understand that I’m not going to strike gold overnight. I’ve been trying to enjoy the process, stay curious, and remain open to opportunities I might not have considered before.

I don’t know your financial situation, so I can’t tell you how you should approach this part of starting over.

For me, I’ve slowly become indifferent toward the career I once thought I’d spend the next 40 years pursuing.

That’s a strange feeling, especially when you’ve spent so much of your life working toward something, only to realize that reaching it doesn’t necessarily make you happy.

I’m only now beginning to do the introspective work of asking myself some of the harder questions.

What actually gives me a sense of purpose? What kind of life do I want to build? And what truly is the best use of my time?

I don’t have the answers yet. Not even close.

Who knows? If it’s three years from now and I haven’t made any meaningful progress, maybe I’ll find myself right back in the corporate grind.

But I’m pretty confident I’d regret never trying far more than I’d regret trying and failing.

Conclusion

No grand conclusion here. Just my experience so far. Read it and make of it what you will.

I’ll leave you with this, though.

I did everything that was asked of me.

I went to school. I got the grades. I got the internship. I got the job. I got the promotion. I saved the money.

And somehow, none of it made me feel like I’d accomplished anything that actually mattered to me.

I don’t regret any of it. If anything, I’m glad I followed that path long enough to realize it wasn’t what fulfilled me.

Because now I can unapologetically try something different, knowing that what I’m leaving behind wasn’t making me happy anyway.

And when I eventually reach the end of my life and look back on everything I’ve done, I doubt I’ll wish I’d worked harder for my boss, spent longer hours sitting in a cubicle, or made more money for someone else’s company.

I think I’d be far more disappointed if I never found out what else I was capable of.