Pros and Cons
I grew up on the outskirts of Norwich, a small city in the UK with around 300,000 people in it. All of my teachers at school seemed to have grown up in other parts on England, but gone to the local university UEA and then just ended up settling down and building a life here.
I can also trace my family history back through both my mum and dad’s sides and basically everyone grew up and stayed in Norwich. Sure, some branches ended up leaving and making families elsewhere but all of my immediate family stayed in Norwich, with the majority of my cousins going to local universities.
And just for the record, this is not a bad thing at all! Norwich is a lovely part of the world. I feel very lucky to be able to call it home and have a reason to go back there. It will always be my home and I love it.
However, when I had to pick the 5 universities I wanted to apply to, I quite literally drew a 100 mile radius around Norwich and said to myself “nothing within this circle”. Bless my poor Dad who then had to take me to visit these universities from around the country. I then got in at Warwick in the midlands.
While I was at university I also thought I’d end up in London. It’s where my brother moved to fresh out of uni, and it just felt like there was a natural pull that would bring me there eventually. In fact an ex girlfriend of mine once quoted this as a reason to break up, as she wanted to move back home after university and would never want to move to London.
Alas, life doesn’t always work out how you plan and I moved to Birmingham for a year before then spending 2 years in Detroit and now I find myself in Chicago, a full 4,000 miles and 6 hour time difference away.
Now I live a very privileged life. I’ve been able to travel around so much because I’ve been given incredible opportunities, however when you live on the other side of the world to the place that you grew up, there’s definitely cons as well as pros.
I mean time difference just sucks in general. It makes everything a little bit harder when trying to catch up meaningfully with the people you care about: friends and family. And unfortunately it means that the natural drifting apart that happens to what is probably the majority of relationships in life, just happens that much faster.
And then there’s the fact that you can’t just jump in a car or on a train and go home for a weekend. If I want to go home then it either takes weeks of planning or hundreds/thousands of dollars to do it in a hurry. Which unfortunately means that you can’t react super fact in case of an emergency, or really be there when bad news happens.
I think most people feel pretty helpless when their relatives and loved ones get older and have more and more health complications, but it feels all the worse when you’re sat on the other side of the world trying to figure out where the bar is for things that require you to jump on a plane ASAP.
I may be living what is basically my dream life in one of the coolest cities in the world, but like with everything in life it is not a black and white situation. It is not all good or all bad, but in fact a very murky grey with complexity and nuance.
Without getting into all of my personal life struggles on this very public blog, I’ve really been dealing with that nuance over the past couple of weeks and I just needed to sit down and write it all down. I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again: this blog is quite literally therapy for me, and now I’m back on a weekly schedule it feels dishonest to pretend to be in a different state of mind this week.
The positive/uplifting blogs will return at some point, I promise.
5th June 2022
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