Last week, my family moved into our gorgeous new home in the country.
If you’d have asked me last week, I definitely wouldn’t have described it that way.
I would have said, “Me, my exhausted shift-working husband, two children under 10, two cats, fifteen boxes of books no one has had time to read lately, every baby toy we never threw out and a resentful chicken stuffed ourselves into a car and drove for an hour and a half to a house so far out that the internet actually stops halfway down the hallway.”
That’s right, my new home sits on the border between civilisation and the outback. We couldn’t even stream a movie the first night we were here.
We were tired, we were hungry, and we were stressed.
But now, as I’m typing this, the sun is setting over my own slice of paradise, shared only with the kangaroos. My husband is actually reading one of the ten thousand books we hauled up here with us. My kids are running free in a 20-acre-wide backyard. The cats are snoozing. Even the chicken has stopped it’s clucking.
It’s not a hot take to say making a tree-change from the urban jungle is stressful. Ultimately, though, it has been worth it.
And although it’s the same type of upheaval we all experience when making a move in our careers, we rarely apply the same emotional understanding.
Taking on a new role is one of the most anxiety-inducing things we do in our lives, especially if the job we’re leaving is actually a pretty good one.
Between first day jitters and imposter syndrome flareups, not to mention the long stress of sneaking out to interviews and actually telling your boss you’re leaving – a new job can start to feel like unnecessarily rocking the boat.
Remember though that you wanted to move for a reason – whether it was bigger opportunities, better projects, or simply the chance to work with new people in a collaborative environment
And as soon as the dust has settles (or the bookshelves are stacked) you’ll realise that moving was, in fact, exactly what you needed.