How Moving Home has Helped me get Back on Track.
I had one goal upon graduation last spring: Whatever you do, don't move home. Stay in Lincoln. Go to Cali. New York. Anywhere....except back home.
Spoiler alert...I moved back home this summer in June.
My vision of post grad life went a little bit like this: I would move the month of graduation, a degree in my hand, and a job lined up. I would be in a new state, making new connections, living my life to the fullest, as some would like to call it. That was my fantasy all four years of college.
To return home to my tiny town where I grew up for eighteen years of my life, where almost everybody knew me, was just not an option for me.
Don't get me wrong, I have a great relationship with my parents. I didn't have any unfinished business with anyone that I was trying to avoid. My reluctance to move back home after school had nothing to do with my parents or the past. It had everything to do with me and my future.
"I wanted to get my life started right away after college, and I knew that moving back to that mountain town was just not the right place for me to do that."
So, to avoid even the option of moving home, on the first day of my senior year, I made a commitment to myself: have your post-grad life plan be done by April. This would be a month before graduation. So, I would have plenty of time to relax and prepare for finals, while also being stress free of where I would be living come graduation. Well...April came around real quick and the reality had set in that I wasn't going to find a job outside of Nebraska. So...my two choices were to either keep my current job until school ended. Then, find a better job and a new, cheaper apartment. Then that way, I could save money and just move to Cali or New York by this time the following year. Or my other option...move back home.
Since my mind was set on not to move home at all. I stayed in good old Nebraska and soon, the pieces started to slowly crumble. Safe to say that I was in over my head. I ended up finding a new job that paid better and was a closer commute. I also found a new, cheaper apartment that I grew to love very much. Once I was settled in with my new job and apartment I for sure thought I would be set to move out of Lincoln next year....boy was I wrong.
Bills, bills, bills. This was one of the two paychecks I would receive for the month. Which wasn't bad..but then comes the next paycheck and I was spending it like there was no tomorrow. Half the shit I was buying was bought on impulse..so basically I was young, dumb, and broke. To make things worse half the time I would avoid going grocery shopping and just eat fast food or go out downtown with my friends. It was all bad. I was so focused on what was happening in the moment, I forgot to think about my future.
So, around December I finally sat down and started thinking about my life at that moment. I realized all the decisions I was making were poor and just messing with my mentality. I was never going to get better acting this way. I had little to no money saved up for moving outta state. My life was a mess. I needed to take a different step in my life. A step I may not like, but it was the right step to lead me in the right direction.
My lease ended in June. That would be the month. That would be when I finally said goodbye to the"The Good Life," my home, for the past five years.
Time went by fast, and it came to the point where I needed to start packing up my apartment and hauling my years worth of shit I collected and head back home...and I was discouraged.
I began to question if was making the right decision.
Days leading up to moving day, I wasn't sleeping. Which lead me to have a hysterical breakdown at my grandma's house the night before I had to drive back. Why was I like this? I mean, besides money issues there were other reasons I was moving home too. I had made some relationships that resulted in myself making poor decisions. I was in a toxic relationship that was just getting worse and worse every day. By the end of it all, I hated going downtown on Saturday's because of the people I would run into there. Nights like those are supposed to be fun. Not getting an anxiety attack when you see someone who wants to start something up. So yes, essentially I was moving home to escape all this negative energy I was surrounded by. Which was a great thing for my mental health right? So why I wasn't I sleeping? Why did have a breakdown? What was wrong?
"I was finally happy again."
Honestly though, I felt like I was starting to do just that all by myself. Months had passed since I came to the conclusion to move home. I was surrounding myself with people who I knew would always be there for me at my lowest of lows. I had cut all the toxic people out of my life. I was starting to create a new, better life for myself. So yes, I did have concerns about moving back home, because I was finally happy again.
One concern was purely out of ego: I didn't want to be a cliche, the stereotypical millennial, the wayward twenty-something who moves back in with her parents because she can't handle the "Real World."
My second concern was far more grounded: I was worried I would lose all my motivation to move to California or New York.
I had grown immensely through the past five years and I was scared. Scared of just accepting the first job handed to me, hating it and losing my motivation to get out of that town. I was scared that because of this tiny town and lack of communication with old friends, I would go back to being depressed and lose all momentum in life. I was scared that all of my hard work from school would just become nothing. I thought I would end up adapting to the small town lifestyle again and just stay there, like a lot of the people from high school end up doing. Which is not a bad lifestyle to live. It's just not the life I know I want to live.
Well, it has been about two months and I am so grateful that I was wrong. Far from losing motivation, I gained it. Living in the basement of my parent's house in this quiet town, I was able to reorganize and reevaluate my life. I laid out the previous years of my life. I started by turning my basic slideshow portfolio into a website. While I was designing this new portfolio of mine, and looking back at everything I had created in college. Reliving the projects I had spent hours on, drawing and creating, simply because I loved the process of it, versus the ones I dreaded even starting on. Something hit me.
"I had done it. I figured out what I wanted to do with my life, career wise, and how I was going to attain it."
This small town atmosphere has given me the much needed time to clear my head. Stay away from the stupid shit that just got me into trouble, and to just reevaluate life in general. I have been able to set both short-term and long-term goals for not only my mental health, but my career as well. I am starting to get my priorities in order, and I know I am making decisions based on introspection and not impulse.
We all take life at our own pace. There is no shame in moving home, whether it is right out of college, or years after graduation. Anywhere you can find the time to take a deep breath and reorganize is a good place to be.
As Always....Thank You for Reading.