Lessons On Hanging In There
Sitting With the Uncertainty After Leaving a Job and Coping With the Intricacies of Moving to Another Country
In my last newsletter, I shared the news of leaving my job after a long time pondering my decision.
If you missed it, you can catch up with it here.
While I’m happy that I managed to put out the practicality of my decision, I have been feeling like I missed writing about the ‘no man’s land’ experience you enter when making such decisions.
Let me explain.
When I left my job, I didn’t have 100% clarity on what my next steps were going to be.
I knew that I wanted to experiment more with my freelancing, explore my writing, and simply needed a break to rest.
I trusted that the next chapter of my life would unfold and reveal itself to me.
I didn’t have to wait that long, as after a few weeks of leaving, it became clear to my partner and me that, after two years of full-time travel, we wanted to establish ourselves in the US for a more extended period.
This realization gave me a considerable amount of peace.
However, it was really just the beginning of a phase that would require resilience and endurance for navigating new uncertainties and the bureaucratic processes of a country’s immigration system while entering a new chapter in our lives.
During these weeks, I’ve been learning a few lessons on ‘hanging in there’ that I want to share with you:
1. Boredom is what you experience while you keep doing what you ought to do while waiting for results.
While waiting for work-related news, I keep doing every day what I have set myself to do for this period, which includes writing on Medium multiple times a week, this newsletter, a bit of freelancing, and exercising.
NONE of these activities are known for overnight success.
Now, for someone who has been traveling full-time, jumping from one continent to another in a 15-day time span, this kind of repetition—which consists of doing the same thing while waiting for the cumulative impact to take effect—is entirely new.
Some days, it makes me feel reluctant to get out of bed.
However, what I've come to realize in these weeks is that pushing through repetition and boredom is the only way to see results.
Most days, there's no dopamine rush around the corner, no spark of excitement awaiting me—just the steady accumulation of days while awaiting news or expected results to arrive.
2. You need to sit down to tea with the experience of lack of definition.
When I left my job, all of a sudden, I could no longer identify with my job role and/or company’s name at social events.
I was also left with an incredible amount of free time, and it was all up to me how to fill that in.
On top of it, as when I left my job I came to stay with my partner in NYC for a while, I also started struggling with concepts of belonging and a sense of place.
On paper I am a tourist leaving within the 90 days, yet I often know the city better than any of my interlocutors who have recently moved here.
What I've discovered through this process is that reinventing oneself or finding a new category that aligns with your current state takes time and patience.
Until then, you find yourself sitting down to tea with your lack of definition.
3. Uncertainty is More Widespread Than We Think
A few days ago, I crossed paths with an Indian student.
When we delved into discussions about the future, she appeared determined to avoid contemplating it and instead preferred to "go with the flow" (even if her anxious gestures seemed to suggest otherwise).
As I interacted with more Indian students in the U.S., and even my daily newsletter Morning Brew highlighted a 35% increase in students from India studying in the U.S., I became curious about how they could afford the sky-high University fees.
Upon researching, I found a mix of individuals who could afford it and others, the majority from the comments I read, whose parents had to take considerable mortgages, like a guy whose parents had to mortgage their only house as security for a bank loan.
Reading these comments made me realize that each of us, in our own way, is waiting for something, hoping for a glimpse of clarity in a sea of uncertainty.
Whether it's navigating the complexities of immigration or contemplating the future in the face of financial challenges, the shared thread is the resilience needed to endure the waiting game.
So waiting is the only thing we are left doing.
If you are waiting for some news to arrive, hang in there.
Yours,
Caterina
While waiting for my next newsletter, give a read to my latest article: