International relocation -- Part 3
Let's dive right back into this mess, shall we?
Company coordinationImmigrationProperty managementHome maintenance/improvementsCarsBills, expenses, miscellaneous- Work
- Friends and family
All of things I've already covered took up a lot of time and effort, but these last two categories were (are) the hardest.
Work
I've done a lot of job hopping in my time. I have had nine different jobs in the last seven years. Nine frickin' jobs. Two of the nine were promotions, so those were good ones, but I spent probably more than a year out of those seven years looking for a job. Like, in between jobs looking for a job. And I hate the job search. It's a pain in the ass and takes months to land something. I've been wanting to work in a corporate social responsibility role for many years now, and I'd finally landed a job working on a Microsoft Philanthropies team. And here's the kicker--they found me. A recruiter reached out to me about this role and my background, in this rare instance, made me uniquely qualified. Finally!
It wasn't an easy role and the hours and energy were more than I'm comfortable with, but I was able to contribute in a way that I felt was important. My work was valued by the team. And I was building good relationships. To willfully walk away from that was painful. I tried to make the case for why they should keep me on remotely, but the only option that worked for them was if I worked Seattle hours. That's midnight to 9am Singapore time. Why move to another country in the first place if I'm going to let my life revolve around Seattle anyway?
Needless to say, I'm not stoked about having to undertake the job search again, but perhaps I need to reframe and embrace the challenge. It appears to be a huge part of my life, so why not accept it? And there's a silver lining, which is that I get to take a breather from the 7 to 6 life. Which is nice, but it feels unsettling to not be a financially contributing member of our household. I really don't like the feeling.
Friends and family
Leaving people is always the hardest part of moving. Seven years is the longest period of time I've lived anywhere since leaving Spokane for college. Even we, and most of our friends, knew that we were going to leave, it didn't make it easy when those final few weeks rolled around. Because the immigration piece took such a long time, it almost began to feel like the move was a rumor. Like it was something that wouldn't actually happen. We were lulled into our normal daily lives interspersed with friend visits that ended up feeling utterly ordinary. When that email from immigration came through, it almost felt like whiplash. Like we'd rushed headfirst into the transition, made lots of headway, then came to a sudden halt, not moving for months. Then full steam ahead again.
I'd been going on weekly walks with my best friend since May, lapping up all of the together time we could. We'd finally figured out how to spend time with some of our other friends, friends who are our parents' age and who we wanted to be particularly careful around in Covid times. Then there were the friends we'd kept seeing for months anyway, giving Covid the big middle finger. Which drew us closer together, and made it even harder to say goodbye in the end.
And Covid. Covid made all of this more strange. There are friends we didn't get to say goodbye to, and friends who didn't even know we were leaving. Moving out of the country during Covid is fucking weird. Covid had already diminished our socializing time, and shrank the number of people we did see to a small number. Where we would normally have done a big farewell gathering, we did a series of one-on-one and small group goodbyes, which were simultaneously meaningful and excruciating. There are stolid friends that I saw cry for the first time. Where we said "I love you" for the first time. I cried during and after every goodbye.
We made a pre-emptive last trip to see my sisters and nieces in July, way before our departure date was set. And since I'm on a daily sister text thread, and since we learned how to bake together remotely, that one doesn't sting as much.
Two weeks before we flew out, we also made a trip to visit my mom and brothers in Arizona. We don't see each other as often as we like, and this one was hard as it was both a hello and goodbye. There were some errands that weren't an unwelcome distraction. It was an upbeat visit but with the move ever on the fringes, even if it wasn't being talked about directly. That goodbye was as poignant as ever.
Then there was the goodbye to our furball, Asla. Because she is (was) a part of our daily life, an integrated, fuzzy member of our little unit, this goodbye caused a LOT of distress. She even got to move in with her Seattle grandparents, who are the absolute best cat people I've ever met. But my heart broke a little every day for months, knowing that she wasn't coming with us and that, anxious little cat that she is, we were going to cause her distress by moving her to a new home with new people. I felt like such a bad cat mom. Guilty. I know that the day I get pictures of her lounging about comfortably in her new home, I'll feel much better about it. But I'll always miss her. She was the best cat and we were so lucky to have had her in our lives.
Great, guys, now I'm crying. It's a Friday night and I'm sitting here crying, missing all of my Seattle and state-side people (and creatures). Yup. It's definitely harder moving in your 30's.
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