Leaving Everything Behind: The Hard Truth About Moving for Your Career
- Brandon Townsend
- Jan 22
- 5 min read
Updated: Jan 23
If you're 18 years or older and you still live in your hometown, there would have been times throughout your life, no matter who you are, where you've developed awesome relationships, you've experienced some fantastic things throughout your life, whether that's with your friends or with your family, with certain kinds of friends throughout your time in school, and or created an awesome bond, I hope, with your family still.
Also, you might be working a job, maybe it's just a minimum wage, normal entry-level job, where you live a comfortable, somewhat happy life.
You go through your life, your work, maybe you've just graduated high school, and work part time, or full-time, and then during your free time, you get to spend time with your family, because you love your family, I hope.
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You get to catch up with friends whenever, you get to do whatever you want with them, and life just seems amazing. It's so good that you get to catch up with your friends at any time you want, as long as they're available and they're not working, of course.
It's also great because you're living at home, and you don't have that many responsibilities and you're living the comfortable, awesome life.
That's what I didn't realise which I took for granted until I made the move to move out of my home town and move into a completely different state, into a completely foreign city called Brisbane, Australia where I knew no one (other than my awesome uncle) and had no connections.
Imagine leaving that comfortable amazing life where you have your friends back home and you've got your family back home taking care of you, all the responsibilities of the house, and giving all that up to pursue your dreams or to pursue better career opportunities and to make something of yourself.
I had to give up all those amazing friendships, that I made back in my hometown, give up my amazing time that I get to have every single day with my family which I truly treasure, and missing out on events and sports that we had on every weekend where you'd meet up your teammates and have fun playing cricket.
The hardest thing for me was making an instant decision of moving away from my hometown leaving my minimum wage job in pursuit of succeeding further in my career.
I did this because I realized that I was sick and tired of living the same life and I realized if I was going to live the same way, I was going to be in the same position my entire life which may seem awesome to you but for me I knew I needed to live up to more than what I was doing.
Leaving Everything Behind: The Hard Truth About Moving for Your Career
Struggle #1: Quitting My Job and Going Through the Interview Process
I quickly realised the first thing that was a real struggle was getting through the nerves and how terrifying it was to go through the job interview process of all the sales roles that I was getting myself into.
There were plenty of butterflies flying around in my stomach, even at the time of preparing and trying to memorise my answers to interview questions I thought I might get.
Struggle #2: Stuff is Crazy Expensive - Very Tough to Get Ahead
I didn't realise how expensive things were, until I left home.
It's up to me now to pay for the bills in one of the most expensive cities in Australia and one of the most expensive places in the world. It was up for me to get a job to be able to provide for myself.
Not only that, I know this might not sound much like to you if you already live out of home and you're probably used to it as well, but being responsible for your own lunches for work, cooking your own dinner.
Well, I don't cook and when I was back at home, my mum always used to cook lovely awesome dinners which I did appreciate.
Now I will appreciate it so much more now knowing what it is like to be responsible for your own dinner.
Struggle #3: Being Homesick - Missing My Friends and Family Back Home + Higher Responsibility
What I will appreciate and value so much more now moving out is I don't get that awesome life back at home with my family and friends.
Also, when you move out, you can't afford to sit around and indulge in fun entertainment such as video games, laying around on the Sunday watching movies or anything like that because you have things to do.
You're an adult now you don't get to be a child you don't get to be a kid anymore and do all the fun stuff you get most of the days of the week.
It's hard for me as well being away from my siblings as well because I love them to bits as well I love my family to bits I love my friends to bits and giving that up still to this day even after about two months now hurts.
I won't be able to spend time with my family for Christmas, where everyone's happy, everyone's in a good mood, and excited to do things. That's another struggle that I had to sacrifice in order to do what I need to do to move forward.
I realise in order to achieve extraordinary things in your life, you need to make extraordinary sacrifices. Like the one that I'm having right now.
This is not to discourage you from going away from comfort at all. This is just to make you aware that, of course, it's not going to be all sunshine and roses and not easy like that.
It's going to be tough, but you'll realise that it's a fun journey. If there's no challenges and struggles throughout your life, then what's the point of life?
It's up to you now to make new friends, make new connections, be able to stand out in work, be that guy that shows up energetic with a positive attitude, everything like that, knowing that you don't know anyone and that a lot of things are going against you.
In Summary
Leaving Everything Behind: The Hard Truth About Moving for Your Career
This is the reality of leaving everything behind and moving for your career. The three main struggles I face and you will likely face are:
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