So let’s say I gave in to my impulses. Run, hide, get away from it all. Actually do what it takes to go away somewhere. Let’s go with Britain, because it’s the foreign country I’ve been to the most, and I’ve paid enough attention to Absolute Radio and BBC America that maybe I could pull it for a while.
First – how long? The stamp on the passport says “six months without recourse to public services,” which I assume means I might be able to get treated for a sniffle on the NHS but shouldn’t count on help with a job or housing or anything. So you need a place to stay – and a place for two, presumably, because I don’t think the wife will cotton to me running away to Britain without her. If staying longer than a couple of weeks, a job is essential, unless you have a stray house to sell for the cash to sustain you through this little outing. But even if you could sort that – ok, you have a shed to live in somewhere, and somebody will pay you money to blog, and the wife can keep her job and telecommute from the Pret around the block (or the pub down the lane if rural enough) – fine.
Then what?
How long before you come back? Do you ever plan on coming back? You’re cutting your old job adrift, almost certainly. You’re not going to see much of your friends – even with the help of Skype and FaceTime, there’s still the time zone difference, and forget about having people pop over to visit. You might see the Redskins occasionally, if you’re willing to get up at two AM for Monday Night Tuesday Morning Football (although regular start time would be 6 PM, just right to cap off a Sunday evening) but forget about hearing Sonny and Sam on the radio. Actually forget about following college sports altogether, unless you can arrange for some sort of wacky international streaming access (not bloody likely). Different TV might be a novelty for a while, might even be enough to while away the evenings sometimes, but you’re going to have to go out and make an entirely new crop of friends in a foreign culture (don’t forget, two countries separated by a common language).
But if you don’t do it for good – if you wind up only making a year of it or such, and you’ve quit your job and sold your house and abandoned your old life to make it work – what do you have to come back to? At that point, you’re committed. You’re all in. You’ve bet your life on the devil you don’t know.
So as much as it might help to be curled up on the sleeping bags in the shed, with the rain falling outside and the mist on the moors, and the splendid isolation from everything you might want to get away from for a while – you’re probably not going to be able to make it work.
Reality is a bitch, that’s for sure. I guess this is why people have that saying about trying to be happy with what you’ve got. Or this is why everything in life has consequences. And pros and cons. There’s no such thing as perfection, so you have to choose which best case scenario from which you have the option to choose.
Just like all Big Life Decisions, it’s about compromises. You can leave your beautiful, two-story, gorgeous, historical home in a god-awful location surrounded by narrow minded people, but it might mean you live in someone’s guest bedroom for awhile, and then when you move out someday, you might only be able to rent a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment.
Or you can move to a different country and give up almost everything you had before to have a wonderful experience in a new place for a short while. But then you have to start from scratch when you return to your home country. (Ref: Tall Heather)
Or you can stay where you are and spend more energy and time on finding activities and people that bring your life meaning. But it might mean trial and error to find something you enjoy, or people who don’t annoy or bore the shit out of you.
That’s the neat thing about life. Very few things are permanent. If we’re willing to be flexible and open minded, and if we’re prepared to adapt and perform, we can do a lot. Probably not all at once, but let’s face it, that would be boring.
I know you’d love to have the entire future all planned out. Know it’s secure. Know you’ll be all right. Unfortunately, you know life doesn’t work that way. All I ask of you is to have faith in yourself that you (and I, us together) have the skills, intelligence, and competence to make it work. Whatever that may be. And if we end up selling the house to go on some life adventure because we choose that set of pros and cons, then so be it.