What would I tell you if you were where I was?
Part one — If not now…?
Years ago, on a summer holiday in Bodrum (a town on Turkey's southwest Aegean coast), I had a tarot reading. It was for fun. I was still at university and I’d gone down with a friend whose family lived there.
I remember saying that I wanted to live abroad, and specifically in Italy.
I had no idea about Italy by then. I hadn’t even been once, let alone the language, the culture, the cities. But I guess that was my intuition.
And the interesting part is that the lady reading my cards said yes, I was going to live abroad but somewhere overseas, and that wasn’t Italy.
My first arrival to the land of Great Britain was as an overseas student.
Go figure. Or go tarot.
I want to write about this without overthinking it, and without making it look like something different than it actually was.
Since I’m on the same journey, I’ve naturally come across a tremendous amount of “starting over” content. Everyone gives you advice on something, or teaches you something, or puts you in a box of “40+ starting over.”
And maybe I’m doing the same. I don’t know yet.
What I’m aiming for is to tell you my story without a filter. The vulnerable parts as much as the joyful ones, the struggles, the learnings, the sense of failing and the sense of winning as well.
I’m going through this live, so I’m stopping for a second, looking back at where I started, and noticing what I would actually tell myself a few months ago or even further back, when the idea was first planted.
Thank you for being here. Your support means everything. If you’d like to contribute to this journey of words and becoming, I’m deeply grateful.
The decade in between
Obviously I started building my life in the UK, and in all the survival mode of setting up a life in a different country, I wasn’t thinking of Italy at all.
(A small detour, because it makes me laugh now: I was a university student but I’d already started working while I was studying, and funnily enough I was an editor for a tech magazine. Then I started my career as a digital marketer, mostly at tech companies. My bachelor’s was in journalism, my master’s in communications. And hey, now I’m writing. How surprising life is.)
Anyway, I diverted.
Then in 2017 I had a brutal break-up with my boyfriend at the time. As much as I was sad, I’m not going to hide that it was actually the best thing that happened to me, because since then the trajectory of my life changed.
This is the Eat Pray Love part. After the break-up I threw myself into solo travelling for the first time in my life, while literally being so fearful. Thankfully my friend was getting married in Italy at that time, so my travel adventures had a soft start, and I think it was the first time me and Italy met, on the most beautiful destination of all, the Costiera Amalfitana. I’ve spent a week or two in different parts of that coast almost every year since. Except this year, which I’ve mostly dedicated to Rome.
This isn’t a piece about my solo travels. But there was one thing: after that year I was in Italy more than once a year, every year.
Then I met Rome. Honestly, love at first sight, and we became attached to each other. I was back and forth, and at times I spent extended periods there.
There was always the thought at the back of my mind: I see myself living in Rome.
There’s a phrase in Italian: mi sento a mio agio. I feel at ease. That’s exactly what Rome did to me. Nothing more complicated than that.
But…
It’s not always easy to leave a life you built over more than a decade. Or your career. Or your family and friends. Or even yourself because once you’re out of your comfort zone, or in a zone that’s not your home, or that’s now your new home, voluntarily or involuntarily, you’ll see a different version of yourself.
And that version is different from the version who moved abroad in their 20s.
I was raised to purely believe in life’s only path. Study, master the studies, find a job, master the career, climb the career structure, build the life, the home, the family. With that mindset, after decades of it, making a move on something you truly dream about and desire is the hardest thing you could ever do.
But then there comes a time. At least in my experience, there arrived the time.
I didn’t necessarily have to choose between a life I hated and one I dreaded. On the contrary, I was working a really good job, with really good people. I genuinely had a peaceful life, a healthy and productive routine.
But once something else is calling you, it is calling you.
Which also created fear. Fear of the unknown, of uncertainty, of the what-ifs, fear of regret.
And in between the good and the bad, after years of wanting it, I decided to do it. One of the videos I watched from a movie helped with that decision, too. I simply didn’t want to end up in my 50s saying I should have done that.
But let me be brutally straight and honest. I’m not selling a dream here, or telling you that once you’re out there it goes amazingly well. On the contrary it’s not an easy feat. But it’s not impossible either.
If not now, when?
I’m not writing this only for people who want to move somewhere else. This is for everyone, even if you want to change the smallest, simplest piece of your life. Because whether it’s starting over or changing one thing, there’s a commonality in the process.
And the question I’d start with is: if not now, when?
The answer may genuinely be “later,” and that’s fine. We’re all on a different journey and the timings differ for each of us. And unlike what social media tells you, you don’t need to start over once you hit your 40s. It may well be in your 20s — in fact I met brilliant people in Rome in their 20s who, in some form or shape, were starting over.
It’s not a spiritual injection or a piece of encouragement. It’s a genuine question, and in my case I literally did the maths. Here’s what that looked like for me, and what you might want to look at in yours.
Career: I was in a strong position, with decades of tangible marketing work experience, which made my anxiety a bit calmer in terms of future planning. If it doesn’t work out, I’d go back to my career. Knowing you have a tangible asset behind you makes it a little bit more relaxed.
Worth asking yourself: what’s the thing you’d go back to, and is it still there in a year?
Family: I’ve lived apart from my family for more than a decade now and they’ve become immune to me living and travelling in different parts of the world. So I’ve got their full support, but realistically I had to take a few things into account. They are ageing, and in fact my mum had cancer a few years back, when I had to spend most of my time in Istanbul to take care of her. Thankfully in this season of our small family everyone looks healthy and they’re getting along with their own life.
Worth asking yourself: what season are the people around you in right now, and are you deciding inside it honestly?
My sister: She needs her own section, because she’s the only family member in London. We’ve lived together and separately over the years, but she’s been a huge part of my life there. The decision of leaving her had to be thought about carefully, and I want to be honest that it didn’t resolve. It’s a cost I decided to carry.
Worth asking yourself: who’s the person this decision costs the most, and have you actually said it to them out loud?
Finances: “Quit your 9–5” is the most dangerous advice social media could ever give anyone. I won’t say it. On the contrary, I’d say assess your financial and logistical position in detail. If your change is like mine, I gave myself a year of run rate before I moved. If your change is something different, assess the logistical requirements instead. Even if it’s starting a diet, what would that mean for your shopping routine?
Worth asking yourself: what’s your runway, in months, written down as a number rather than a feeling?
Life: It will change, as I said, voluntarily or involuntarily. How resilient are you is a good question to ask and maybe developing a bit more resilience, maybe 1% more resilience, is the honest answer. It entails leaving your friends, your routine, your habits. The change you’re making will look different across all of those. Can you build new ones? What would it take?
Worth asking yourself: which one of those would you miss first, and what’s the smallest version of it you could rebuild?
Then look at the question again. If not now, when?
The answer may well be “yes, now.” Or “I need a bit more time.” And if it’s the second one, what I’d suggest is working out what that time actually looks like as a tangible plan.
Next up: where do I feel most misaligned?
Thank you for being here. Your support means everything. If you’d like to contribute to this journey of words and becoming, I’m deeply grateful.
I really enjoyed this and sound advice too, I moved from Australia to the uk and started again in my 20s. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve done and it takes a lot of grit and patience. I’m looking forward to the next instalment.