It would be fair to say that Texas and I have a slightly fraught relationship. It hasn’t been an easy location for me in many ways but we’ve made it work. On the whole, I think that Houston and I have a healthy respect for each other these days.
Yet last week I found myself falling into one of expat life’s psychological traps. I like to call it ‘comparison roulette’. It’s a dangerous game and it’s highly likely that someone will get hurt.
We were flying back to Houston after a wonderful trip to Seattle and Vancouver Island. And I was recalling the feeling of awe I used to have as we flew back into Norway – I used to love seeing the land spread out below us, the islands, the fjords and the mountains.
Our brief visit to Canada reminded me of that feeling. While we enjoyed Seattle, we fell in love with pretty much every part of British Columbia that we saw – breath taking scenery, mountains on every horizon, the smell of salt water on the breeze and just a hint of autumn in the air. And seriously, who knew that the Canadians made such great wine? Add to that the fact that we were spending time with are expat friends who have become like family to us and I had a hard time leaving.
And that’s when it started to go wrong. I started to make comparisons – Texas versus Vancouver Island, Texas versus Canada and even Texas versus Norway. To be fair to Texas, it’s not really an even fight. Vancouver Island and Norway have the sort of landscape that just speaks to me and allows me to indulge my passions for being on the water and hiking. With temperatures still in the 90’s on the first day of autumn, my suburban neighborhood here in Texas doesn’t really feed my soul in the same way.
Surely it’s just post-holiday blues, I hear you say. Well, yes, there is some of that. But for the expat it’s a bit more complicated. Comparing your current location with previous locations has the potential to really trip you up. Post-holiday blues tend to quickly fade as you slip back into the familiarity of home and the life you’ve built there. For the serial expat, our lives are always a little bit transient and often our current location wasn’t our choice but determined for us by our spouse’s employer. When it’s not your ‘forever’ home, how hard to you work to make it work?
When you start making unfavorable comparisons between your new and previous or desired locations, you’re setting yourself up for misery. Your current location can’t really win. You start to focus on all the things you hate (the heat, the traffic) about your location or all the things you are missing out on. It’s a dangerous place and it’s exactly where I found myself last week.
It’s not where I want to be. I don’t want to spend the rest of whatever months or years we have left in Texas quietly hating it and wishing I was somewhere else. The ‘somewhere else’ will come soon enough and will bring its own challenges and problems with it.
This week I had to remind myself that being happy in your expat location doesn’t just happen. It takes work. You have to push yourself out there to meet people, to explore opportunities, to see how you can make this place that you wouldn’t have chosen to live in become your home. Sometimes it’s exhausting and disappointing and sometimes, the work really pays off and things start to fall into place.
Sometimes, you have to remind yourself that this is all supposed to be an adventure and then actually live like it is one. So Houston, what do you say, are you ready?
I have this feeling all the time. It’s been hard to come back to Qatar after Greece. Not because I don’t like it here, but I feel like other places might be more suited to how I like to live. For now I enjoy living here, but know it’s not forever. And being from Texas, I know it isn’t for everyone.
I have been loving the photos from your Greece trip! I think we are all susceptible to the re-entry blues with any location – that whole ‘the grass is always greener’ thing. And to be fair to Texas, I might feel differently if we were based in Austin or even further north….but for now, I have to love the one I’m with!
Thanks! Glad you are enjoying them. There are more to come.
Yes, the “grass is greener” syndrome is hard to avoid.