Postcards from America

(well, almost)

I initially wrote this as a podcast, I love me a podcast. So does the rest of the world it seems EVERYONE has a podcast now, which is overwhelming when you want to listen to one let alone record one, who’s going to listen to me? Well, I decided to write instead and perhaps I’ll record some audio as my writing develops and I gather around my lovely readers, and die-hard followers who will be anxiously waiting with bated breath at my every sentence. HA!

As with podcasts, it feels like everyone is now on Substack, well not everyone not just yet, but all the wonderful writers that I follow and get so much inspiration from are and I’ve been a lurker and a pervert for some time but now I’m ready to take the armbands off and jump in! Shamone.

Photo by Ross Findon on Unsplash

I’m treating this as a diary as anything else to help me navigate this next ‘challenge’ in my life. Anyway, how rude of me, let’s get the introductions out the way my name is Sammy, and I’m 43, a Hertfordshire lass currently based in the UK. A bit about me; talking to strangers fills my cup, and I’m obsessed with having a community (so obsessed I seem to abandon everyone I make to move away?!) I am hopelessly optimistic when meeting new people that I imagine we’ll all be sat on each other’s couches soon sloshing back red wine whilst declaring how much we love each other and what did we do before we met. I go walking and stare into people’s front rooms and houses and wonder what my life might look like living there, it’s one of my favourite pastimes. I also love to throw my whole life upside down and put my tender anxious heart through hell by moving countries again and again and wonder why I’m shoving Betablockers down my neck. So the next country to tick off is America, we’re moving to America. And what a time for it! Politics hasn’t been this nuts since House of Cards, and well we all know the rest of that saga.

The problem with me is that wherever I am, I long to be somewhere else. I just get bored of life in the same place for too long, is that my pattern forever or is just that I’ve not found where I love living? Of course moving countries, when you’re in your 20s, is sexy, adventurous, expected (ooo look at you upping and getting out of town) with hardly any belongings and a thirst to get out into the world is potent and enticing. However, I am in my 40s, certainly not yet dead and let’s hope plenty of miles left on the clock (touch wood) but if you’re reading this and middle-aged, you know what I mean. Everyone is fully into their groove, so seeing friends is hard work and is becoming more scarce as the years roll by. Christ I sound depressed, I’m not, it’s the TERWOOTH.

We’re all busy, most of my friends have kids, and we’re all spread out into the corners of different counties. Not to mention I’m knackered half the time and need naps. I don’t know if it’s a UK thing but trying to find time to see friends requires an extensive back and forth about what weekend suits seeing as we’re already booked up until January 2025. What about MAKING NEW FRIENDS -what the hell! Who has time for that? There is an excitement there, to find new friends in the US but there is too a weary, tired version of me thinking here we go again. But, I will make the best of it. I can just imagine myself now in my American local coffee shop and if someone is friendly to me I’ll be eyeing them up immediately to see if they are friend material. Watch out, I can be enthusiastic. Did I mention I’m adorable?

Photo by Jairo Alzate on Unsplash

Wanderlust is my middle name, it’s made my life interesting and fun, however, its kept me on the same salary, produced an erratic CV, and has meant I have wonderful, international friends but none that all live in the same place or even country. It has seen some great highs but has brought some incredible lows and sometimes I just don’t know where I want to settle. I lived in London for 15 years, moved to Australia for 6 years on and off, and moved back to the UK in 2019 before the world imploded. In my late 30s, I joined in holy matrimony to a wonderful man, we don’t have children (that’s a long story) and we’ll get to that bit when we’re all settled in.

In many ways the timing is perfect, I’ve wanted a change of direction in my job for a while, I get to move somewhere else and get to be ‘shiny’ Sammy, up for anything, energetic, a renewed purpose, the one with the accent that’ll keep me ‘interesting’ and I guess a novelty. I get to potentially reinvent myself all over again, my friend calls me Sylvester the cat due to my many lives and she’s not wrong. Perhaps America will be great for me, a fresh start, a chance to shake off the shackles of England and become the best version of myself (such a spewy term) But as we all know, wherever we go, we can’t escape essentially who we are but bugger it, those first few months I’ll be killing it until I can’t no more and I hunker at home and face time my mum and cry and ask her why we did this. She’ll tell me, I can hear her now, “What’s the matter? You get back out there and go and make some friends!

Once, I rang her from New Zealand in my early 20s, me and some friends were travelling around in a camper van and things had just gotten on top of all of us, we were sharing a double bed (a double bed! 3 of us! I miss being 22) and one night, having drank a box of red wine we all had a barney. We were all crying and wailing, totally dramatic, if I could witness it now I’d laugh but at the time it felt claustrophobic and unbearable. A threat to life! I called my mum, praying she’d say come home, that’s the sensible thing to do, no, she said “Stop being so silly, it’ll all feel better in the morning” Aside from the disgusting ‘I’ve been run over’ hangover, she was right. Thanks, mum.

I currently work in Fundraising but I have completed a Life coaching course, who hasn’t? I know, life coaching – ugh, she’s not one of those – listen, I don’t own any beads and I certainly, don’t own any crystals (ok maybe Rose Quartz when I was single) point is, I know what most people think of life coaches, what a bogus job and its shady. And well, it’s not got a great rap, but the way I look at it, there are naff people everywhere right? I mean, I’ve experienced so many people who shouldn’t be doing what they do. I know I’ve got a lot to offer as a coach and (here comes my American confidence) I’ve not yet moved there but I am starting to believe in myself! I have to be confident otherwise I’ll never bloody get it off the ground. Us Brits are so good at being negative and cynical, we’re not known for encouraging others if it is something new – and forget it if you succeed, maybe it’s just the naysayers on Social media but I always found the attitude in Britain “You’ve made your bed, lie in it” “Get on with it” “we struggle on” etc. You Brits understand what I’m getting at.

I’m going to legitimately look the Americans in the eye and tell them I am a Coach (albeit a very new one) and resist the urge to put myself down or snigger at the ridiculousness of it, because it is something I believe in and I’m manifesting that caper! Also, Americans LOVE personal development. Sounds like a match made in heaven. Form a queue (something I can certainly teach the Americans).

So why America? My husband works for an international company and it was increasingly looking like a move abroad could be a promotion it helped that half of his team is largely based in the US. Increasingly he’s been doing American hours and it was kind of inevitable that a move abroad for a couple of years, so we started to give it some serious thought. To kick start our potential ‘recce’ in November 2022 we did a huge American trip, we spent the first few days in Vegas celebrating my husband's and his close friends’ joint 40th.

Photo by Grant Cai on Unsplash

After Vegas, we went to Colorado on a horse ranch, getting my Daisy Duke on and riding horses in the sunny but cold mountainous landscape, whilst we were there we were asked if we wanted to fire some guns at beer cans – having always harboured a secret fantasy to be Sarah Connor in Terminator 2 I thought HELL YEAH. I let out a bit of wee when I fired the shot and took the can out, jubilant and pumped but not wanting to get too carried away we stopped after a couple of rounds. Once we had exhausted the role of cowboys, we left for Austin Texas, which was, as the Australians say A HOOT, it was late November and it was a balmy 27 degrees. Perfect, we got excited thinking we could see ourselves in this funky (hello 2003) city, with bars a plenty, big cowboy energy but friendly and welcoming to us polite and apologetic Brits. We then realised that most of the year in Austin it’s so hot you can’t go outside until the evening, I do want warmer weather but to be in Air-con for most of the year isn’t appealing to me. Once we left Austin, me with a pair of atrociously overpriced Cowboy boots (a must) and a liver already begging for help, we made it to San Fransico, I don’t want to talk too much about this city because it breaks my heart, let’s just say the drug use and homelessness was something I’ve never witnessed on such a scale. There were some pretty parts but I didn’t feel safe and I was so intimidated by the things that I did see. So that was also off the list.

We made it up the road to Carmel-by-the Sea – a beautiful and affluent Californian town where, interesting fact, Clint Eastwood used to be the Major, we spent 3 nights enjoying the warm sunny days wandering the beautiful weatherboard style shops and cute villagey feel vibe which makes it so popular and endearing. After that, we finally flew home after 2.5 weeks of white processed food and more craft beer than you could shake a stick at! It was a welcome relief to be home and to get up close and personal with some green vegetables. GET IN MY BELLY IMMEDIATELY.

As the search continued and the conversations went on, it was clear the West Coast wasn’t going to be a viable option, the company had said that the time difference wasn’t favourable, so we were left with the rest of America to potentially choose from, should the move go ahead, can you imagine being given the option to move anywhere, bar the west coast of a huge country? A country with such different rules, attitudes, beliefs, landscapes, and temperatures, it’s A LOT. Where would you go? New York just didn’t appeal at this point, a really big expensive city, we wanted something a bit more gentle but still a great base, somewhere we could earn money, spend money and be able to travel to see America. I couldn’t see us being able to do that in NYC. Also, the colder, freezing month. Just no.

Photo by Clay LeConey on Unsplash

We then revisited the US last summer, one of Aarron’s colleagues lives in Charlotte North Carolina, and we were intrigued, it was close to a lot of cool states, apparently a lot of New Yorkers were moving there because of the climate and cost of living. I didn’t know what to expect, all I knew was that feeling safe having enough to do and having access to nature were important to us. So off we went to Charlotte, and it is a decent, clean American city, absolutely not New York (where is) but smaller, cleaner, accessible, affordableish (for America) and the pull for us - great seasons that didn’t last too long but were solid, reliably long hot summers, shorter winters, and lots of lovely green, parks, theatres, sports stadiums (not my pull but might be fun for a beer and a hotdog?) and the most important tick of all - breweries. Plenty of em’. We had found somewhere we both agreed on. So now we had our city more or less chosen, we just had to wait for the paperwork to go through. And Christ all mighty it didn’t half take its sweet time, but finally, we have our visas. My visa photo is alarming, for starters I decided I’d do a ‘selfie’ in my husband’s badly lit office one rainy afternoon, I couldn’t even be bothered to take off my dressing gown, its leopard print (OBVIOUSLY chic) but with my lipstick barely hanging on and with bags under my eyes – I look like I’ve been up all night chasing a high, I look feral, unhinged, but it’ll always make me chuckle when I have to flash it to various officious looking folk. On the upside, when they look up at my face, they’ll likely be pleasantly surprised.

As I write this, I’ve been experiencing a serious bout of bad mental health. An anxious time, and of course I am – this is a big deal, right? (sorry I need to stop) It would be strange not to feel anxious about the impending change. With my coaching hat on, I have to try to reframe it as ‘excitement’. Sure I’m moving country but what’s the worse that can happen? It’s OK I know. I can come home, obviously. A few months ago I was excited, but I guess the closer we get to things our brains start hijacking: the what ifs, the anticipation, the WTF’s, are we doing this, we’ll be on our own! YADA YADA YADA. Now put this on repeat. When my anxiety gets intolerable, I start becoming very agoraphobic, suddenly motorways are an issue (they never used to be) a train journey, being in a small room or even outside with people if I don’t feel I can escape (so I don’t make a tit of myself, cheers brain!) then I can get panicky. This is a rather new thing for me, so it does suck balls. I’ve had a few panic attacks recently, christ they’re a laugh! I’ve never been more aware of the power of the breath, and not to try and sound like a monk, it’s amazing benefits when we purposely breathe and check in with ourselves.

Photo by MANH LAI VAN on Unsplash

Also with wavering hormones and the Peri-menopause very firmly in hand, I tried HRT (another subject for another day) but trying out a new medication and moving abroad just spun me out too much, I was constantly checking in with my body, how did I feel, what was THAT, you know what its like, I had to come off it and instead, I upped my anti-depressant, I want to feel better and more stable. And not feel like a crazy cow.

I’m envious of my husband who doesn’t have to look for a new job, just a simple move, whilst I have the unenviable task of looking for work in a big ass American city (OK not that bad, probably 1 million peeps but hey it ain’t a village!)

Americans, god love them, are a different kind of breed and confident eh? It’s like the day they were born god gave them the ability to articulate their emotions- Dawsons Creek they spoke articulate monologues about their intense feelings! They too can walk into a room and give a speech without a hint of nerves. OK, I’m generalising but umma right though? Spare a thought for us Brits, I’m going to be apologising left right and centre and they won’t know what to do with me, SORRY for not bumping into you (you bumped into me?) SORRY for not walking through that door – I’m going through this door over here! SORRY for not knowing you weren’t queuing (I saw a line and joined it, I’m English did I mention?) In some ways, I’ll be so adorable and even catch myself thinking Sammy, look how cute I’m being in this big ole city with people that speak funny, I’ll be loving myself (in a cute way) but then I’ll catch myself in another scenario and think I sound like a total div. JUST STOP. And people will chuckle about certain words I’ll use – “Alu-min-nium” and it’ll all end in a laugh.

Such fun.

Until next time!