How do you know you're "ready"?

Do it. Just. Do. It.

There are always a lot of but and if, but it’s your life. What if you will regret that you didn’t make your decision, what if you will stay where you are and your life will become miserable. I’ll tell you only one thing - if you are satisfied with your life at this very moment - don’t move and enjoy, if not - take a risk! Better to regret about what u’ve done that about what u haven’t. And if you won’t like changes u certainly always can come back. Don’t waste your time and your life! Good luck

How do you know when you’re ready? Bzzzt. Trick question - you never are ready. Even if you think you are, you’re just foolin’ yourself.

I’ve been nomading in one form or another over the past few years and I still don’t think I’m ready. But I did it anyway and so far I haven’t died. Sure, there have been places that I hated but I just moved elsewhere. Problem solved. If I stuck to my plans that I had 3 months ago, I’d be several thousand miles east of where I am right now. But I changed my mind a few weeks ago, bought a $40 plane ticket and flew the next day. Not hard to fix a crappy situation.

My only regret? Why the hell didn’t I start this earlier? I had the opportunity many times 10-15 years ago and chickened off. For what? Nothing. Staying ‘home’ seemed like the smart thing to do at the time. Today I know different however hindsight is 20/20. Because I chickened off, I ended up amassing debt and signed up to other commitments, making it extremely hard to leave when I finally decided to do it.

Side note, I’m in Melbourne right now and it is beautiful. It would be difficult to hate this place. Well, as long as you ignore the whole super expensive thing.

One thing I like to point out to those on the fence about travel - DO IT NOW BEFORE YOU TURN 30. Working holiday visas are amazing things, especially when you’re in expensive countries like Australia where people get paid better. You can’t get them if you’re old and wrinkly. If you’re bootstrapping your own startup, this may not apply to you but being able to legally work overseas without giant piles of complicated paperwork makes life a heckuvalot easier if you’re the type of nomad who is just starting out with limited to no clients.

In the end, you’re 24. You’re probably gonna live to 100. Traveling for a year or so to figure out if it works is only a blip in the grand scheme of things. If you don’t travel, how many years will you have the voice in your head yelling “Why the hell am I not traveling?” Best to shut that voice up sooner than later so you can get on with your life.

Posting this question here, you can expect to get answers along the lines of ‘just do it’, since most people here are either living outside of their home country or dreaming about it.

You may actually hate it and realize it was a bad decision. You may dislike your job and want to go back, yet feel the obligation to your company/recruiter/whatever. Nobody can tell you those things can’t happen, because it’s personal and depends on your character.

However, just the fact that you’re seriously thinking about it (and already took some action to make it happen), most likely indicates it’s something you’d enjoy and appreciate. As others said, you can always just go back (even with a feeling of guilt) if things don’t work out.

I’ve lived my whole life in a small country in southern Europe (Croatia) and didn’t travel much. But I wanted to, and really wanted to live in tropics. So I applied for a job for an American startup in Singapore, flew for an interview to San Francisco (never been to US before), went back home, got married and moved to Singapore in a month, without ever having visited Singapore or Asia before, and with a commitment (non-contractual) to stay for at least a year. My newly-wed wife followed two months later, because she was still studying. It was probably the best decision I ever made, and I’ve loved every moment of it. I left Singapore two and a half years later, but not because I didn’t like it – I left because now I want to travel more.

The issue with leaving your family and friends on the other side of the world is the biggest one for me, and I’m still struggling with it. It doesn’t get easier and it doesn’t go away. I just try to spend some time home as well, and keep in touch.

Meeting new friends was very interesting. Back home, I spent virtually all my time with friends I’d known since high-school or earlier. It was a pack of about 10 people, and that was it. We went to a bar after work together, we partied together, went to vacations together. After that, I thought finding new friends, and in such a different culture, would be very hard, especially since I generally considered myself introverted. And I was very wrong. It started with couchsurfing meetups, and then moved on to various meetups related to different interests (iOS and Javascript meetups, tennis playing and training, swimming, learning languages…). When I was leaving, the group of people I was saying goodbye to was ten times as large as the one I left back home, after 27 years. Of course, you cannot replace a person you’ve known for 20 years with someone you’ve known for a year, but you don’t have to. Your real friends back home will still be your friends, one or twenty years later.

Living in a foreign country changes you – it’s up to you how deep and profound you’ll let the change be.

I hope that helps!

Separately; to answer your question, "How do you know when you’re “ready”:

I don’t feel like such a thing exists. Changes are lots of different shades of challenging, and you make your own meaning out of tackling them. I like to forget being “ready”, and just go try.

Good moment for you to post this and me to see it. I moved to Melbourne, Australia from Canada when I was 24 about a year and a half ago, and I’m just moving out now. I feel like I should definitely post now.

So first direct answers:

What will I do if I go to Australia and I hate it?

Move back home. No biggie. Lesson learnt

How long will it take to make friends?

I’ve struggled with this a bit here in Melbourne. I’d say at this point I’ve got a good group of people I’d call friends but it took a bit of effort. In Melbourne, my experience was that people have long term friends (like people from high school), and you really have to integrate into the circle to get really tight with people. Personally I’m good at making friends but really bad at keeping them, so I think this is more me than anything.

Do I want to spend a couple of years of my life on the other side of the world to everyone I know and love?

This can be challenging for sure. You’ve got to make sure that your friends are cool with skyping, and that they’ll reach out to set things up as much as you will. I had an easier time of it because I had a small number of close friends. Probably be prepared for some people to fall off, but that’s just life I guess. You’ve probably got to put more effort in than normal in this situation.

So just to indulge a bit, I’ll just jot down a bit of context here. I don’t mean to be super narcissistic, but I’m hoping that you might find it interesting to hear and help you figure things out.

I initially moved here after graduating from engineering in Canada. The structure at my uni set me up a bit for constant moves, since we alternated between 4 months of work and 4 months of school. The work I did generally was in other cities, so I lived out of a suitcase for 6 years. Towards the end I met an aussie girl on a work term in Montreal and we started dating. After I graduated, I thought I’d move out here. As much as I’d like to say it was purely for her and for love, I think my goals at the time were a bit more broad. I viewed the move as an experiment as well. Can I find work? Could I move across the world and build a life from scratch where I’m happy? I wanted to figure these things out.

So fast forward to now and I think I’ve mostly got it nailed down. I learned how to find work in a foreign place. I learnt how incredible it is to go to local usergroups and make friends there (checkout melbjs, golang melb, and stick on irc at #polyhack). I got comfortable speaking at usergroups and conferences. I got to see a beautiful country full of beautiful people and I enjoyed every second.

Some notes on Melbourne; it’s a rich city, really well known for cultural stuff. It’s got some pretty unreal coffee everywhere you look. Seems like every high-school kid works in a cafe at some point and can pour a perfect flat white with the swirl of pretty foam. The bars are cool as hell, and often hidden away in little laneways that remind me of Europe. I spent alot of time exploring the rooftop bars and listening to random bands at music venues tucked away somewhere I wouldn’t expect. To this day I still feel like I discover something cool everytime I go out. It’s a place you just continually rediscover. My relationship with my uni girlfriend didn’t last long, but I fell in love with Melbourne. It’s really an amazing place that I think everybody should come and visit. I’ll never forget it.

Travelling around Australia is also quite awesome. Sydney was fun, prettier and a bit more corporate. Hobart was tiny and jam-packed with amazing food and super nice people (especially if you go for the taste of tasmania festival). Brisvegas and Gold Coast were glitzy and exotic. Radelaide was like a quieter Melbourne with beautiful wine. Every city is cool in it’s own way.

At this point in my life I’ve found that I’ve achieved alot of the goals I set out when I first moved here. It’s come time for me to set some new ones and keep learning. So I’ve sold everything I don’t need. I’ve quit my job. I’ve made new goals. In a few days I get on a flight to Vietnam to hang out with the folks at hacker paradise (http://www.hackerparadise.org/). I’m very excited about all this.

So I guess my point here is to understand your motivations. What do you want to learn about yourself? What’s your experiment?

I think it’s important to never stop experimenting. So whether you stay or go, I’d love to hear that you never stop doing that too. If I can help at all or if you just want to chat, feel free anytime. Ping me on twitter and we’ll set something up. @whatthezach.

So ya, sorry for the rant, hope it’s not too preachy. I’m just pretty pumped for you.

All your fears are very normal.

But remember that many of these fears have been placed on you by society. Without sounding to anarchistic, society by its nature wants you to be scared of doing something that’s out of the norm, because it’s literally that, it’s not normal. It’s riskier.

But we’re in very risky times too. The rewards you get working for a digital agency at home may not be as much as the rewards you get when you develop yourself as a more unique individual and get in touch with more cultures than just your own.

TL;DR do it, it’ll be much easier than you think once you’re there.

Change and fear of the unknown can be frightening. That said, what do you really have to lose? I started living abroad when I was in high school as Rotary Exchange Student. Best year of my life! I was really scared that I was going to miss so much! I didn’t know the language, had never left my family. I did realize that doing some thing familiar was going to result in a familiar outcome, however who knew what was going to happen if I left the country for a year. It could be horrible or it could be awesome. I was willing to risk it, Why not?

The worst that can happen is you move back and start again. Which again isn’t a bad thing. I’ve moved back and forth multiple times and under different circumstances. Returning back home and starting again is fairly straight forward and pretty benign. Leaving is also pretty simple, you just do it. People understand and life happens, you can’t change that or worry about it either.

Back when I started moving away, we had snail mail and faxes… Now you can skype!

Most everyone will be back when you return from your time abroad and you’ll pick up where you left off. Also people love to come visit you when you are away. It’s a great excuse for them to travel.

In terms of making friends, I’m out going and found people to be mostly out going when you’re the new foreigner in town. You always have a good ice breaker… but this mostly depends on you.

All said and done, listen to what you gut tells you. Mine never has led me astray.

Miles

[quote=“fredrivett, post:1, topic:1231”]
What will I do if I go to Australia and I hate it?[/quote]
You move back or move on.

Depends how much effort you put in. If you wake up, go to work, got home and that’s your life, then you probably won’t make friends (bar colleagues).

If you go out, explore hobbies, join clubs, go to meetups, talk to people, you’ll make friends. Same in every country. If you don’t make friends easily at home, you’ll have to work harder to make them abroad.

If you’re thinking about it, probably. With technology these days, you’re only an SMS/whatsapp/phone call/skype call/facetime/google hang out/etc away from said loved ones. I find Facebook does a great job at keeping me connected to my friends in the UK.

And if the worst case scenario happens, you’re only a 23 hour flight away…

I moved abroad after I just turned 23. Likewise, I didn’t want to stay in the UK. I had an “anywhere but here” mindset. It can be scary, yes (I really had no idea what to expect from Dubai) but it’s exciting! I don’t regret a thing. It’s been almost 2 years and I’m ready to move on. I’m not going back to the UK. I’d say the experience has been one of the best things that ever happened to me.