The Only Thing I’ve Learned This Year

It’s my expat anniversary! Three years ago, I boarded a plane headed for Tokyo, where I’d spend a night before going on to Singapore. I don’t remember which airline I flew, though it was definitely not United because they are the worst. I saw the Northern Lights on that flight and I cried because a dream had just come true and also because living abroad was going to change my life in extreme and mysterious ways and I wasn’t sure I was ready.

That was three years ago, but every time I say that I feel like I’m lying. Surely it’s been longer. Since then, I’ve traveled from Singapore to Georgia, taught in five countries, bought numerous SIM cards, celebrated my 30th birthday with a flaming rum-soaked cake in Cuba, gotten food poisoning in Cambodia, gone on a date in Poland with a man on the run from the US government, developed a special relationship with a specific naan vendor in Singapore’s Little India, eaten freshly made cheese at a dairy farmer’s home in the Carpathian Mountains, confused a very famous shrine in Tokyo for a hidden gem because I stumbled upon it at 5am, sprayed political street art with locals in Tbilisi, found out just how romantic ski resorts in Ukraine are, collected way too many stories of visiting doctors in post-Soviet countries, explored salt mines in Romania, drank with winemakers and brewers in Serbia, and shattered my phone more times than I can count. Haven’t I lived abroad for a decade, at least? With all the homes, the adventures, the heartaches good and bad – has it only been three years?

It has, and I’m reminded of that every time I get carded in Moscow grocery stores trying to buy a bottle of wine. Hasn’t been that long at all.

My expat anniversary is probably one of the most important dates I celebrate. I also plan special things for my birthday, and New Year’s can be pretty fun too, but there’s something really special about my expat-iversary. It’s something I made, myself, not just a date that was already on the calendar. It is the line of demarcation between my life when I wanted something and my life when I got it. Every year when it rolls around, I look back and reflect on what I’ve learned.

There must be a really steep learning curve when it comes to living abroad – or maybe I’m just becoming less attentive in my old age. My first year, I had twenty lessons from traveling the world to share (the most important? Always travel with your own corkscrew). Last year I had three key takeaways from expat life. And this year, I’ve learned just one thing.

This year was a big one, with three huge moves. In the last 365 days, I left Kyiv, the place where I both found home and lost it. I moved to Tbilisi with no job, friends, or place to live, but instead of taking the opportunity to reinvent myself I dug deep into what had always been there. And I threw out all my plans to move to Seoul and ended up relocating to Moscow, a city that I had visited just to check off a box but felt like home within 48 hours.

Here’s what I learned from those three big decisions—

Don’t discount your heart.

Look, anyone who knows me in any way, shape, or form understands that I’m not the most predictable person. I follow my own particular logic, but there is a logic. Over the last several years there’s been a constant tug of war between my head and my heart. I am a naturally very emotional person (I single handedly forced my family to become semi-comfortable with tears) but there was a period of my life where I tried to counter this by shutting down my emotions and rationalizing everything. And over time, that sort of logic became just as unreliable as my heart, a confusion that had its own Event Horizon where I couldn’t tell the difference between logic and hope. Which, naturally, resulted in a terrible decision.

But in the last year, I’ve been paying more attention to the thrum of my heart. Ready to go? We’re out of here. Craving a challenge? Let’s go climb the mountains. Feel your heart rise in the least likely place of all? Life is for taking chances.

While I couldn’t have logically explained all my decisions at the time, they came from a grounded place in spite of the transience. I know it’s too early to tell and life loves a good plot twist, but I have zero regrets about my decisions this past year.

Don’t let your heart be a dictator, but listen to what it says. As I’ve followed this, something very interesting has happened. Not only have I been more confident and happy in my decisions – but I’ve started to develop a more direct path, too. I started working on my next professional qualification, and I’m slowly hammering out a long-term plan for my career. And I’m not talking about a three-year ‘long-term’ plan, but something that could sustain my entire life.

Which puts me in an uncomfortable position. It’s been just over a month since I moved to Moscow. I live a fifteen-minute walk from the Red Square. Every time I walk home I glimpse a far tower of the Kremlin. I have friends old and new here. I’m learning a lot of Russian from the three year olds I teach. Little of it is useful in real life, but I can nail “I want” with a perfect accent now. I have a city of infinite layers in front of me, with endless alleys of exploration, never mind the rest of the country, stretching over an eighth of the world’s land. There is room to live and grow here, and I can see myself living in Moscow long term. The only thing missing from my life is a friend with a dog.

But before I moved here, I had started making allusions that I’d be coming home to the States when my contract in Moscow is up. I told my parents. I told coworkers. I told a guy. I told myself. And, to be honest, my heart does believe that – it’s time to go home. At least for long enough that I can answer questions like “Is that cool in America?” (Not that I ever had any real authority there anyway.)

I don’t know where I’ll be writing next year’s update from. A hazardous guess would only be able to narrow it down to two cities, but at this point they both have an equal fifty-fifty chance, despite being nearly 5,000 miles apart. What will the final decision depend on?

My heart.

But until then – nothing changes. It’s not perfect here in Moscow, but rarely has my heart felt so ready to nestle into a place. Whether this is my first year in Moscow or my last, it makes no difference. I won’t panic and try to cram everything in, but I will seize opportunities with enthusiasm.

Though sometimes my heart says it’s best to stay home with a bottle of wine and The Great British Bakeoff, and I won’t discount that either.