Four Unexpected Things I Wasn’t Prepared for When I Moved 2700 Miles From Home
If you’re thinking about joining the COVID-19 Great Migration, be aware of these weird considerations
I‘m not someone people describe as conservative, but when it comes to major life decisions or big purchases, I tend to look… and look… and look… and look even more before I leap.
When I decided to buy a used vehicle that could go off-road in early 2018, I spent 3 months doing research, test drives, watching YouTube videos, reading forum posts, and wearing out carcomplaints.com on every make/model of vehicle with more than 8" of ground clearance and any kind of all-wheel/4-wheel drive before deciding I wanted an FJ Cruiser. Then I spent another 3 months looking for the perfect one and negotiating with used car dealers.
So in late 2016 when I decided to move across the country from Richmond, Virginia to Reno, Nevada, I spent the next 10 months preparing in every way possible. There’s lots of information out there for people making big moves, and lots of tools for comparing cities to figure out differences in cost of living, weather, culture, laws, and obligations.
- I knew I needed to have at least 3 times as much money saved as I estimated I would need (doesn’t mean I did, I wore out a credit card instead, but at least I knew)
- I knew I needed to keep one giant to-do list, or I would get confused/overwhelmed.
- I knew I needed to talk to all my friends who had moved out west to get an idea what to expect.
- I knew I needed to research the cost of living and goods, the job market, the housing market, and the economic history of local booms and busts.
- I knew that I needed to prepare myself mentally for uncertainty and improvising because no amount of planning can account for every circumstance.
I hung out on City-Data.com a lot and I knew that Reno had a similar cost of living but less housing inventory. Fewer marketing/advertising/art/media folks, fewer folks with Bachelor’s degrees. Fewer churches and a less religious population. Better non-discrimination laws but fewer LGBTQ+ community resources and entities. Twice as many sunny days per year. No humidity, no mosquitoes, no fleas. A local music scene with a respectable amount of post-punk band bookings at an all-ages inclusive nonprofit venue (hollandreno.org).
There were some weird things my first year in Reno, though, that no one ever mentioned.
1) Elevation changes can completely thrash your physiology
So after my first 6 days in town in 2017, I felt like I had the flu — total fatigue, short of breath, constant major headache, joints sore, muscles sore, could barely walk down the hall, generalized anxiety, and only had a couple hours of energy per day to look at apartments.
I mentioned how lousy I felt to my best friend who I was staying with, and pretty matter-of-factly he said, “Oh yeah, that sounds like altitude sickness. Just drink a lot of coconut water and get a lot of rest, it’ll get better soon.”
Huh? Altitude sickness?
Reno is 4700 ft above sea level, and I’d lived at about 15 ft above sea level my whole life. I’d visited Reno, Tahoe, Denver, and other places with a high altitude many times, but never for more than a couple days. In just a couple days it’s not that noticeable, but after a week, my body was trying to re-calibrate itself for the low oxygen, low humidity, and low atmospheric pressure, which apparently involves most of your organs functioning differently, and that process can be painful and tiring.
“Uh, how long am I gonna feel like this?” I asked.
“I’m sure you’ll be fine in two weeks,” he said.
I was not fine in two weeks.
I felt horrible for about two months, I felt weird for another four months, I started to feel a little normal after about eight months. I was thankful I hadn’t moved out with a full-time job offer, because I would not have been able to hold a job for those first two months. It’s been over three years now, and I still don’t feel like my body has acclimated to the change in elevation and dryness entirely.
Elevation affects everyone differently, some more than others. I wasn’t lucky in this regard. But it would have been nice if anyone had mentioned that the elevation of the entire city might make me sick.
2) New environment, new microbes
Prior to COVID-19, I went out to eat constantly — I live alone, so it costs me almost as much as cooking, and it afforded me a little social interaction that I wasn’t getting staying in every night.
There are a lot of questionable kitchens and food prep practices everywhere, so I was a little surprised when after almost ten years of adventurous eating in Richmond, I got food poisoning four times my first year in Reno.
I was chatting with my doctor about it and she pointed out that every locale has its own unique balance of persistent microbes, and it’s just another invisible thing that you have to acclimate to when you move to a new place. It’s why sourdough bread from San Francisco tastes so much better than sourdough from… Gatlinburg, TN. So I was resistant to all the wacky bugs floating around Virginia but there’s a whole new crew here in the high desert taking residence in the food and on surfaces.
3) You can’t ever really leave home anymore
Some people contemplate a big move because they want something new, and some are trying to escape something old — old drama, old problems, old politics, old routines— I think a lot of folks are looking for a little of both. At one time, moving far away could pretty effectively free you from the old. But these days with as much as we live our lives online, proximity matters less than it used to.
I still find myself reading Richmond restaurant call-outs (see above) and neighborhood drama. I still feel obligated to engage with certain local Virginia news. I still get really upset about venues closing or neighborhoods being permanently altered. I still see people posting about heading down to hang out at the river and it seems like I’m still there. It’s become far more obvious to me just how much I maintained my relationships digitally, because so much of it feels totally unchanged.
Unless you decide to close your accounts and start new ones, you’re still very connected to everything back home. Which is great news if you didn’t really want to leave it all behind.
4) You can’t ever really go back either
Home is a place in time, not just a place.
The people who lived there when you did, the places that were open that you went to, the culture that existed — I think we’ve all been learning in the era of the coronavirus that nothing lasts forever.
I’ve been back to visit twice, and some of the places that were the most important to me are already gone, less than three years later. The rate of small business closings everywhere has been dramatic since March.
So going back to visit home won’t be like going back to visit the chapter you ended by moving away. The pages have been turned. That place in time is over.
That has made my memories of my years at home all the more precious.
So basically…
Hopefully, even as idiosyncratic as this was to me and my move, I hope that this was helpful if you’re considering moving cross country; the big takeaway is: there are variables you don’t even know about and can’t plan for. You can research something forever but at some point, prepare what you can and cope ahead for uncertainty.
It’s worth it though! My move was necessary to my personal development and my life in Reno is vibrant. I wouldn’t be who I am now if I hadn’t moved across the country alone to a place where I only knew one person and started over.
Wes McQuillen is Principal of ALTER Strategies (www.alterstrategies.co) which offers alternative (and virtual!) marketing approaches for hard-to-advertise age restricted, highly regulated, and stigmatized products and services.
