Living and Working Abroad

Moving to live and work in Poland has been a fairly big change in my life. Although it's in no way on the same level of arduousness as stowing away on a truck from Afghanistan for 4 weeks, or risking a voyage across the Mediterranean in a makeshift skiff, it still felt like a fairly momentous decision for me to take.

The cons were pretty clear. I knew I would be giving up a career which it would take time to rebuild, at an income vastly inferior to the one I had left behind.

I knew I would be lonely and miss many of the things that I had previously taken for granted.

I knew I would face personal and professional challenges which, I worried, I wasn't able to meet alone without the support networks of friends and family.

All of that could be expressed in the fairly inelegant English saying, "it's could all go tits up."

What I could only guess at in a way I now am sure of is, after six months, how much I would enjoy the uncertainty and the challenge. I've arrived at new conclusions of what it is to truly feel happy, and how to arrive at happiness, what it is to live and be liked on your own merits, and re-considered what friendship and love means to me in a way that I never felt able to stuck in the rat race and pepper grinding cauldron of life that is London.

I've discovered an ability to multi-task and work harder than I ever have done before. Why? Because it matters so personally to me. There isn't a safety net to catch me. If I'm not doing my physio, I am prepping for classes, travelling,budgeting, organising trips around Poland or planning any number of extraneous activities.

I know now I never would have gained this new understanding of who I am if I hadn't dared to take a risk and come over when I did. To anyone considering living abroad, I say go, go ye afore it's too late.

Whatever happens in the rest of the time I have left, I hope I don't forget the lessons of what has been a very happy and productive experience for me. Watching this Steve Jobs speech on, "How to Live Before you Die" this morning I realised everything he said spoke directly to the issues and decisions I've been mulling over these past six months. 

I think the English are rather bad at expressing personal aspiration, but surely his final wish, for us all to,"stay hungry, stay foolish," is something English people can relate to.

In other news, my Sledz has turned out rather well, although I think it needs a little more Ocet. In addition I have finally discovered a good source regular English language opinion on Polish politics: PolandX