If you had told me a year ago that I was going to get my first job as a journalist a whole three months after graduating, in a place with just a fraction of the population my hometown, I’d probably scoff at you and tell you that I’m obviously going to get hired right out of school and get an office overlooking the ocean.
This was not the case, no matter how much I desperately hoped it would be.
The reality is that I am moving away to a small, northern town I have never visited before to start my first job. It wasn’t any start out of the ordinary – in fact, most big-name journalists have started in the small markets. I suppose it surprised me most because I felt that I wouldn’t need to start in a small market, for whatever reason.
Am I scared? Oh yeah. But am I excited as well? You betcha.
By the time I moved away from home to the coast for the first time, I was exhilarated rather than sheepish about the whole thing. I always felt a kinship with the spirit of Vancouver, maybe because it’s on the ocean, or because it has an interesting tapestry of different cultures and experiences. It felt like I had made this big accomplishment, moving out of my hometown and coming to the city I felt like I belonged in.
Here’s the thing. Becoming an adult is realizing that being happy with yourself as a person has little to do with where you live.
When I moved the first time, I wasn’t entirely happy with myself in Kamloops, and I naively thought moving to Vancouver would fix all of that. My growth in recent years has had more to do with moving and being on my own than it has with being in a specific place. Which is what makes the idea of moving to a small town easy right now.
I have been living for the last few years trying not to do the easy thing. In my mind, staying in my hometown was the easy thing. Right now, at this point in my life, rounding up a bunch of part time work in Vancouver seems like the easy option, too. Or, at least, it’s the comfortable option.
Many different fields require you to start in smaller markets, so here’s a word that might apply to you: don’t write off small towns as barren wastelands. They’re not. There is an entire world to explore out there, and you shouldn’t be above living in a place that might not have everything because it means being outside of your comfort zone.
Like that dumb quote from Girls dictates, outside of the comfort zone is where the magic happens.