An Ode to Austin, Texas // One Year in the City.
Hi friends! If you follow along on Instagram or any other form of social media, you might know that I am celebrating my first anniversary living in Austin, Texas! In the middle a global pandemic last summer, I packed up and moved across the country to Austin. You might be wondering how this all happened, and to be honest, I find myself wondering the same thing quite often because it really just feels like somewhat of a whirlwind.
Let’s throw it back to March 2020.
Daniel and I snuck away to Austin for my birthday, the first weekend in March 2020, and made it back to St. Louis right before the world was turned upside down with COVID-19 and all the craziness that came with. After an amazing weekend exploring Austin, I came back to St. Louis highly reflective of the sheer amount of times Daniel and I looked at each other and said, “What would life look like if we lived here?” Once I got back to St. Louis though, I settled in my new position as a Project Manager for a hospital system and focused on all the ways COVID-19 was impacting my day-to-day. A short month later, COVID caused all my projects to be cancelled (they were technology-related, not COVID related), so I was subsequently laid-off at the beginning of May 🙁
After over a month of attempting to apply for jobs in St. Louis, I had a come-to-Jesus moment when I realized my anxiety over unemployment was clouding the judgement of my career ambitions. I had applied to over 150 positions from a funeral home to a mortgage office. Although these roles were perfectly great roles, they didn’t represent anything remotely close to where I imagined my career to go. Out of everything I applied for, there was nothing that made me excited about the direction it took me in St. Louis. While of course I needed to be okay with any opportunity that came my way (I mean, hello pandemic + major national unemployment), I realized I didn’t want to settle for something that I would majorly regret.
One Sunday night, Daniel and I took a picnic to a park and started walking laps around the park after we finished eating. That night, I told Daniel how I felt so deeply I needed a season of change and a fresh start beyond what was available in St. Louis. So with that, I opened my job search to other cities not experiencing as much of a plateau in the job market. Enter Austin. When I began going down this path of looking for jobs in Austin, everything just seemed to make sense. Jobs in both Daniel’s and my respective industries were booming, even during a pandemic. Some of my dream companies were located in Austin. One of my top grad school prospects was in Austin. All the pieces started coming together in my mind and as each day passed, I realized more and more just how badly I wanted this life shift.
Fast forward to summertime 2020.
Daniel and I road-tripped down to Austin over the 4th of July 2020 to make sure this was a decision we were both confident of. While we were in Austin, I was in the middle of four interview processes, so I was able to drive around and see the office areas of all the companies I was interviewing with. Since the pandemic was raging full-force in Austin in July, it actually allowed us to experience the city as we would be while living here. We ordered takeout, took hikes and drives, and drove literally up and down random neighborhood streets where we could imagine ourselves one day living. The biggest surprise of the weekend came when we stumbled upon the cutest little house in our DREAM neighborhood. We felt like there wouldn’t be another opportunity where we’d find a dream space in our price range, so we applied (along with 4!!! other applicants). A few days later, we discovered we had been approved to lease this house! We were thrilled, but simultaneously terrified since SO many things were left up in the air.
A few short weeks later, I had secured a new job I started remotely, then Kelly and I road-tripped 14 hours to Austin from St. Louis with Pixie and all my beloved plants jam-packed in my car. When we pulled into my new driveway, a POD with all of my life belongings awaited me. Kelly spent the first week with me here and we put the house together. A few weeks later, Daniel moved down!
Speed up until the present moment.
Now, after taking our time to settle in over the last year (WOWIE! One year!!), I couldn’t be happier with our decision. We have had so much fun exploring a new city together, both working in new job industries (tech for me and software engineering for Daniel), and navigating the process of making new friends during a pandemic 🙂 The city is full of outdoor activities that have kept us busy (read: sane), from kayaking to hiking, yoga, and picnicking in the park with the perfect view of the skyline behind us. I am so grateful to be in a city that values so many outdoor aspects (especially during a pandemic). This move hasn’t come without its challenges and it would be naive, and frankly lying, to act like this has all been sunshine and rainbows. There have been really, really challenging aspects of this transition, which I’ll probably discuss more in depth about later. In short, life in St. Louis was easy. My friends and family were a short drive, if not bike ride or walk away. It was the city that I have known and loved for 24 years.
To be honest, putting myself out there in a new city, losing the community that I spent years building in St. Louis, and balancing the feelings that come with all of those changes was really hard. And often I felt that I couldn’t mourn missing my life and people in St. Louis because “I was the one who made this choice”. It took a lot of spending time really listening to these emotions, journaling and meditating to finally come to terms and start to make peace with a lot of these conflicting feelings. Thankfully, I am lucky enough to have friends and family in St. Louis who are so intentional about making time to talk with me consistently. That alone has made the transition 10x easier without a doubt, and it feels like I have so many people by my side to take on this new city even though they are almost 1,000 miles away.
Well, thank you for following me on this wild ride of a post – I knew I wanted to write my moving story for you all but wasn’t quite sure when to share. My one-year anniversary just seemed like the perfect time 🙂 Thank you to each and every one of you who have supported me during this transition in life – I am even more grateful for you than you’ll ever know.
xx,
Olivia