The Nail in My American Coffin

Issue #46 · How could I break up with a city that I’d just met?

Hi there, I’m Emily! 🙋🏼‍♀️ For those who are new, here’s a quick catch-up:

Five years ago, I packed my life into a suitcase and hit the road, moving to a new city every few months. Now, I write stories about the quirks, chaos and realities of living abroad, intertwined with my attempt to design a happy, meaningful life.

If you enjoy this post, stick around — something big is coming later in 2025!

The Nail in My American Coffin

It was the first and only time I’ve ever time-traveled — we took off at 4:30pm on Monday, October 16th and landed at 10:30am on Monday, October 16th. After ten hours in DeloreanAir ZipAir economy class, I stepped outside of the airport terminal and was met with blinding Californian sunshine, the scent of salty asphalt and a loud, familiar accent.

Maybe flying in directly from Japan — a place that reprogrammed the operating system of my mind — was a bad idea. The surreal precision of Tokyo, including everything from its immaculate streets to its impeccably orchestrated subway system, was still fresh in my mind and had set an impossibly high bar. Not to mention, how could San Diego prove itself as a place worth moving to when most of this trip would be spent in a jetlagged blur? Was five days, four nights even enough time to make a life-changing decision of this magnitude?

On the other hand, I was ready to fall in love and was convinced that San Diego was the one. In fact, I had re-routed my entire travel itinerary 7,000 miles around the other side of the globe in order to make this pitstop. If that’s not the setup for a romantic meet-cute, I don’t know what is. And it wasn’t entirely a blind date — I had lived in California for the two years leading up to the pandemic. But this was my first time in San Diego, and I was hopeful that being a bit further south would allow me to escape the (imo) depressing San Francisco fog and provide a more relaxed rhythm to life. I was entering year three of living without a permanent home base, and the itch to finally settle back down was now un-ignorable.

On paper, San Diego checks most of my boxes: solid weather year-round, a smaller city surrounded by nature, an active beach volleyball community, some semblance of diversity, and direct flights to my side chick, Mexico. I even had a head start in the friends department, thanks to the pandemic-induced SF exodus and the uncanny number of San Diegans I’d met during my international travels. Hours of research made it clear that Ocean Beach would be my neighborhood of choice, so I rented a quaint little studio and made myself at home, eager to experience things through the eyes of a local.

Day one¹ was promising, although still on Tokyo time, I was wide awake at 5am. Fortunately, the cute coffee stand on Voltaire Street was open, so I grabbed an egg sandwich for “dinner” and got my long overdue pumpkin spice latte fix (you can take the basic white girl out of the states, yada yada). Twenty-three crisp American dollars later, I was floored. Sure, I had expected some sticker shock being back in the states, but this was beyond what I had imagined (several $11 IPAs and one $27 gallon of laundry detergent would later confirm² that this was not a fluke).

Nevertheless, with my pricey PSL in hand, I carried on to Dog Beach for some prime early-morning people watching. It was alive with surfers, joggers, dog-walkers, and a group of retirees who, with their friendly smiles and pop-up volleyball net, quickly drew me in for a chat and a few pick-up games. It was like taking a peek into my potential 65-year-old future, and I couldn’t resist picking their brains about life in San Diego. A bit older than I’d imagined, but hey, new friends! The rest of the day I spent getting the lay of the land, nourishing myself with some Baja-style fish tacos and chatting up a pair of bartender locals that, at first, seemed hesitant about hyping OB up to yet another east coast transplant, but later let down their guard and admitted how much they adored living there.

Still, after a few more days of exploration, something wasn’t quite clicking. While many things in my “pros” list were validated, the “cons” column seemed much con-ier than I had hoped.

I’m not sure if it was the aggressively gray morning marine layer, the variety of holistically-blessed yet capitalism-fueled "wellness" products for sale at the Wednesday night farmers market, or seeing the brutal reality of this country’s homelessness and addiction crisis up close — probably a combination of all three. But I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I was slipping back into my old American life, facing the same daily frustrations that I had once left behind. Oh, and where the heck were the bike lanes?!

To be clear, this post isn’t a dunk on you, San Diego. You’re a fantastic city, and my criticisms aside, I still had a great time. I just didn’t feel the chemistry — please consider this my apology for ghosting you. Maybe it’s a weak consolation prize, but if I did have to choose a place in the U.S. to settle back down, you’d still be on my short list.

Cliché breakup justifications aside, the thing is — and this is something that this trip helped me realize — is that no one is forcing me to settle back down in the states. Nearly 18 months have passed since this October 2023 jetlagged adventure, and in that time, my perspective on things has shifted significantly. I used to assume that leaving my home country meant losing my sense of security. But today, the idea of putting down permanent roots abroad no longer intimidates me. The world feels smaller, my comfort zone bigger, and my desire for a picket fence non-existent. Consider this yet another step in my ongoing pursuit towards achieving societal pressure escape velocity.

Yes, settling down abroad will require a complicated visa process, lots of paperwork, challenging logistics, overcoming cultural barriers, and sometimes feeling like an unwelcome outsider (or worse — assault by water gun). But rather than settling for a U.S. city that’s the lesser of fifteen evils, the potential for a more expansive, more fulfilling life that allows me to be my best, happiest self is a prize that I’m willing to work for — let’s just hope that I remember to send a few postcards.

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Recommended related posts:

• On Passport Privilege — A friendly reminder that the opportunity to voluntarily immigrate to a new country that I’ve hand-picked is not something I take lightly.

• Stacking the Happiness Odds in Your Favor — My thoughts on the domino effect that results from the decision of where we choose to live.

• Societal Pressure Escape Velocity — A must read for those also considering the idea of an unconventional lifestyle.

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1. In hindsight, this was just another incident of the ‘girl visits new city for 24 hours, immediately considers moving there’ trope, which regrettably, I often embody.

2. This article was published six days after my trip: Report names San Diego the most expensive place to live in the US