Every Move Gave Me A Fresh Start. But Somehow I Kept Ending Up In The Same Life.
Every time life abroad started feeling a little flat, I did what any seasoned expat with a WiFi connection does.
I started cheating on my current country.
- Google Maps.
- YouTube videos.
- Apartment listings.
- Facebook and Reddit Groups.
Within twenty minutes I’d convinced myself Albania would fix everything Georgia suddenly couldn’t.
Funny how the next country always looks amazing when you’re sitting at home avoiding your own life.
I’d done this before, and sometimes it was exactly what I needed.
Leaving the United States changed my life. Building a life in Ukraine changed it again. Eventually, visa problems forced me to move on.
But then an uncomfortable thought crept in.
What if I wasn’t outgrowing the country?
What if I just kept getting better at building the same small life wherever I went?
Before you book another one way ticket, ask yourself this.
Are you leaving the country… or the life you built there?
1. My Apartment Became the Entire Country
Living in Saranda looked like a bargain on paper. Great view, reasonable rent, peaceful neighborhood.
What I conveniently ignored was that every trip into town meant hiking those hills, so staying home became a whole lot easier than going anywhere.
Before long, not only was my work was online, but my entertainment was online, and my biggest adventure most days was walking to the local market. It slowly dawned on me that I wasn’t really experiencing Albania anymore. I was experiencing one apartment on one hillside.
Funny how one address can convince you you’ve figured out an entire country.
Before You Blame The Country: Judge an apartment by the life it allows you to live, not just the rent you pay or the view from the balcony.
2. I Mistook Isolation for Culture
I tried a few expat meetups, but too many conversations felt stuck on repeat. American politics, complaints about America, complaints about the country we were living in, or people trying just a little too hard to become interesting because they’d moved abroad.
Sound familiar?
After a while I stopped going and quietly convinced myself there just wasn’t much of a community here.
Looking back, that wasn’t entirely fair. Rejecting the social circles I found wasn’t the same as proving there weren’t people I’d enjoy knowing.
A familiar face at a café, chatting with local shop owners, or simply walking the same streets regularly probably would’ve done far more than waiting for the perfect expat crowd to appear.
Before You Blame The Country: A country doesn’t owe you a ready made social life. Sometimes you’ve got to build one a conversation at a time.
3. Cheap Living Quietly Made My Life Smaller
I’ve praised affordable living abroad for years, and I still believe it’s one of the biggest advantages of leaving the United States.
What I didn’t notice was the quiet tradeoff. The cheaper apartment also made me think twice about every walk into town, every coffee, every spontaneous afternoon out.
Saving money slowly became staying home.
My budget looked healthier every month.
My daily life didn’t.
Before You Blame The Country: Cheap isn’t always… cheap.
Saving money loses some of its magic when it quietly costs you movement, people, and the everyday moments that made you move abroad in the first place.
4. Travel Kept Hitting the Reset Button
Every summer I’d head somewhere else.
Greece. France. Spain. North Macedonia. Bulgaria. Romania. Austria. Hungary. The U.S.
Sometimes all I needed was a ferry ride or a cheap flight before Ukraine, Georgia or Albania suddenly started looking tired.
Travel always worked.
For a while.
I’d come back energized, convinced I’d fallen in love with living abroad all over again.
Two weeks later I was sitting on the same kitchen or balcony, following the same routine, wondering why the excitement had disappeared.
The trips weren’t fixing my life.
They were interrupting it.
Before You Blame The Country: Sometimes travel refreshes your perspective. Sometimes it postpones rebuilding the life waiting for you at home.
5. Every Annoyance Became Another Reason to Leave
When you’re already restless, every inconvenience suddenly becomes national evidence.
A delayed delivery isn’t just a delayed delivery anymore. It’s “this country never gets anything right.” A repair takes too long, someone doesn’t answer a message, the bank sends you somewhere else, and suddenly you’ve built an international court case against an entire country.
I’ve caught myself doing exactly that.
The problems were real.
The story I kept telling myself about those problems wasn’t always.
Before You Blame The Country: Be careful what your frustration is trying to prove.
6. The Next Country Always Had Better Lighting
The funny thing about another country is that it never has your current routine.
The apartments look brighter. The cafés look livelier. Somehow you’ve already imagined yourself speaking more, laughing more, leaving the apartment more, and finally becoming the interesting expat you thought you’d be.
I’ve moved enough times to know that’s fantasy.
The new country doesn’t arrive with new habits.
It arrives with you.
Before You Blame The Country: Before choosing another country, ask which problems are waiting at the airport with you.
When the Map Finally Stopped Taking the Blame
Some countries really do stop working for us.
I know that better than most. Leaving the United States changed my life. Building one in Ukraine changed it again. Eventually I had to leave because circumstances gave me little choice. Sometimes the country really is the reason.
I’ve also learned how easy it is to put every disappointment on the map.
A country is experienced through the apartment you rent, the streets you walk, the people you know, the routines you repeat, and the life you build between Mondays and Sundays.
After twenty seven years abroad, I don’t assume another country will automatically give me a better life.
Sometimes the country really has stopped working. Political upheaval, war, residency problems, rising costs, or changes you simply can’t control can make leaving the right decision. I’ve lived that reality too.
Before I move again, I want to know I’ve given that country the best version of the life I was actually willing to build there.
Otherwise, I may just end up rebuilding the same life somewhere else.
Before You Blame Another Country…
A disappointing stretch abroad doesn’t automatically mean you’ve chosen the wrong country.
Sometimes it’s your neighborhood. Sometimes it’s your routine. Sometimes it’s the stage of life you’re in. Sometimes it’s in fact, “the country”.
If this article made you question whether you’ve outgrown your country or simply the life you’ve built there, I wrote Is Life Abroad Really For Me? to help you answer that very question.
The article ends here. Thanks for reading!
The Expat Backroom begins below in the Substack version. That’s where I answer the harder question. When do I leave a country… and when do I change the life I’ve built inside it?
David Peluchette is a Premium Ghostwriter/Travel and Tech Enthusiast. When David isn’t writing he enjoys traveling, learning new languages, fitness, hiking and going on long walks (did the 550 mile Camino de Santiago, not once but twice!), cooking, eating, reading and building niche websites with WordPress.