Why Do I Keep Moving?! ✈️

I HATE moving, I really do. You would never guess it because I seem to move ALL THE TIME! Since January 2021 I have moved 14 times! Those moves have been across 4 US States and 5 countries. I think a part of it is that I crave new experiences, I actually crave change. Change has been the only constant in my life. I’ve been moving a lot since I was a kid. 6 schools in 6 years in 3 states on both coasts from 8th grade to freshman year of college, including 4 different high schools in 2 states. It’s just normal for me to move I guess, but I actually really desire stability. I want stability in my life and I’m kinda jealous of the people who have lived where they live for many years and have a job they’ve been working at for many years too. They have friends and family and work colleagues they hang out with. They have found their places and created fulfilling lives for themselves. The familiarity of everything. It’s like a tv show, a sitcom. There’s something really charming about that. I am the opposite of that though. Instead of stability, I have chaos.

When you move a lot it becomes very hard to near impossible to cultivate friendships or create any type of meaningful relationships. It gets very lonely at times and that can be hard to deal with. I don’t want to make decisions purely because I’m lonely though and I don’t want to settle. I don’t want to stay in a places just to stay there. I am genuinely trying to find and live my best life. I’m searching for happiness just like everyone else. I don’t want to stay in a places I hate just because I don’t want to move. I have found the country I want to live in, that I know without a shadow of a doubt. Norway is my home. But even in Norway I have now lived in 6 places; Oslo, Longyearbyen, Tromsø, Båtsfjord, Bergen, and now Beitostølen. I have lived in more places in Norway than probably any Norwegian. I don’t know that for sure, but I’m going with it. From the capital, to the north, to the NORTH north, to the northeast above Russia even, down to the west coast, and now to the mountains. I came to Norway to SEE Norway. I want to see the whole country and what better way to do that than by living all over it? I tell you I hate moving, but then I get so bored living in a place after a year or two that I want to go somewhere new and different. Let me explain the different places I’ve lived and the backstories to them.

I went to Oslo first because it was the capital and the biggest city and I thought finding a job would be easier there. I had never been to Norway and I didn’t know anyone or have knowledge about the smaller towns and villages so I kept it simple. I lived there while attempting to get a visa and stayed for 6 months while trying and failing twice to get a work visa. Next was Longyearbyen and I went there because I had applied for a visa again and they told me it would take 4 months but it ended up taking 9 months for it to go through. I had already put in a notice with my job to resign and leave at the end of those 4 months. So when time came and I didn’t have an answer yet, I came across an opportunity to work on Svalbard! My choices were to go forward to this new place or go back to my moms house while I waited for the answer. Svalbard is actually the only place in the world you don’t need a visa to work and it is actually a part of Norway so it was perfect. I figured I could go there and work until I heard back about my visa. If it got approved, I’d move on to mainland Norway and if it didn’t I was gonna just stay on Svalbard until I figured out another plan of action.

The visa did go through and so I moved to Tromsø. Tromsø is actually my favorite place in Norway so far. It was so cool living under the northern lights and being so far above the arctic circle. I really enjoyed it there, and I think it was a mistake to have moved away, but I didn’t have a fulfilling life there. My social life wasn’t great and I had no money to really be social. You make friends by going out and doing stuff and I didn’t get to do a lot of that. I determined that I needed to make more money so I could go out, be social, meet people, and enjoy life. Norway doesn’t have tips though so for me as a bartender, my salary is capped. It’s never gonna be much more than it already is, so how do you get more money then? If you can’t make more, then you need to spend less and I saw an article online that said everyone that lives in Finnmark only pays 18.5% taxes! Even keeping my same salary, getting my taxes cut down to 18.5% would have been a substantial raise and living in Finnmark is a lot cheaper than Tromsø too! Rent in Båtsfjord half of what I paid in Tromsø. Boom! Taking home more money from my paychecks and spending half on rent was the financial boost I was looking for. So after almost a year and a half in Tromsø, I left for Finnmark and let me tell you, that was a mistake! I did not verify that what that article said about taxes was true and it was NOT. I was paying the exact same amount of taxes in Finnmark that I was paying before. Rent definitely was cheaper, but my 100% job I was expecting to have ended up not being that and was actually more part time. My cheaper rent was cancelled out by working half the time so I was actually in the same position living in Finnmark that I was living in Tromsø, except I was living in damn Finnmark. I could live in Finnmark for the extra money. Save up for a year or two you know? But not for the same money. Don’t get me wrong, the people in Båtsfjord are great people, but it’s such a small community. Everyone there is already in a relationship, married with a family, or retired. It’s not exactly a thriving place for singles. There is no reason for a single man to go there if not money.

Bergen came about because I needed to get out of Båtsfjord, and honestly I was too proud to go back to Tromsø. My job offered me my job back and I could have easily just went back but I had made such a fuss about the new life I was going to have in Finnmark with that incorrect information I had, that I didn’t want to hear the “I told you so” from EVERYONE who told me living in Finnmark was a terrible idea and I would hate it. So because I didn’t want to do that, I figured it was a great opportunity to go somewhere new! I had already lived in Oslo and didn’t want to go back there even though I do have actually friends there and would have a social life. I was using this as an opportunity to go somewhere I had never been before. I met a guy at my bar that was telling me how great Bergen was. Norway’s second biggest city situated between 7 mountains, and the rainiest city in Europe. Sounded exciting, and I had never been there before. So I said “Why not?”

See I say I hate moving and desire stability yet right there I had the chance to go back to TWO different places I had already lived before and instead I chose a place that I had never been to and didn’t know anyone in. I really should have gone back to either of those places too because Bergen was challenging for me. I didn’t know anyone and of course had no friends. After moving there I got hurt at work and tore up BOTH of my knees requiring surgery on both. I had a really nice apartment in sentrum but less than two months after moving in and the owner telling me he wanted a long term renter that would rent for 2 or 3 years, that same owner sold the apartment and I had to move out on short notice. I couldn’t really find a new place and I was basically injured the entire time I lived there. I never even got to go to Fløyen! The people at my job though were really amazing and they were definitely the bright spot of Bergen for me. There was just a lot of things that happened that were out of my control that made me feel like Bergen wasn’t my path. Everywhere is not for everybody and I’m ok with that.

Beitostølen was appealing to me for a couple reasons. It’s a ski village and there’s a ski school there and I wanted to learn how to ski. Norway is the literal birthplace of skiing and I have actually never been skiing before so the opportunity to learn something new and fun that a lot of people enjoy doing was exciting to me. I definitely could have again gone back to Tromsø or Oslo, but new experiences get me every time. I can’t live in Norway and not have been skiing so here it is and I will be working and getting paid for it. Beitostølen is very small, yes there’s only 300 permanent residents living there year round, but ski season brings in 25k people so that should be very fun and exciting too to meet a bunch of new people everyday. Beitostølen is also only 3.5 hours away from Oslo with a couple direct buses per day. In Norway, all roads lead to Oslo for one reason or another so it will be good to be close and able to go there the same day if need be. I don’t know if Beitostølen will be my forever home but I think it could be a place to live for a couple/few years while I really try to determine where I am going to live my actual life at. I do know I want to go back north. The north is where I feel most at home. All the reasons most people don’t like the north are the reasons I LOVE the north. It’s cold, it snows a lot, the polar night and midnight sun are awesome and the northern lights are my favorite.

I guess I’m looking for a feeling. A place that feels like home. A place that feels right. The rest will sort itself out.