What made you decide it was time to leave your hometown? What city/town did you leave and where did you wind up?

40 comments

  1. Colllege. I only applied to one school in my home state and even with a scholarship it was a last resort.

  2. I left to go to University (my local school was terrible) which was 3,000+ miles away. After school I thought I’d return but the economic opportunities were far greater elsewhere. I left the Windward side of Oahu, Hawaii and ended up outside Los Angeles, California.

  3. My parent’s job forced a relocation and I couldn’t afford to live on my own at the time. I later ended up moving back.

  5. Left smaller, post-industrial midwestern hometown for college in fun, liberal city in same state. After college moved to Seattle for a while. Eventually came back home.

  7. Hurricane Katrina. Albeit I was already leaving to start college in another city, but after that hurricane, the city hasn’t been the same. Left Southern Louisiana for college in Northern Louisiana and ended up moving to Las Vegas. Loved it so much, I got my wife and her family to relocate too.

  8. I left for college when I was 23 (spent a few years working and going to community college part time). When I graduated, I ended up just staying in that area, as my hometown didn’t have much to offer. Moved from central CA to NorCal.

  9. I came from a small town so it never occurred to me to stay. Though many people I went to school with stayed within ~100 miles.

  10. There was a confluence of factors but the one that drove it home was that I was only staying for the benefit of friends and family. Great people, but as I edged towards thirty it became apparent that not everybody shared my same threshold for self-sacrifice. People moved away, got married, XYZ and the other thing the point was that I realized that it wasn’t a world I could preserve on my own, and I’m glad it wasn’t or I’d have died up on that cross.

    I don’t want to sound as if they were somehow in the wrong, but I was trading in my personal satisfaction for theirs and at the time I expected them to reciprocate that. I had a lot of feelings around my home city, Seattle, how it had changed so much for the worse over my 26 years there, and has made no serious effort to be a city worth staying in if you aren’t pulling down tech money.

    I had always thought about teaching, but found myself in tech what with skyrocketing rent and it was my most marketable skill. After I burned/washed out of that, I had a lot of fear around going back to school and getting yet another expensive degree for yet another job I would ultimately hate and possibly burn/wash out of again. So, I decided to dip my toes into teaching English abroad, see if it was worth pursuing, and I moved to Taipei for the better part of 4 years.

    I was visiting home when covid hit and that has been a major issue but I hope to be back to teaching English in a classroom by the end of 2021, ideally much sooner.

  11. My fiancé got a promotion, but we would have to move to the other side of the country. During the pandemic. And I didn’t have a job lined up.

    We went ahead and did it, and other than still not finding a job, it’s been pretty good. There’s actual seasons we get to experience, and the food has been a welcome surprise. My cousin moved here shortly after us and introduced us to a cool group of people. And my fiancé’s brother and family just moved here too, so now we have more family here than we did back home.

    I’m hoping with the vaccine here, maybe stuff will start going back to normal and I can find a job. Moved from Dallas to DC

  12. Left home for college (~250 miles away) at 17. I was young for my class, and didn’t turn 18 until I was at college. Came home for Christmas, and went out for a couple beers with some friends. My old man, with whom I had a relationship that would at best be described as “indifferent,” was up when I got home: live under my roof, he said, you come home at a decent hour. I left to go back to school the afternoon of Christmas day, an hour after dinner. It wasn’t contentious, but I knew then that if I wanted to live the way I chose, I would have to do it on my own.

    A year later, I was leaving (well, pushed) school, and a friend of mine who lived in a different city (nearby to college but different state) told me that he could get me a job if I had no plans. I had no plans, and since my college career had imploded I wasn’t in a huge hurry to return home. I took him up on his offer, got that job, met a girl and got stuck. I’ve lived here almost 35 years now, 32 of them married to that girl. It’s more home than my hometown ever was.

    Point being, I never “decided” to leave my hometown, and for years, even after I’d gotten married, I’d always sort of assumed I’d someday go back. I just never did. Which is to say, looking back I didn’t know at the time that *this* instance was going to be the time I left home for good. Saw something on Twitter once: there was a time when you and childhood friends all played together for the last time, and none of you knew that it was the last time” (or something to that effect). I never made a conscious decision and said I’m done with my hometown. I just left for college… and never went back.

  13. After living almost my entire life in my hometown (with the exception of my freshman year and about 6 months abroad), my family and I sold almost everything, packed up our stuff, and moved to France (my wife’s home country). We did it for a number of reasons. For me, I was totally burnt out on my business that I had been running for 7 years. My wife had been a teacher, but things changed dramatically after Sandyhook, and she just didn’t feel safe.

  14. I left my home town at 18 and joined the Military. Did a few years and came back to home. I was gone again within six months when everyone was still treating social encounters like they were in school.

    I moved to the city over and got away from it and built a life. Four years ago I moved out of my county entirely and to a major metro centre. Haven’t looked back. My life has been nothing but successful since.

    Ultimately, my home town is always going to be that. But the people stopped growing when they left school at 16, and it really shows.

  15. I’m from UK and still live in my home time (after brief stints away for jobs / university). I love being near family and friends even though my town isn’t so exciting.

    I just wanted to share an observation: it seems so much more common in USA than UK that people just up and leave to live far away for a job, a girl, or just because they fancy a change. Where I’m from (north east England) most people after uni/college either stayed in the area or went to London because they literally had to in their field of work. London is only 3 hours on the train but it still feels like they might as well be in Australia.

    I’m just a little interested to know why the dynamic feels different between UK and US, with people seemingly moving so freely there. I do sometimes feel like spreading my wings and living abroad for a while, but I really value time with my family and friends, so I’m not sure the trade off is worth it.

  16. As I was doing my diploma thesis in Quito I realized that there is not much potential for career development (outside of selling your soul to Oil companies). So I decided to purse a masters in Europe and landed in a small town in Germany. I got a job working as a researcher in renewable energy systems.

  17. Hometown? Spent my young years in Jersey and my parents loathed the northeast and brought us to South Florida, then a small town in Central Florida. I’m not saying I dislike New Jersey and even had plans to move to NYC at one point, but the culture (from my experience) just isn’t for me there. But the move to Central Florida; I despised, vocally. I found conservative small town Florida fairly hostile, and like many other people’s experiences, like high school. People had bonfires and did drugs for fun, and I was more interested in just getting away. The extreme humidity also gave me a lot of physical stress and discomfort. My back and shoulders were always tense and my hair was constantly frizzed. Stepping outside is a test to see how quick sweat would drip down your back.

    Sometimes it’s hard to get up a move on your own and you need a driving force or opportunity to come right in front of you. Had an offer and moved to Vegas. Things aren’t looking hot right now as we have the highest unemployment in the country from COVID, and there are things I don’t like about it. But for the most part I love it. As an introvert and night owl, I can drink 24 hours a day or grab a burrito or sushi at 4am. I also get cool, cold weather without the snow. Plenty of nature outside the city and so many places to eat.

    There’s negatives to living here. It’s bone dry if that is a negative factor for some people. We have the worst drivers anywhere coupled with highest rate of DUI per city. You also have to be a little extra cautious as there is extreme mail theft and auto theft, even in nice parts of the city.

    I had plans to move to Los Angeles to my friend’s spare bedroom or Seattle. Something about the west side of the country is really beautiful to me. So long as things improve with a vaccine, I’m gonna stay here for some time. The next move will likely be out of the country. CA and Seattle are just too expensive for me to look at, and I’d rather semi-retire somewhere else.

  18. I grew up in Richmond Hill, Queens. New York City. Left in 2010. Ended up in Western Washington State. But I’ll be moving back home when the pandemic is over.

  19. I grew up in a very boring rural area which was a minimum 30 minute drive to a town where the median age was 50. I wanted to continue my education and get a four year degree at the university that was an hour away, and I didn’t want to spend my life commuting, so when I got accepted I arranged to move there. My family was very supportive in what I consider to be the best decision I ever made.

  20. Left the dates when I finished college to go to Korea. I only took the leap because the recession gutted the job market in my hometown. I’ve since bounced around Asia and am currently in Taiwan. However, I plan to move back after the pandemic. Moving is great if it’s toward something better. It sucks if it’s moving away from something that’s a problem. For those of you that are considering a move, know it’s a challenge (not impossible) after 30.

  21. Left to go to school. From the midwest. Stayed in the midwest for a while. Then a few years in the south and now in Europe. I knew it was time to leave when I couldn’t get a job in my home town.

  22. Lived in Chicago for about 11 years in my late 20s, 30s, then moved abroad to Central America after I got an online job. Worked from the mountains and lived the “digital nomad” life for about 6-7 years. Traveled Central and South America and saw some countries I’d have never seen if not for the fact I was 100% remote.

    Now I’m in the process of buying a house in Florida. I’ll be entering my late 40s in a few years and I feel the calling to own some real estate. Been a wild ride.

  23. Weather. From the major city in northeast US. I moved to Florida. I wasn’t waiting until retirement to live in the sunshine.

    Also my now wife lived here but she would have moved north for me. (She’s from the same town) but once we got serious there was no way we were living anywhere but two blocks from the ocean.

  24. I was a professional musician. I had always wanted to live somewhere else and at a certain point I was a fish too big for the fishbowl – or at least I saw it that way. I wanted to more room to grow. A few years previous I was going to move to NYC where I had a lot of musician friends doing studio work, but a relationship derailed that and when I got back to being me again I was touring all over the US and then coming back to my little hamlet in between gigs. I got tired of being on the road all the time and decided to figure out how to remain stationary. I decided to go to LA instead of NYC where I also had friends in the biz. I went there, did it for a while, but LA – as much as I enjoyed it – wasn’t my scene. I went to Denver after that to decompress for a year – where I also had friends with job opportunities – and while I was there I decided my true path wasn’t a performing one – as I had been doing for a decade – but in a teaching role. So I moved back to my little hamlet, got another master’s degree, and now I teach music full-time and I’m very happy with my choices. I bought my first home this year, I have most of my bills paid off, and I’m stationary with the option to travel instead of the mandate.

  25. I was 18, my small town was too small for me, I wanted to go out and experience the world and big ideas….

    18 years later I moved back home to take care of my aging parents. 2 years later my father passed away suddenly. I’m glad I got that time with him. Now that I’m older I appreciate the slower pace of life, access to nature, and no traffic.

  26. I’m 40 and new I never wanted kids. I also new I liked the city a lot and wouldn’t be happy living in my 30k person suburb.

    In college, I moved to a city, after college I stayed in a city and when I bought a house, I bought in a first ring suburb and eventually sold that place and moved back to the city core again.

    I just like living in a major metropolitan area. The energy, the quirkiness, the food, the different people, the perspectives and everything else.

    During the Minneapolis riots, it felt like you were really a part of some sort of historic event.

    It also helped show me that what they show on the news and what is actually happening are too very different things.

    I’d have friends from the suburbs texting me to see if my loft was burning down, whereas the reality of what was happening was confined to some smaller areas and a lot of it was peaceful in the end.

    All that being said…if I did want kids, I would absolutely move to a nice house in a second ring suburb and live in an area with a lot of new houses and young kids so that my kids could have a good life with a lot of friends/neighbors and a lot of people having kids like me. As it stands though; I shudder anytime I leave the suburbs and have to think of living there.

  27. My small New England hometown had about 3000 people in it. The only goal of nearly every teenager there was to leave. I can count the number of people who stayed from my graduating class on one hand, and they’re now mostly working for the town.

    My feeling was that I had to make it at least as far as Boston if I wanted to give myself options for the future. Made it there for college, then moved around the US to larger cities and towns for grad school, spouse, and jobs. I took my current job a few years ago, and it brought me back to within a 30-minute drive of home. After getting used to living thousands of miles away, it still feels surreal to see things that are familiar from childhood. I live far enough away that it feels different, but close enough that I sometimes run into people on the street I haven’t seen in 15+ years.

  28. The weather. I was living in Wisconsin, and this certain winter there was a polar vortex. -20F most mornings. If it was windy, the wind chill factor could easily be -40F or lower. If it got above zero, it was a good day. Every morning I was freezing, deicing my car, to go to a job that absolutely didn’t need to have me come in.

    I took a few days off and flew to Denver. Getting off the plane into 60F degree weather I decided then and there I was done. I got a job in Denver within a week or two of returning to Wisconsin, and within a month or so I was making the drive to CO.

    Since then I doubled my salary and have made an extremely comfortable life for myself in Denver.

  29. I was lucky I got to move with my parents when I was 17 to the US. I freaking hated Venezuela and Venezuelan culture and still do to this day. This was 20 years ago, so we didn’t leave because of hardship. Still, I never looked back. Once you get to know the culture, you understand why the country is the mess that it is today.

  30. Left Spokane, WA because I didn’t want to college there. Went to college in Flagstaff instead. From flagstaff I got a job in Phoenix.

  31. I’m 31, still live in my hometown, Charlottesville VA. Well, I live *near* it – I live 25 minutes outside of it and work in the city. It’s a fantastic place to live, but it’s waaaayy too expensive to actually live there anymore for normal working-class people. Rent prices are out of control, and the housing market is absurd; things stay on the market for like 12 hours, the median home sale is $600k, and there’s constantly people snatching up properties to turn them into AirBNBs/Vacation Rentals, which further exacerbates the problems.

    As soon as we get our house in selling condition (about eleven months), we are gonna move to Roanoke VA. School is the main motivator – we have a baby now, and we don’t want her to be in the school district we live in, but can’t afford to move into a different one around here. That being said, the problems we have with housing will benefit us greatly when we sell – we may even be able to sell our house for double what we got it for. Roanoke has a great public school system, low CoL, but it’s a sizable city that’s up-and-coming. Plus we can get a pretty amazing house – think $250k for a great condition, 2000 sq ft 20’s American Foursquare in a really nice neighborhood. Our money will go so much farther there, and it’s still close enough to home to see family easily.

    So in summary, I’ve been priced out of my hometown.

  32. Left nyc for the army in 88, came back in 91 and simply could not fit in. While l love the city it was constant stress. Moved to palm beach fl in 96 and while I don’t love it (not a boater, fisherman) it’s low stress, gorgeous for the most part. My kids have a quality of life I could never provide up north

  33. I swore I wouldn’t end up in small town Ohio and that I would get out, and I was 23, living in my hometown and making barely any money. I couldn’t afford anything more than rent, and my job basically told me they thought I should make less money.

    I didn’t want to off myself, but I couldn’t just keep doing the same thing anymore. I was entirely dissatisfied with my life. I sold my car to buy a cheaper one, sold all of my furniture and anything I figured wouldnt fit in a Honda Accord. My rough plan was to move out west, establish residency, and try to go back to school.

    I ended up getting a bunch of recruiters calling for jobs in Ohio. Repeatedly told the recruiter I wasn’t qualified for the job. The wanted to hire me, but in Kentucky.

    I have been living in Kentucky for almost a decade. Never went back to school, but I make really good money, and Kentucky is pretty great. Im glad I didnt move further away, as my father became sick and being within driving distance was a godsend.

    I will say that I appreciate home a lot more after being removed from it for a while.

  34. I decided to leave my hometown because there were no jobs in what I wanted to do at the time. Plus I got tired of living in white suburbia, Pennsylvania. I ended up in NYC where I have been living for the past 20 years. I’m never moving back.

  36. I left my home town at 18, moved away from bad influences. I was able to graduate High School, started a career in the Culinary arts. Moved back to the area I grew up, not the same town, in to work. Moved to Alaska at 21, lived there for 14 years. While living up north, I changed my career and now live in FL. I occasionally go back to my home town, just passing trough. The nice thing is no one knows who I am. It’s like being a ghost.

  37. Raised in Solon, Ohio (suburb of Cleveland). Moved to Cincinnati at 18 for college. Joined the Navy after college. Spent the next almost 11 years being stationed all over the country (Pensacola (school), Norfolk (USS Mount Whitney – LCC-20), back to Pensacola (school), Philadelphia (USS Independence – CV-62) – then the ship moved to San Diego, back to Pensacola as an instructor, Norfolk (USS Dwight D. Eisenhower – CVN-69). Left the Navy and took a job in Virginia Beach. In 1999, I was offered a job in Mechanicsburg, PA, and I have been here with my wife and kids ever since.

    It’s funny – we have lived here in the Harrisburg area longer than any place I have ever lived, yet I still consider Solon my hometown, and am a lifelong fan of the Cleveland sports teams. You can take the boy out of Cleveland, but you can’t take the Cleveland out of the boy.

  38. Moved from Columbus, OH to Los Angeles a few years after college in 2005. I want to say it was because Ohio is a cultural wasteland full of rednecks, and it is, but I was just beginning to discover a very cool side of the town, had my own one bedroom apartment and was actually having the time of my life there when I moved. I had met someone that lived out here in LA and I wanted to seek work in the entertainment industry. Been here 15 years as of last summer.

  39. Getting away from my parents, toxic friends, and bad memories so I could make new toxic friends and bad memories in a another city. At least I’m away from my parents tho’.

  40. I’ve only ever lived in about a 30 mile radius of where I grew up, but I also never had the desire to go anywhere. I grew up in a small town in Colorado, right next to Boulder. Went to college in Denver, met a girl from Boulder, moved to Denver, then found a job in my old hometown. Moved around Denver since then, but I’ve got kids now and still no real desire to go anywhere; Colorado is a great place.

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