Hitting an Expat Plateau, an episode from our archives, is inspired by a letter from one of our long-time listeners. Giovanna wonders what to do after hitting an “expat plateau,” when the rapid learning and expanding period of being a new expat inevitably slows down.
After a little over a year living on the idyllic Italian island of Ischia (by way of New York, London, and Rome), Giovanna ponders what to do when the novelty of expat life wears off and you’re left with just… life.
She also asks the question: does moving to the tiny Italian town where her mom was born somehow nullify the life her parents strived to create as immigrants in the States?
We explore this and other topics on this episode pulled from our archives.
***The Bittersweet Life podcast has been on the air for an impressive 10+ years! In order to help newer listeners discover some of our earlier episodes, every Friday we are now airing an episode from our vast archives! Enjoy!***
You can listen right here, or find the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, and elsewhere.
Related Episodes:
Episode 364: Eross-cultural Challenges
Episode 329: Expat Move Time Warp (with Stephanie Fuccio)
Episode 321: Living Alone during Lockdown
Five key takeaways from the episode:
- The hosts discuss “expat fatigue” or “expat plateau” based on a listener email from Giovanna, who is experiencing challenges after living in Ischia, Italy for over a year.
- They explore potential causes for this plateau, including loss of novelty, integration challenges, lack of social connections, and questioning if the location is the right fit long-term.
- The hosts suggest strategies like journaling, seeking out new activities and friends, giving it more time, and reflecting on the positive aspects of living abroad.
- They discuss their own experiences with similar feelings in their expat and relocation journeys, highlighting the complexity of these emotions and decisions.
- The episode marks the 5-year anniversary of the podcast, and the hosts encourage listeners to support the show through sharing, reviews, and donations to help it grow.
Full Episode Transcript:
Katy
This Is The Bittersweet Life. If you’re new to the show, thanks for joining us. I’m Katy Sewall. I’ve been in the radio business for nearly 20 years, mostly working for public radio in the United States. In 2013, I quit my stable job and I moved to Rome for just a year. That’s where this podcast begins. And if you’re new, don’t be afraid to start at the beginning. I’d hate for you to miss out on the adventure. That adventure might inspire you to do something crazy like quit your stable job and move to Rome for just one year. And my co host is Tiffany Parks. She’s a writer and author of Midnight in the Piazza and she’s also an expat who moved to Rome over a decade ago with the determination to stay whatever it took. She’s also my childhood friend. I met her on the school bus in the sixth grade. I hope you like the show and if you do, tell a friend and take the time to write us a review. Now on with the show.
Opening
Welcome to Rome. This Is The Bittersweet Life with Katy Sewall and Tiffany Parks.
Katy
Hello, this is The Bittersweet Life. I’m Katy Sewall.
Tiffany
I’m Tiffany Parks.
Katy
Tiffany is in Rome, I am in San Francisco and today we are going to be tackling a listener email.
Tiffany
This email is from Giovanna, who is one of our longtime listeners, I believe, and someone who we interact with a lot on social media. So it’s great to have a letter like this from a listener and I’m going to read the email and we’re going to talk about it. So Dear Katy and Tiffany, I left New York over 10 years ago to move to London for grad school, then to Rome for 18 months, then back to London and then back to Italy to the island of Ischia, where I’ve been since December of 2017. I’ve been listening to your podcast since 2014 and I find it so, so comforting. I’ve been listening to a bunch of past episodes trying to find some ideas of how to deal with what I’ve been feeling lately. I’m in my second year of living in Ischia and I’m not sure how to explain what I’ve been going through lately. Maybe you could call it expat fatigue or expat plateau. Having lived in Italy before and having Italian born parents, I thought I was prepared for all the negative and less than beautiful aspects of life in Italy. I certainly don’t think my first year in Ischia was my honeymoon phase, especially since I spent a large amount of time terrified and feeling guilty for undoing my parents life that they had created in the States and for moving back to Italy, especially Ischia, where my mother was born. But lately, maybe it’s because this new way of life is no longer distracting and I’m integrating myself more into life here and feeling at times isolated, isolated and foreign. Maybe this is the same sort of hump you come across when you learn a new language. At the beginner levels you improve quite quickly and you can see your level of improvement. But at the intermediate level it feels like you’ve hit a plateau. It feels like you’re never going to get better, and it seems like it requires an insurmountable amount of effort to learn enough to become quasi fluent. Meanwhile, under the surface you are learning, but it’s not boiling up to the surface yet. You touch upon this a lot in many episodes, and I’ve been going back to listen to some to see if I can find some advice on how to get through this period. Particular episodes are Integrate Roots, Guilt Moving, Part two, Grief, Advice, and Isolated. I found a lot of advice in these episodes and many others, but I was wondering if you had any other advice to give to someone who has lived abroad for a while and has no intention of giving up Some types of things one can do to get through this plateau or fatigue. Is it simply homesickness? But homesick for where? One of the many things I love about your podcast is that you two understand the more subtle problems of living abroad. You talk about things in a way that I can’t talk about with friends or family back home, or with the locals wherever I’ve lived, or with family in Italy. And it helps me a lot. It’s nice to listen to two friends talk about issues and ideas while I cook dinner. It makes me feel less alone even when I’m not feeling lonely. Thank you two for such a wonderful podcast. All the best, Giovanna.
Katy
So I love this notion of the plateau because there are so many instances in life when the plateau comes about, and I think her analogy of learning a language is a really good one. Even though I’ve never been good at learning languages, but it reminds me very similarly of that people talk about in learning a musical instrument, or that you get to a stage where it feels more like banging your head against the wall. You’re still good, you’re better than you were as a beginner, but you’re trying to become advanced and you’re just not getting there.
Tiffany
Yeah, I mean, it’s just also, like, if you look at a child, I mean, children grow so fast when they’re under one year old. And as a parent, you’re always trying to, like, keep up with your child’s growth and, like, make sure they’re growing fast. And then all of a sudden they’re two and they haven’t grown in six months. They’re the same height, they’re the same weight, and you’re like, oh, my God, my child is sick. No, their growth just slows down as older they get, the slower they grow. I think that must be the same side of kind of thing with language and the same kind of thing that she’s talking about here.
Katy
Yeah. So did you. You were in Italy way longer than me, so, I mean, I’ve definitely experienced the plateau, I feel like, in just my travels over the last five years. But do you remember having an experience like this? Like, you become comfortable and then all of a sudden you become more uncomfortable again?
Tiffany
I don’t know that I’ve experienced exactly the same thing or that I have thought about it in such terms, but I definitely identify with the idea that the first sort of year that you’re there, despite how hard it is. And she mentions that her first year was very hard and my first year was extremely hard. But there is something exciting about it. And she uses the word distracting. Being in a new place is very distracting. It’s very easy to fill your head and fill your life when you’re doing something that’s constantly bringing novelty into your life. Yeah, it’s exciting.
Katy
She also mentions fear. Fear and regret in that first year, too. I don’t think she uses the word regret, but I think it’s interesting that those two things, which are extremely negative, we would say, I guess, can also just be so distracting. And I wish you’d told us what the fear was. I would love to actually talk more about all those fears that come in when you’re brand new to a place, but that’s an aside. Go on. Like you were saying, those things are all very distracting.
Tiffany
Yeah, I mean, like what we were talking about a couple weeks ago in how our episode, how to. At a certain point, wherever you are, whether it’s Rome or whether it’s Timbuktu or Bali or wherever it is, eventually, if you’re there long enough, it just becomes. Life just becomes your normal. And if you moved abroad to get away from normal, which I think a lot of people do, I definitely did partially. That was part of it. Oh, shoot. Now it’s normal here. And I think that’s why so many people end up doing the serial expat thing, where they’re constantly moving every two years, because they need that novelty. I don’t necessarily know that she’s going through something that extreme, but I think that it is part of her issue. Sort of like, okay, I don’t know if anyone listening has been to Ischia, but it’s. It’s an amazing place. My husband and I adore it. We’ve been there three times. We went there on our honeymoon. It’s just incredible. It’s this island. It’s this volcanic island off the coast of Naples with natural thermal baths, and it’s just an amazing place. It’s not very touristy, which is wonderful. It’s near Capri, but it’s totally different vibe. It’s much more down to earth. The cities, I mean, they’re not cities, there’s towns. But the towns there are just adorable and beautiful and full of locals. So, you know, me sitting here in the outskirts of Rome, thinking about Ischia. How could you possibly be bored of Ischia? But it just goes to show that anywhere can get old and it can get stagnant.
Katy
Well, so, of course, if I don’t have great advice myself, I like to look up what other people have to say about it. You know how I love definitions. We know that she’s talking about the plateau as a state of little to no change following a period of activity or progress.
Tiffany
Yes.
Katy
But the number one definition of plateau, which is a noun, is just an area of relatively level high ground. So you could look at this as a positive thing. If you look at it through that lens, that you’ve achieved another level of higher ground.
Tiffany
Yeah.
Katy
And in that higher ground, you can maybe look around and see what’s new around, around you and what other opportunities you have now that you didn’t have before. So that might be something to think about.
Tiffany
We’re talking about this today, and I’m not going to be able to get her feedback before this goes on air. But I am curious what her social situation is over there, because I know for me, when I was living in Rome the first year and I had no friends, or almost no friends, that was a very hard thing for me. That much easier in Rome to make a lot of friends. There’s a lot of expats here. There’s a lot of people from different parts of Italy in Rome, it’s just a bigger community. Ischia is a very small place. I wonder if reaching out to try to make more friends, more connections, maybe more specifically like minded friends. And I feel like the best way to make like minded friends is take a course or join a club, something like that. That might be an idea. I also wonder what her home situation is like, whether she’s single, whether she’s in a relationship. Because I can imagine that if she’s single, that might be what’s making it a little bit harder. Although of course I don’t want to make any assumptions. She might be totally single and thrilled to be single. Who knows? Yeah, I guess the idea of homesickness. She does mention homesickness, but she says, then she says homesick for where? Which makes me think that she doesn’t have a strong connection to any other place. Otherwise she would know exactly what she was homesick for. So these are all questions I don’t really have an answer to.
Katy
Yeah, it’s hard because you have to do that soul searching. I can kind of, I can kind of understand this because I’ve been living in San Francisco for the last year and X number of months now, which is just a little bit over the time that I lived in Rome. Of course, as the year goes on I’ve met a good handful of people here that I really like. And those of you who have been long time listeners know that I tend to work from. So of course meeting new people is slower than it would be if I was working in an office. However, I, somewhere along the line have decided that I don’t want to live here long term. We’ve talked about that a little bit. And because of that I’ve definitely felt stuck in this plateau of the waiting. I’m still here now. I have to be here right now. But I’ve already decided that it’s not the place for me no matter how much I integrate. And then that people will say, well, maybe if you did integrate you would feel differently and all of a sudden it would be the place for you. And that’s probably right. But I’m sort of still going, well, do I want to put that effort in? I’m pretty sure this isn’t the right place for me. And I guess that reminds me of the plateau she’s talking about. It’s like this weird in between, sort of uncomfortable, not sure exactly what I want to do from here thing. I just sort of know that this isn’t right. And so I’ve been doing a lot of looking around. Like if I say, oh, what’s right is I need to move back to Seattle. But Then Derek says, well, what, you want to live in Seattle the rest of your life? And I say, well, no, not necessarily. Well, then why go back there? And sometimes I think I go back there just to reset, look around, be surrounded by family and friends again for a little while and figure out what the heck is next from here. I wonder if she’s also feeling that now that you’ve settled into this place, you’ve been there for two years. One year. She said she moved there in 2017. So two years is the plateau coming from a sense that maybe this isn’t the right place. You feel like it should be the right place because you’ve put in so much time there. I don’t know. I think those are the questions you have to ask. What is at the root of what’s making me uncomfortable? And I know for me here, it’s that I, right now I feel like a need to be around more people that I’ve known for a longer period of time. Just because I’m working on a lot of creative projects. I just want the easy support of long term friends.
Tiffany
I totally get that. I think about that a lot because that is one of those things that expats. Unless you’ve been an expat in the same place forever, but by the time you get there, you don’t even feel like an expat anymore. That is one of the things that we don’t have. That is one of the major negatives of being an expat is that your friends are all short term friends.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
Whenever I’m in Seattle and I’m spending time with you and Suzanne and other people that I’ve known for years and I don’t even just mean, like people I’ve known since college and I have a couple of really close friends that I’ve known since college. But I mean, like people like you and Suzanne and Kate that I’ve known since I was 10 or 11. And there is this incredible comfort in that, in being with someone who just. You just know and they know you and you don’t have to like catch them up on anything. You don’t have to tell them. Okay, well, when I was, you know, this age, I did this and this to create context for the story that you’re telling. They just know. They know all your stories. They just know everything. And they know you so well that if you do something out of character or you say something rude or obnoxious, they know you, you know, they’re not going to judge you for it because they know who you really are. Whereas when you’re with people who you’ve just met, like, you have to kind of be on guard. Like, you have to try to be the best version of yourself.
Katy
Right.
Tiffany
So I totally get that. I absolutely get that. And especially you, having lived in Seattle for so long, you were very used to that.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
And I can see how you would miss that.
Katy
Yeah. But I mean, going back to the question of the place, the plateau of place, did you feel that way? You didn’t. Like, when you were living in Montreal, you had to be there for college for a certain number of years, but did that place. Because the place itself felt like it didn’t resonate with who you wore or the kind of life you wanted to build? Did it have any of the discomfort that she’s talking about? I’m just wondering if it could partly be place oriented.
Tiffany
I don’t know. I don’t think that. She says she has no intention of giving up.
Katy
She has no intention of giving up living abroad, which is fine.
Tiffany
Yeah. She doesn’t necessarily mean esque. Yeah.
Katy
I mean, I have no intention of necessarily not moving around for the rest of my life. I just sort of know that I don’t want to build a permanent life in the place I’m currently at, or. That’s what it feels like to me as a fact, right now.
Tiffany
Yeah. I don’t. Yeah, I don’t know. I kind of. It’s hard. I honestly, if I were to give really blunt advice, I would say you need to live in a place that’s a bigger city, where there are more expats. Because I think, while I think it’s important to make friends with locals, I think that there is something about having an expat community. You really need that. You need people who understand you, who get you. And I just don’t know how many expats there are living in your town. Like, I just can’t imagine that there’s that many. So if you want to be an expat long term, maybe you need to go somewhere else in Italy. Maybe you need to go back to Rome. That’s not really very good advice, though, because you’re probably sitting here like, okay, I have a job here. My life is here.
Katy
Screw you, Tiffany. I’m just.
Tiffany
I’m just thinking on, like, practical terms. I can’t. I love the idea of moving to a place like Ischia, but then I think about daily life. What would you do unless you had a family that really, like right now I have my son, and he just Takes up so much of my time. I don’t necessarily miss. I mean, I miss it in the sense that I wish I had more of a social life, but I don’t feel the lack of it because I’m so busy.
Katy
Well, and you’re also in love with the city that you live in. Sometimes I’ll qualify that.
Tiffany
It does make a difference. But I don’t think we should assume that she’s not in love with Ischia.
Katy
No.
Tiffany
Ischia is a very lovable place.
Katy
Yes.
Tiffany
My dream is to get to the point in my life. One of my many dreams is to get to the point in my writing career that I can spend one month in Ischia every summer writing. I don’t even have to be on vacation. I just want to be there and I want to be sitting on a balcony overlooking the sea and just right from Ischia. So I love Ischia. But again, living there full time all year round.
Katy
Yeah, yeah.
Tiffany
Might be difficult.
Katy
I don’t know.
Tiffany
I don’t know if I’m giving you any good advice, Giovanna. I really. I really don’t know. But I would say push through it because I’m just looking back up to the top of this email. She said she moved in December of 2017, which actually means she’s only been there for a little more than a year.
Katy
Right. She’s right around where I’m at.
Tiffany
Yeah, I think you need it. I’m going to go back on my previous advice and I’m going to say give it some more time because I think. I think being an expat gets better after one year. And I mean, you already have experience with this because you did live in Rome for some time. You lived in London for some time. I would give it some more time. I would give it two years. I found like my second year in Rome was absolutely a great year, whereas my first year was not. So give it some more time and. And maybe seek out some. Some new friends and some new activities.
Katy
Here is some advice from some strangers online at some point. This is a quote from somebody named Jrrm. These might all be famous people, but they’re not people I’ve heard of. At some point you will hit a plateau if you keep doing the same things you did to get to that point. Make a change. That’s kind of interesting. That’s sort of like the advice that I used to try to give myself when I was so bored living in Seattle, which I try to remind myself every time I think I should move back there, is that sometimes you just need to go out of your door and take a left instead of taking a right. Because I’m such a ritual habit person, I eat at the same cafe or the same three cafes every week. I write in the same coffee place with the same cup of coffee with the same Danish, you know, I mean, I really can get into, like, these little tiny wedges of holes. And sometimes it’s good to remember that you can turn a different corner or say, what else would I. What did I used to like to do that I’m not doing anymore? That sort of thing. How about this one from Sean S lot? When you reach a plateau, reflect on the positive affirmation from others. So we should just tell her really great things. You have a great Instagram page.
Tiffany
You’re also a very nice person. You always write us so such nice comments. Yes, you’re very kind.
Katy
You’re doing good work. You’ve learned Italian and hey, or maybe you knew it. I don’t know, but.
Tiffany
Well, her mom’s Italian, so I’m guessing she speaks Italian.
Katy
Fair.
Tiffany
Here’s one. You live in Ischia, for God’s sake. Do you know how amazing that is? Just be proud and thankful of that. Just because it’s. It’s so cool.
Katy
True. Although some people say the same thing about San Francisco, and I say it is cool. It’s an incredible city. It’s one of the most incredible cities in the United States. That’s true. I feel that way, but it’s just not for me.
Tiffany
It’s just not for you.
Katy
It’s just not for me.
Tiffany
I really feel like without knowing her, also her work situation, that’s. I’m also curious about that. Does she work from home? Does she have a job somewhere? Does she have colleagues? I think all of these things are going to make a difference in. First of all, and just like what she has the possibility of doing. Is she married to a local and she can’t move? Could be. But if she doesn’t have any ties to that place, then I think one of her at least considerations should be leaving if she’s really not happy there after I just said to give it another year, I’m all over the place tonight.
Katy
You’re torn.
Tiffany
I’m torn. I feel just like her. I’m just. I am identifying with Joanna right now.
Katy
These questions are so hard because there’s so many things at play. That’s what I think a lot about. A lot with San Francisco. There’s so many things at play. There’s so many wonderful things here. And there’s so many things that I don’t like. And then there’s all the under questions, the questions of what kind of a life do I want to have, what kind of people do I want to be surrounded by? What kind of an airport do I need to be located near? Things like that. I mean, it’s big life choices that are underneath these sort of discomforts. That’s what’s also so strange, because it could just be a plateau I feel can come from being sick of the apartment you live in. I’ve definitely had that happen where I think I am so sick of living in this particular place. And I wonder, if I were to just move to a different apartment, would I love this city ten times more? That’s hard to decide, because then if I rent another apartment, I have to be here for a whole nother year, you know, so it kind of flips, flops back and forth. You know what I mean?
Tiffany
Mm. I was just thinking while you were talking. We talk so much about all of these things about that have so much to do with where we live, but there are so many people in the world. This is kind of off topic, but there are so many people in the world who just don’t think about it. They live where they live. A lot of times, they live where they were born. The thought that where they live has anything to do with their happiness level or it just doesn’t even come into the equation. It’s like they’re gonna stay there, and they’re gonna be there. I wonder what makes the change between the people who are like, I’m not happy with my life right now. I need to move across the world, or I need to move across the country, or even I need to move to a different apartment. Like, I wonder what makes that difference between the people who are. Their happiness is so connected with where they are.
Katy
I don’t know. I think sometimes it’s just watching other people. We’ve talked a little bit before about the fact that I think if my father hadn’t been such a traveler and hadn’t encouraged me to go, that I probably would have been one of those people that was sort of satisfied to stay.
Tiffany
Well, you definitely were like that when you were younger.
Katy
Yeah, I was, because I knew nothing else. And at some point, I think you wake up and you find out there’s something else. And the something else might come when you’re a kid, if your parents travel you all over the world or even around whatever country you’re in as a kid or sometimes you discover it later as an adult because you meet other people who are moving about. I think you encounter it at some point and maybe you encounter it like you did through a film or something. At some point you encounter this idea of there’s something outside of here. And I’m drawn enough to figure out what that outside thing is. Whereas some people, I think, even discover that outside thing, but are still pretty good with staying where they are. Like they’re pretty happy where they are, or not even happy, but it just is what it is.
Tiffany
Yeah, well, that’s what I mean.
Katy
And neither is bad. Like, I think sometimes those people are the lucky ones that are just. It could be where they just grew up, someplace they liked it well enough to stay, they traveled two or three times a year and it’s all good. I mean, I think that’s brilliant in.
Tiffany
Some ways, just not for us. Yeah, well, we have wanderlust. It’s not our fault.
Katy
I mean, maybe for us. I think it also depends on stage of life. I’d be curious too, why she decided that she wanted to move back to her mother home country.
Tiffany
Well, yeah, that was actually what I was going to say because I found it interesting when she says I was feeling guilty for undoing my parents life that they had created in the States. This is something that I asked Estrella about on our episode ethnicity about a year ago because her family, her parents had been immigrants from, I want to say, El Salvador. They moved to the United States and she moved to Rome. And I asked her, do your parents ever say what the hell? Like we sacrificed everything we had to make a life for our children in America and you move off to Europe. And this is actually kind of worse because she’s moved back to the city where her mother came from. And if her parents did make a lot of sacrifices to move to the States, I don’t know what the situation was, but I can see how as a parent, I would be a little bit frustrated if my kid moved back.
Katy
Yeah. And hoping that she just learns her lesson and gets herself home again sooner than later.
Tiffany
Yeah. And I mean, like I’m. I think when you have kids you start seeing things a little bit differently. When I moved off to Italy, the last thing that, no offense, mom, but the last thing I thought about was like the fact that I was leaving my mom behind. It just didn’t cross my mind. But now that I have a kid, wow. You know, if my kid decides to move really, really far away from me one day, that is not cool. I want to be near my kid. And so imagine her mom moving from Ischia all the way to the United States and then her daughter moves back to Ischia. So not only is the quote unquote, life she made for her child gone. I mean, it isn’t gone, but you know what I mean.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
But also she’s not near her daughter.
Katy
Yeah, yeah, it’s a good point.
Tiffany
But I don’t think that she should feel guilt for that because I think that everyone makes their own decisions in their life and you can’t. I mean, you can’t think about your parents. As much as I hope that I live in the same city as my son, I don’t. I don’t want him to think about me when he decides where he’s going to go and what he’s going to do, because it’s his life.
Katy
Yeah. And not knowing the parents history, it’s possible that her parents moved really far away from their parents to make this happen. And yeah, there’s a lot of issues at play here.
Tiffany
It’s karma. It’s karma. Tell your mom it’s karma.
Katy
It’s a lot of stuff, though. Gosh, so many issues at play. I don’t know. Do I have any good advice besides. I don’t know. I don’t right now because I feel like I’m in the plateau, so I’ll be. I’ll take advice from anybody.
Tiffany
I don’t think I would have characterized it as a plateau, but I’m kind of in a plateau. I mean, I’ve been in Rome a long time. I kind of would like a change. As much as I love this city. I can feel that. But I would say keep a journal and write down a lot of your daily thoughts and see if that will help guide you. I’m sorry if that’s a kind of New Agey answer, but, well.
Katy
And what I’ve been trying to do is make the most of the opportunities that are allowed by this period of time while I’m trying to figure out what’s next. So an opportunity that’s allowed for me right now is because I do know less people in the city. I have more time to myself. So I’m trying to do more writing. I’m trying to really get some of these art things, this podcast, all to better footing. Like, I’m trying to spend the time. I’m still doing paid work for people, mostly in Seattle, but I’m also trying to use the more quiet time that I wouldn’t have in a busier city where I know more People to work on these things that are very insular. What are the good things about this chance and do what I can with them.
Tiffany
That’s good advice.
Katy
I don’t know if it’s good advice. It’s just what I’m doing. That’s what I’m doing. Writing stuff, recording stuff. But yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah. We’re both sort of in that what now? Period. But at the same time you’ve solved one of the issues is you finally are living in a place that you really like. Like you finally have an apartment that you really like that is yours to control and manage. Which I think is something that I long for from time to time.
Tiffany
Yes, that is true. I love the space that I’m in. But I miss being in Trastevere a lot.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
I miss being in the center of Rome a lot.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
And I feel like there is a part, there is a big aspect of Rome that I am missing right now in my life. I mean, I’m not that far away, but it’s not the same. It’s not the same as walking out my door and being in the heart of Trastevere with 20 restaurants in a one minute walking range.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
And churches with gorgeous works of art and it’s just not the same.
Katy
Yeah. And because you’re going to a job, you’re commuting. It can be going from home to work to home. Except now you’re going from home to work to home like you did when you were in Trastevere. Except you’re not passing all the things in the center that you would have passed on your other commute.
Tiffany
It’s not even really about the commute. Is more is about when I was at home, I was in the middle of the city.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
And so it’s. It’s hard. It’s a combination of that and also having a child. Meaning that I don’t have the same kind of nightlife that I used to have. My lifestyle has changed dramatically from when I was intrastevide before I had a child. There’s a lot of contentment that I still have, but it’s not coming from Rome anymore. It’s coming from my family, it’s coming from my writing. It’s coming from the ambiance of my home, the indoor of my home. You know what I mean?
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
It’s not about like. I mean I have like a beautiful view of hills and trees and that’s. And that’s lovely. But it’s not the same as looking out my Window and seeing a parade go by. You know, like, the things that used to happen in Trastevere just don’t happen where I am.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
You know this. So I’m a very social person. So the social aspect of it is also missing. Like, I used to have this friend who lived across the street from me, and we used to literally open our windows and talk across the street, things like that. Or you. When you were there. And, you know, I’d be like, okay, let’s. Let’s just leave right now. And we’d both leave our house, and, like, in two minutes, we would meet on the same street. Walking towards each other.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
And we would go have a pizza. Those things aren’t part of my life anymore. And I miss it. I miss it a lot. And if I. I go into the center on weekends with my son and. But I have to plan it. Where are we gonna go tomorrow? What are we gonna do? Where am I gonna park? What’s the weather like? It’s just a totally different thing.
Katy
Yeah. I think that’s kind of getting at a little bit of the heart of what I’m missing in this city, is that it’s also those kind of accidental encounters. The last time I was in Seattle for work, I was just walking down the sidewalk on my way from one meeting to another, and I ran into a girl I used to work with at the People’s Pub when in my 20s. We used to work Saturday nights together, and I hadn’t seen her in ages. I was on my way to a meeting, she was on her way to something else. We had less than five minutes. But it still is those kind of chance encounters where you’re like, oh, I know people here. You know, this is an old friend. It’s the same idea of we walk out and we meet each other on the street, and if you live too far out or you live in a more isolated place, that just doesn’t happen as much. So you came to the wrong place for advice. In this particular day, I feel like some days were really, really good with the advice, and some days were, you know, okay.
Tiffany
I don’t think we should beat ourselves up, though, because I think that. I think it is a difficult question, and I think that she’s in a difficult position because she clearly wants to be an expat. She likes the expat life. But there’s something missing, and you have.
Katy
To figure out what that is.
Tiffany
There’s no easy solution.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
Yeah.
Katy
Sometimes even figuring out what that is is really hard.
Tiffany
Yeah. Maybe that’s it. She seems to figure out what is.
Katy
Missing and sometimes it’s multiple things.
Tiffany
Yeah.
Katy
So that’s tough. It’s really tough. So maybe partly our advice should be try to start figuring out what those things are.
Tiffany
Well, hence the journaling that I suggested.
Katy
Right. Repeating themes. When I did the Artist’s Way, you had to write these journals every morning, three pages every morning. And then when the notebook was full, you had to go back through and reread the whole thing. Which, by the way, at the time, torture.
Tiffany
Yeah, that’s where I stopped. I didn’t finish the Artist’s Way because I couldn’t handle that.
Katy
Well, see, I pushed through. And that whole point of that is that you go back through, you read it and you see. What do I keep talking about on these random mornings when I’m just getting out whatever’s bothering me? Because really, it’s just free writing. You’re not trying to make a piece of art here. You’re just getting out whatever you’re thinking about. And then you go through with different colors of pencil and you underline repeating themes so that you can see I am constantly talking about these five things. So there’s something there that you have to explore, basically.
Tiffany
Well, there you go, Giovanna. You’ve got to read the Artist’s way.
Katy
Yeah, you read the Artist’s Way and.
Tiffany
Everyone should read the Artist’s way, in my opinion, artists or no.
Katy
Yeah, yeah. It’s a good thing to do. Basically. A lot of exercises to try to help you figure out what’s blocking you from doing whatever it is that you want to do that you’re not doing is sort of the idea anyway. We should leave it there.
Tiffany
Yeah. And maybe. Maybe there’s gonna even be more than one show a week. I don’t want to give anything away.
Katy
Oh, my goodness. Do you mean there might be two shows in this week’s feed?
Tiffany
Um, you didn’t hear it from me.
Katy
Well, I am intrigued. Find us on social media as well. We’re always there to search for The Bittersweet Life podcast. And until next week, this is The Bittersweet Life. I’m Katy Sewall.
Tiffany
I’m Tiffany Parks.
Katy
Join us again. Bye.
Tiffany
Guess what? It’s our anniversary today.
Katy
How did we forget to talk about it?
Tiffany
I don’t know. Today is officially the five year anniversary of the launch of The Bittersweet Life podcast.
Katy
Wow. That’s incredible. That means we’ve not only been doing this longer than high school, we’re one year into college.
Tiffany
Oh, my God. It’s insane. That is insane.
Katy
So help us celebrate by spreading the word about this show to your friends, because that’s how we make it into the next five years. Right?
Tiffany
You can write us a review on itunes, you can share the show on your social media sites, or you can just send us a whole bunch of cash. Like, that’s good, too.
Katy
We really could use your cash. It would really help us grow the show. I know that sounds tongue in cheek, but it really actually is. See, we’re a show that’s not connected to a network or an institution, which means if we’re going to attract new followers, we have to figure out ways to advertise that come from the ground up. And over the years, donations have kept the show afloat from a technical standpoint, where it helps us pay the hosting fees, it helps us have microphones to use those kind of fun things. But to grow the show, we actually do need financial support to be able to advertise the show so more people get to hear it.
Tiffany
Yeah. So in any way you can support us, whether it’s financially or through spreading the word, is incredibly appreciated. And we have a little surprise coming up. Keep an eye on your feed, on your podcast app, because we might just be popping up before expected.
Katy
Yes. So subscribe to the show if you haven’t, and you can find links on how to support us in the show Notes. Thank you so much for everything you do. And yay. Happy five years.
Tiffany
Happy anniversary, Katy.
Katy
Happy anniversary, Tiffany. And happy anniversary to all of you who we’ve met just because we had this crazy idea five years ago. Talk to you next week. Bye.
