u/Gabacoolbeans

Hi everyone - wow I thought hell would freeze over before I would ever post on Reddit. Usually I’m the person getting all the “AITA” posts on TikTok with Minecraft in the background. Sorry I digress.

TW: mental health, unaliving

I’m in a little bit of a pickle right now. I (25F) live in the USA and have always kind of lived in the same area my whole life, even into college. I always wanted to live abroad since I was a kid and read all the books and watched a lot of foreign movies. I was planning on studying abroad in Ireland but that unfortunately was axed due to the pandemic.

I have an engineering degree and have been working for about three years in construction management in the same city. It’s been an extremely demanding path that’s kind of wrecked my mental health but been rewarding in some ways and I’ve built a great relationship with my peers. I am honestly just kind of getting the feeling that I’ve grown out of my current city and am looking for a smaller city or town with more access to nature. Honestly the things that once gave me joy here are starting to make me feel a little dead inside.

My family - i absolutely love them. I am extremely blessed to have grown up with a loving family that supports and roots for me always. I lost my sibling to s**cide about 6 years ago and we haven’t really been the same. My family used to travel a lot before they died - we did Asia and a lot of countries in Europe. After that my family’s love to travel just sort of died, idk if it’s related to that. They haven’t really ventured out of the country ever since and say they have no desire to anymore. I on the other hand absolutely love to travel and try to do it when I can. I finally got to travel to Scandinavia this past spring, which I’ve wanted to do for years now. I have a whole list of places im dying to go, including all South America, the Philippines, Banff, basically everywhere lol. It’s also I guess kind of a way I keep my sibling alive in my heart since they were definitely the life of the party on each family vacation.

I fell completely in love with Australia when I visited there last year, especially with the beaches and the mountains. I tried applying to a lot of engineering roles there but was unsuccessful. I got approved for the famous Working Holiday Visa there which I’ve seen loads of videos about. I applied to every job in the book on backpackers boards and got an interview with a cafe outside Sydney. All felt good and they gave me an offer in addition to housing for a small portion of my paycheck. I’m like, cool, maybe I could finally get to my living abroad dream and maybe it could lead to a great international opportunity long term. Kind of a YOLO moment.

Here’s the thing: my family doesn’t totally support me leaving and are worried about how this will affect my career in the long term. Here’s the thing - I do love engineering and want to stay with it in the long term. I do worry that the WHV could mess that up and I won’t have a lot of prospects in the future. But also, living abroad is still my dream and if I stay in the US, I feel like I will spend the rest of my life regretting turning down that opportunity. But then again, I have no idea if my current career path is even the one for me.

So that is where im at right now - anybody done the WHV or landed any engineering jobs abroad? Any help is appreciated - I feel completely lost right now and the voice telling me I should move abroad just keeps getting louder and louder.