Moving to a new city skyrocketed my Personal Growth
Reflecting back on the past 9 months has put into perspective how critical taking the leap and moving to a new place has been for my personal growth and development.
Moving to a new place on my own forced me to have experiences and face challenges that I never would have dealt with in the safety of my familiarities at home.
“If you are not growing, you are dying.” — Tony Robbins
In January of 2018, I decided I was ready to settle down and live somewhere indefinitely. After some research, I decided on Denver, Colorado — mostly for the weather and because I love to snowboard.
Previously I had been traveling as a digital nomad for over a year and before that, I was in college so I technically hadn’t lived on my own yet.
Traveling had its own unique set of challenges, but settling down for me seemed scarier than being a digital nomad. As a nomad, I wasn’t locked into anything financially and nothing was permanent. I was living day to day — if I didn’t adapt well to a place, I’d just leave — it was as easy as that. I wasn’t tied down by a lease or other fixed expenses. Everything was short term so I could pick up and leave in a moments notice. There were pros and cons to this lifestyle but I ultimately decided that having a base would give me more stability.
Challenge #1: Being broke & finding income
When I arrived in Denver, after a few days of apartment hunting, I signed a 3-month lease in a 2-bedroom apartment with a roommate I met on Craigslist.
I was unemployed and using my savings, AKA crypto gains, as runway until I figured something out. If you’re at all familiar with the cryptocurrency market then you know January (2018) and the months following were not great for investors. I was watching my investments dwindle day after day. Within 2 weeks of moving to Denver, I had around 1/4 the amount of money I had when I left for Denver. I was hoping the crypto market would make a miraculous recovery and I’d be rich again but it was becoming apparent that it wasn’t going to happen.
I ended up selling my coins at what felt like a terrible time in February, (because I needed the cash) but now looking back it was actually a good time to sell because the coins I was holding at the time have yet to go back up to the price that I sold them at.
So there I was locked into a lease ($1,000/mo) with no job and significantly less money than I’d planned on having to bankroll me until I figured out a solid source of income. To be fair, this was my fault but I was desperately trying to figure out what my next move would be.
I spent several weeks applying for freelance jobs and only landing a few small gigs that didn’t earn me a ton of money compared to my cost of living. I was feeling pretty hopeless and eventually started cold-calling local businesses asking if they needed someone to re-design their website. No one was interested.
To illustrate my desperation, here’s one of my journal entries from this time.
I know I’m gonna have a breakthrough at some point but holy shit it’s fucking frustrating right now. I’m just trying to get some steady income so I don’t need to worry every single day that I’m gonna get kicked out of here.
If someone brings me my car maybe I could drive for Uber or Lyft. That wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
I have a few options at this point…
1. Continue working and trying to land jobs freelance jobs for 3 months until I’m out of money and have to move back home or land a big contract
2. Get a job doing something unrelated to my career at like home depot or something
3. Day-trade crypto on GDAX and possibly hit it big but also possibly lose it all
As you can see I was pretty desperate (I might have been a little dramatic but you get the point).
I knew I needed to figure something out fast — my runway was almost gone.
It took me a while to consider applying for UI/UX positions at local companies. I had a false belief that it was too difficult to get a job and that only people with a college degree (which I don’t have) could land one. Because of this belief, I stuck to applying for freelance gigs instead of applying for actual jobs at cool companies.
Want to read this story later? Save it in Journal.
One day I decided that I knew exactly what I needed to do. I decided I should apply for an internship at a company that I wanted to work for one day. I assumed that if I could just get my foot in the door then they would mentor me and maybe even hire me. (Spoiler… I was right!)
I began reaching out to HR managers about the potential for an internship. It was my preconceived belief that no one would hire me due to my lack of credentials that lead me to seek out an internship in the first place. That being said, I wasn’t exactly qualified either. I was kind of good enough to be a paid intern but not good enough to be a full-time employee yet.
I sent an email similar to this to HR managers on LinkedIn:
Hi *HR manager name*,
I came across *company name* while researching great software companies to work for in *city*.
Is there someone I could I speak with from *company name* about an unpaid internship opportunity? I would love to get involved with *company name* to contribute my skills and gain more experience.
If you have any information about internship opportunities in the design space at *company name*, I would very much appreciate it!
Thank you!
Dan Sapio
It worked better than I thought! I applied to a handful of companies for an internship and heard back from almost all of them. Most said they weren’t currently bringing on interns but they would keep me in mind for the future.
One of the companies invited me in for a coffee meeting then offered me a paid internship after a few meetings — this is the software consultancy that I still work for today. In short, I interned for 3-months then I was brought on full time as a product designer.
In the article below I go more in depth about how I went from intern to working full time.
This entire period of figuring out how I would support myself was overwhelming and stressful — but absolutely essential to my personal development. It was the first time in my life that I felt real financial turmoil. I knew I could kick ass and figure everything out but at the time I had no idea how.
Sure, I could have always asked my parents for money and they happily would have handed it over, but that would be too easy. My financial stress forced me to be creative and push myself harder than I would have with a cushion from my parents.
Challenge #2: Being taken out of my comfort zone
In the comfort of my hometown back in PA, I could get by pretty easily never leaving my established comfort zone and bubble of familiarities. My parents, family, and high school friends would all be there affording me the luxury of feeling comfortable for as long as I lived there. Staying in my hometown would be easy and it wouldn’t force me to reinvent myself.
By moving 1,612.9 miles away (thx Google maps) I was forced to adapt and re-establish myself in a new place.
In a new place, I had to learn about my surroundings and I had a ton of unknowns that I’d have to figure out. Where should I live? Which places should I eat? What do I eat? Where is it safe to hang out? Where’s the gym? How do I get around? What are the people like? How do I meet people? etc.
Challenge #3: Building a social network
For me personally, building a social network was the most challenging aspect of adapting to my new place. I had to pay a random guy on Craigslist because I didn’t have a single friend to help me move into my apartment.
I don’t have a blueprint for building a social network and making friends, it always kind of happened rather naturally. Making friends has always been a second thought for me until I moved to Denver and realized that I had zero friends in this place. Previously in my life, I built my social network around people that I went to school with in high school and college or travel communities that I joined. Since I was no longer in school and didn’t have any friends from school in Denver, I had to learn how to network and make friends on my own.
I just kind of did my own thing and figured I’d make friends as I went. But, after about a month I realized that making friends wouldn’t happen organically as it had previously in my life — I needed to start putting myself in the situations to make friends. My daily routine didn’t involve a ton of opportunities for socializing so I needed to add activities that helped me meet people.
Here are a few things that helped me build my social network:
- I joined a bowling league (super sick, I know)
- Playing basketball at the rec center
- Kickball league & Flip-cup league
- Wednesday night beer games league at a local bar
- Going to UX design meet ups
- Inviting designers from Behance and LinkedIn to my office for coffee
- Sculpt fitness classes twice a week
- Meeting people in my shared office space
I do things that I enjoy and if I meet people while doing it then that’s great. Not everyone that I meet becomes a friend but the more people I interact with the more likely I am to build a connection with some of them.
“You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” ― Winnie-the-Pooh
Before moving to Denver, there was a mountain of uncertainties and what ifs. Had I entertained the “what ifs” and dwelled on all the challenges then I never would have been able to grow and become the better version of myself that I am today. When I take a big risk as I did with moving to Denver and watching it work out well for me, it encourages me to challenge other aspects of my life and push for change to constantly improve and grow as a person.
“I’d rather live with failure knowing I tried than live with what if”
— Lil Dicky
Thanks for reading — don’t forget to clap 👏 and follow if you enjoyed!
📝 Save this story in Journal.
🍎 Wake up every Sunday morning to the week’s most noteworthy stories in Wellness waiting in your inbox. Read the Noteworthy in Wellness newsletter.
