Nobody Tells You That Starting Over Means Creating Your Own Culture

When I got my first professional job in Tallahassee, Florida, I thought I had accomplished the goal.

I had a job.

At that point in my life, that was really all I had been thinking about. I wasn't looking for a community. I wasn't thinking about quality of life. I wasn't thinking about work-life balance or whether I would have people around me who shared my interests.

I was looking for a job.

And when I found one, I was excited. This was the beginning of my professional career. I had finished college, and now I was stepping into the next phase of adulthood.

What I didn't understand was that I wasn't just starting a new job.

I was starting a new life.

College Had Given Me More Than I Realized

Before moving to Tallahassee, I had spent four years in Tampa.

During those years, I had built an entire infrastructure around myself without really thinking about it.

I knew the area. I knew where to go. I had relationships. I had pledged my fraternity. I had graduated from the University of Tampa. I understood Tampa and the larger Tampa Bay area.

I knew how to maneuver there.

Then I moved to Tallahassee and suddenly almost all of that disappeared.

I had never really thought about what it meant to start over because college had made starting over relatively easy.

College creates a world for you.

There are people your age everywhere. There are student organizations. There are activities. There are classes. There are places designed specifically for people who are trying to figure out who they are and where they belong.

Everybody is trying to find their people.

Then you graduate.

And nobody is waiting to create that world for you.

Your Job Is Not Responsible for Building Your Life

This was one of the first lessons Tallahassee taught me.

My employer had hired me to do a job.

That was it.

My employer wasn't responsible for helping me find friends.

My employer wasn't responsible for showing me where young professionals spent their time.

My employer wasn't responsible for helping me figure out where Black professionals gathered, where people with similar interests socialized, or what kind of community would make Tallahassee feel like home.

And my employer certainly wasn't responsible for helping me figure out what I wanted my life outside of work to look like.

That responsibility belonged to me.

It sounds obvious to me now.

At the time, it wasn't.

The Loudness of Being Alone

One of the things I remember most about those early months was how incredibly loud being alone could feel.

I wasn't necessarily unhappy.

I was excited about the opportunity. I was proud to have started my career.

But I didn't know what it meant to finish work, go home and have nobody there to talk to.

In college, you could walk outside and bump into somebody you knew. You could go somewhere and find people your age. There was almost always something happening somewhere.

Now I had to intentionally find those spaces.

Where did young professionals go?

Where were the people who looked like me?

Where did they socialize?

Where did they build relationships?

Where were the communities that might make this strange new city eventually feel like my city?

I didn't know.

And for the first time, there wasn't a resident assistant, student organization or university calendar waiting to give me the answer.

So I Started Creating My Own Culture

Eventually I realized something that would stay with me for the rest of my life:

If I wanted a particular kind of world around me, I was going to have to help create it.

I couldn't sit in my apartment waiting for Tallahassee to somehow reveal my community to me.

I had to go looking.

I had to meet people.

I had to find spaces.

I had to develop routines.

I had to decide what I wanted my life to look like beyond the place that deposited my paycheck.

In other words, I had to create my own culture.

Looking back, I think that was one of the most important transitions of my early adulthood.

Because I started understanding that a life isn't something that simply happens around you.

Sometimes you have to build it.

Starting Over Is Bigger Than Moving

I've thought about Tallahassee quite a bit as I've gotten older because I've had to start over more than once since then.

Different jobs.

Different cities.

Different seasons of life.

And each time, the lesson becomes a little clearer.

We often define starting over by the obvious things.

A new house.

A new city.

A new job.

A new relationship.

Retirement.

A career change.

But those are really just the external pieces.

The harder question is:

What kind of life are you going to build around this new reality?

Because you can successfully move into the new house and still not feel at home.

You can land the new job and still feel disconnected.

You can relocate to the new city and still wonder where you belong.

Starting over isn't finished when the boxes are unpacked.

Sometimes that's when the real work begins.

The Lesson Tallahassee Gave Me

I went to Tallahassee believing that getting the job was the accomplishment.

Years later, I understand that the job was only the doorway.

The bigger lesson was learning that adulthood would repeatedly require me to create community, relationships, routines and purpose for myself.

Nobody was going to hand me a ready-made culture.

And maybe that's one of the things we don't talk about enough when we talk about starting over.

Sometimes the question isn't simply:

Where am I going next?

The better question may be:

What kind of world do I want to create when I get there?

Tallahassee was the first place that forced me to answer that question.

I didn't know it at the time, but I would spend much of the rest of my life answering it.