Leaving Home.

When I started my little blog, one of the things I wanted to write about was the experience of leaving home for the first time. I feel like it's such a huge life change to go through and reading about other people's experiences really calmed my nerves about leaving home. So here I am telling you about my own experience of moving out and also giving you a few tips that I have found made the transition easier.

Since I was born I have lived in the very hilly and rather quiet county of Cumbria, think Wales, add a few more lakes and you're mind is pretty much there.. Every place has it's good sides and not so good sides, for instance, Cumbria was very peaceful, not much traffic, beautiful scenery and very safe. A great example of beautiful views is the one from my back garden that I am in love with!

I loved living there and can see why many people don't always tend to leave but I knew if I got comfortable I would never actually pluck up the courage to go anywhere else, and since I was younger I have always vowed that I would be adventurous and live in big cities and experience the buzz of busier places. One of the downsides of Cumbria was definitely it's lack of buzz and excitement.

Originally I did imagine that I would go somewhere like London or Leeds, but it just so happened that I found a great opportunity for a one year internship/course in Bradford. From looking at the view of my back garden then looking at my balcony view at my new home in Bradford, you can see they are worlds away..

So in September 2013 I upped and moved to Bradford. From what people had said about Bradford before I went there, it was no surprise that I was absolutely terrified before I left, The day I moved in I had a slight meltdown and decided I was going to add a granny flat onto my mum's house in Cumbria and just live there forever, but fortunately I had enough sensible people around me to convince me that I was going to be fine! And thankfully, I was! I have to admit that I was definitely helped by my crazy flatmate and sister Zoe, who always saved me before anymore of my meltdowns. As I settled into Bradford, I found it wasn't as scary as anyone said it was, yes you have to be careful when you're walking and no, girls cannot walk alone in the dark but that's pretty much the same with any city, I found that the shops were nice, the city wasn't big enough to get ridiculously lost in (which was a worry of mine at the time as I have always had a horrendous sense of direction) and mostly, the people here are quite nice!

Although I found the city itself to be a pleasant surprise, it didn't make the fact that I was missing all things green, hilly, sheepy, my family and silence at night opposed to the lovely police sirens, drills and alarms that are now present in my life at night. I found it really hard at first to not to want to go back to my comfort zone of Cumbria, and I have put together a few tips that I found really helpful to settling into my new environment!

1. Make your new room nice and homely - this was so good for me! Literally I just put up every nice decoration I had in my room back home, all my photo frames, candles and filled my bed with all my comfy blankets and pillows. It made coming back in the evening like coming back to a piece of home.

(This pillow was bought for me from Next home and I just think it's so pretty!)

2. Don't forget why you moved - this was very important for me, whenever I had a down day or missed my family, I would always remind myself why I moved to Bradford. I would literally just tell myself 'you moved to Bradford for an amazing opportunity to learn new things, explore new places and live life to the best you possibly can,  and that, Naomi, is why you're here'. Seriously trust me on this, it helps! If you forget why you moved to where you did, then you'll spend your life reversing back to where you started. And I'm a big believer in moving forward, there's so much to do in this world and it's a cliche, buuuut.. Life is WAY too short!

3. Remember to see the beauty in where you are - moving from Cumbria where you see beautiful scenery absolutely everywhere to Bradford, where you see buildings, and some of them really unfortunate looking. But the more I tried to find the nice things to look at in Bradford, the more I found, it would have been very easy to miss some of the really gorgeous old buildings, or the hills in the distance and it really made me enjoy Bradford a lot more. I took this photo on a freezing autumn day while I was walking around, it was one of the first times I really saw the beauty in Bradford, and if I can find beauty in Bradford you can find it anywhere!

4. Keep in close contact with people back home - now, this seems like a given when you move away, but I have found that sometimes it's actually quite hard to find time to pick up the phone or send a text to one of your friends from home or family when you are getting used to this whole new life somewhere else. But the times when I felt the most homesick were usually when I hadn't spoken to anyone from home for a few days, and I felt so much better after a phone call to my mum or speaking to my best friends about the next time 

we'll see each other. 

5. Don't be stuck in a daydream about home - I was so guilty of this when I first moved to Bradford. I would be so eager to get back to my room which felt like my safe place or be so involved in texting my friends from back home that I would miss the opportunity to talk to my new friends or go out with the new people I was meeting. You can get so wrapped up in being homesick that you don't actually enjoy or settle in to your new surroundings, so make sure you step out and make an effort with people because I found that making new friends made moving so much more enjoyable!

What I'm really trying to say is that moving can be so much more exciting when you focus more on looking ahead than looking behind from what you've come from! I'm so excited already for my next adventure, wherever that may be, and seen as home will only always be only a days travelling away, we can go anywhere that we want to!

I hope this was helpful for some of you and thank you for reading! 

Have a great day wherever you are!

Naomi 

oxoxo