I'm Leaving

I’m leaving the USA and returning to my home country Australia.

There are dozens of steps and pieces of information and documentation that you need to get a US Green Card. Police records for every country you’ve lived in. A list of every address you’ve lived at since the age of 16. And a thorough medical examination including chest x-rays in order to confirm that you don’t currently have tuberculosis.

We had travelled back to Australia specifically to have our examinations done, by one of only 2 doctors in the whole country to offer the service. The appointment had taken months to secure, and we arrived to do it before a public holiday weekend. “Don’t come to the clinic if you are sick, you must wear face-masks at all times, and if you exhibit any symptoms of illness you will need to reschedule,” the clinic sternly warned in a series of confusing emails.

The day had finally arrived after weeks of paperwork and byzantine bureaucracy. Minutes before leaving our Airbnb for the medical appointment, our 8-year-old son vomited on the floor. Breakfast mustn’t have agreed with him, we thought. Just stick to water now, we said. But he kept vomiting, unable to keep even water down.

In the waiting room, I tried to conceal him while he puked in a plastic cup I held while my husband had his 1-hour exam.

Then he spray-puked all over the floor right in front of the receptionist.

As it turns out, all the stern rules were basically a hangover of Covid times and the staff at the clinic were quite understanding and sweet. But our strict medical examination schedule meant we had to each endure an hour of tedious questioning by the doctor, and then haul our asses to the radiology clinic for our chest x-rays. By late afternoon our son was still looking green. At one point, lying on a chair in the radiology waiting room with his arm dramatically flung over his eyes, he started whispering, “Children’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital,” trying to compel the whole ordeal to end.

He turned out to be fine — some mild gastro, nothing serious.

* * *

Here’s the news: I’m leaving the USA and returning to my home country Australia. Again.

I’ve lived in the US for 8 of the past 16 years. I have started my 3 businesses here. My entrepreneurial spirit was first awakened by the culture of relentless optimism (and capitalism) of this country.

But it’s time to leave. I’ll explain why, and what’s next for me.

I’ve written before about how I shake the snowglobe of my life — Perth to Sydney, Sydney to New York. This is another shake. Except this time I’m shaking it back toward home. In many ways I feel like I’m coming full-circle, while still trying to reconcile some conflicting parts of myself.

Why we are leaving

The biggest reason is that my husband and I want our pre-teen child to live out the rest of his childhood and go to high school in Australia. That’s where all our family is, and he (and they) have been deprived of a closer relationship due to the great distance.

Another reason, we love the ocean and miss the physical landscape: especially the hot, mediterranean summers spent at the beach and river.

And finally, for the first time in my life, I don’t feel like I have anything left to prove. I already did the thing. I proved to myself that I could leave the places that were familiar, that I could start a business, that I could grow it, that what I had built could be recognized as valuable enough that one day someone would want to buy it.

It was only after we finally had permission to live in this country as permanent residents on a possible path to citizenship, after all the bullshit and money and time to be granted that little plastic card and piece of paper stuck in our passports did I realize that I was actually done proving anything to myself or other people.

Ambition is alluring and exciting, but it also becomes needy and jealous if given enough scope.

I’m extremely proud of what I was able to accomplish over this time. But now after nearly 15 years of living off and on in the US, it’s finally time for us to return “home.”

I realized that I could earn the thing, stop needing it, and walk away without deciding it was worthless.

What I’ll miss

Two years ago I wrote how I felt that America was the place for me. Both things can be true: that it was the right place for me then, and that it’s time to leave now. Circumstances change. Feelings change. That’s part of what makes this hard.

Two things are true, that I’m wildly excited to return to my homeland, and that I’m disappointed that this chapter is coming to an end. Here are some other things I will really miss:

• The size, vibrancy, and ambition of the retail and advertising industries (my beat)

• The suburban dream we found ourselves in in Roswell, Atlanta, with a gang of similar-aged kids running in and out of each other’s homes all week

• The woods, the Georgia State Park system and the delightful near year-round camping opportunities it held for me and my son, the motivated campers in our family

• Many friends in the industry who made work travel and events feel more like a reunion than work

• The friendliness, openness, and enthusiasm of most Americans

• Relative ease of traveling: within the Americas, to the Caribbean and even Europe (I say this relative to Western Australia being extremely physically isolated)

What’s next

I’m going to Cannes in 3 weeks, then we’re going to have an epic and much-needed family vacation before heading back to Perth in late July.

I’ll be continuing on with my media-company-of-one, Retail Media Breakfast Club, doing pretty much the exact same thing I’ve been doing for the past 18 months except I won’t be constantly traveling to industry events. Just creating podcasts, newsletters and silly videos about the retail media and increasingly more about the impact to the broader retail space of AI-enabled shopping.

Part of me still feels some FOMO. I think I’ll always feel like part of me is here in America.

With just a few weeks left in the northern hemisphere I’m keeping a running list of events I’ll be at. If there’s a chance to say hi or bye, please let me know.

Link to list of events

What I’m learning from this

This isn’t a “clean” decision with an obvious answer and no downsides.

I’ve been traveling a lot for work recently. It can be exhilarating. I’ve been working on my public speaking and that’s been going really well lately. I get to meet interesting new people, hang out with longtime industry friends and collaborators. I’ll miss that.

But work travel is also a grind. The prep, the actual time traveling, the poor sleep on the road, missing my family.

This is how I feel about leaving overall. Relieved, but also likely to miss the exhilaration.

"If you're brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello."

— Paulo Coelho