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First Steps of a Long Journey

Understandably, the first question most people ask when I tell them I’m leaving my (lovely) job and moving to Austria is ‘What will you do there?’, pretty much do I have a job lined up there or am I just winging it!

Well, we’re moving for Alessandro’s job – and as my German is not yet at waitress level I’ll be working on freelance and designs full time. I’m really looking forward to having the time to go out there and make a real go of being self-employed, to design for myself as well as for customers – I’ve learnt so much in the last couple of years so I’m hoping I won’t fail entirely.

(Make sure you look out for an oh-so-interesting post in a couple of months about the joys of registering as self employed in Austria!) 

One thing I know I struggle with is motivation/ procrastination – luckily google says there are a couple of shared workspaces in our nearest big city so I will have somewhere to go when I feel like I’m getting stuck in a rut working at home. I also need to make sure I join as many classes, courses and volunteering opportunities as I can to make sure I get myself some friends out there! 



In terms of goals, I definitely have a fair few big challenges to get stuck into for 2019:

  • learn German – I’m hoping being immersed in the language helps a lot because at the moment my German is coming along as well as my Italian!
  • …learn Italian – I really would like to be able to chat away with Alessandro’s family! One thing I like about the area we’re moving to is that it’s SO close to the Italian (and Slovenian) border, so I will be able to find a wealth of Italians to talk to.
  • learn to drive – this is something I’ve never really needed to do having lived so close to good public transport, however in Austria we’re kind of ‘in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of everywhere’, and it would be nice to be able to take myself to some of the nearby towns
  • learn to swim. – this is quite an embarrassing one, being such an awful swimmer at 29! Now that we’re moving to such an incredible lake-y area its something I really need to dive into at the deep end and learn
  • climb a mountain – in the area we are moving to we’ll be a little bit spoilt for choice for hiking, but I really want to be able to say I’ve climbed a mountain, even just a little one!

Being a bit of a city girl I’m really looking forward to all of the scenery we’ll have around us – although I am a little worried about how much I’ll miss the noise and chaos of Manchester!

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