So I moved to Houston, Texas from St. Louis, Missouri last month and everything went wrong…and right. Let me explain!

I decided to pack my life up into five boxes and move halfway across the country with hopes of getting a better job. St. Louis is small, it’s hard to get jobs, the pay is bad, and I have student loans. So when my cousin approached me for the second time in regards to me moving to Houston, I finally gave in to logic. The original plan was: he would help me move to Houston; my family would drive down to Houston to say their final goodbyes and see where I’ll be living; my cousin would let me crash with him and his family until I moved into my own apartment; my cousin would give me one of his cars; and I would transfer my job down to Houston. That was the plan but things rarely go as planned.

A month before I left St. Louis I found out that the car my cousin was going to give me was damaged and the repairs would cost more than the car was worth (in his opinion). I honestly just believe he wanted me to get a new car because he’s not the type of person to promise you something without looking into it first. Meaning, he would have looked at the car to make sure it wasn’t too damaged before telling me he’d give it to me. It was a 2005 GM Envoy and he thought it was too big and too old of a model for me. So, by the time I made it to Houston, I no longer had a car and I would need to start readjusting my budget for housing because now I would probably also have a car note.

My cousin did allow me to move into the bottom half of his 5-year-old townhouse. It really does feel like my own little apartment down there most days. I have a big bedroom, big windows, a walk-in closet, and a big full bathroom down there. If I’m being honest, my favorite part of my living quarters is that bathroom. It’s gorgeous.

Although I moved to Houston, TX only half of my things did. My mother, brother, sister, and my sister’s husband and children were supposed to drive down to Houston a few days after I flew but after a series of unfortunate events, they couldn’t come. I was already sad about this because I really wanted to see my family one last time, after all, we’d planned for them to drive down here two days after I flew, so we didn’t say all the mushy goodbyes and stuff and when I finally realized I wasn’t going to see or hug them again until probably December, I got very sad. But then I realized that they were also supposed to bring the rest of my things down with them because I could only fly with my big suitcase, my carry on, and my camera bag. My heart sunk even lower. I’d already thrown away so much stuff to get it down to five boxes, but to then lose those too…it hurt. 

It also took me a week to realize I didn’t have a job. Yeah, the company I was within St. Louis wasn’t the best place to work, largely because of the pay, but I was still trying to transfer my job to Houston so that I could still have a job. I went through most of the interviewing process while I was still in St. Louis. By the time I made it to Houston, all I had to do was meet up with the director of my department and the facility director. After that, I never heard back from them. It’s been a month and I haven’t even received the little auto-sent message of “the interviewing process will not continue”. If it wasn’t for the fact that I didn’t have a job, I wouldn’t have felt too crappy about the situation as a whole. Like I said, the pay was really low although the same position I had in St. Louis was a salary position down here in Houston, so I won’t talk bad about Houston’s pay, just their communication skills. I spent most of the month walking and cycling in the Houston heat, applying to different jobs near me and luck finally caught up with me last week when I finally got a call-back and within a few days, I was working again. I also have another interview with a full-time job that I really hope I get because working part-time isn’t going to get me a car anytime soon.

There have been other things that have happened but they are more health-related and will get their own posts.

Have you ever planned a trip or made a big life decision that didn’t go as planned? Let me know in the comments below.

And until next time, thanks for reading.