Finding Yourself by Leaving
Why I left the US for Albania
I first moved to Albania in April 2021.
A lot of people - especially Albanians - scratch their heads when I tell them about the life I left behind to come live in this country.
Ti eja ketu? Ne shkojmë atje! (You came here? We go there!)
Yes, I had a high-paying job at a publicly traded advertising company and worked on a client worth a quarter-trillion dollars.
Yes, I had secured that most elusive of New York City prizes - a rent-stabilized apartment that allowed me to live by myself in relative luxury in the Big Apple, steps away from a beautiful park and public transit.
And yes, my social circle was large, and my people thought highly of me. I was able to do almost whatever I wanted in my free time and had all the money and resources to pursue my own interests.
But I knew there was more out there for me.
You see - I was leading a double life. One where I could never be 100% myself, one where I couldn’t explore and discover everything the world offers.
I could have stayed in my comfort zone and continued enjoying the security and stability that a 9-5 in the biggest city in the wealthiest country on the face of this planet offers.
Or, I could venture out into the great unknown and give myself the chance to shed an old layer of myself and dig a little deeper.
I chose to do that.
Life in Albania for a foreigner isn’t always easy. People here are friendly, the food is delicious, the seaside is magnificent, the mountains majestic, the cost of living low compared to the US, and there are enough sites in just this one tiny country itself to keep you fully engaged for a good couple of months if you want to travel full-time.
But there’s also a lot of loneliness every traveler and expat experiences when they leave the comfort of their home country.
There’s the language, which, after multiple attempts to pick up, I kind of gave up on (I still speak a good smattering of Albanian, but nowhere near enough to mingle fully with locals and completely follow long conversations).
The complex legal system has so many rules and non-rules that a foreigner can never fully navigate it without the help of a trusted local.
The unspoken social rules that take years to learn before you even realize how many social faux-pauses you have committed just by being your typical American self.
And that ever-nagging fear that you made the biggest mistake of your life moving out here in the first place.
The feeling of being isolated from your past life is something you must face as you leave your comfort zone and navigate a new life abroad.
It’s never been easy, but I can’t say it hasn’t been rewarding. I have made amazing new friends and challenged myself to change in ways that would not have been possible had I stayed in New York.
Since leaving the US and moving to Albania, the best thing that’s happened to me is learning to let go of the things I thought were most important to me.
In reality, they were weighing me down like a bag of bricks.
I had always dreamed of being a writer and getting published one day. As a little kid, I used to write almost daily. I wrote entire stories and half a novel about fantastical, faraway lands with kingdoms built on the sea floor and disastrous, dystopian societies where technological innovation had led the government to control the lives and thoughts of every citizen.
But as years passed and the life I had built for myself started to feel choking, too heavy and too difficult, the small flame of writing I had nurtured in my youth simmered down to a spark and, eventually, to just an ember.
Once I learned to let go of what was holding me back, I was able to fan the ember back to a healthy flame. I started a writing club in Tirana that meets on a weekly basis, which helped me get back into writing and to keep pursuing my dream of becoming a published author.
And on September 21st, I got to turn the dream into a reality. I published my first novel, The New Angels.
At first glance, The New Angels doesn’t sound like a story that has anything to do with Albania or self-discovery. When I started writing the novel, I had no idea what it was about or even that it would become the first full book I would write and publish.
“Every day, a new angel comes and visits me.”
That’s how the book started out in my brain - just a sentence that I had received from some greater power or wisdom, a spark of creativity that floated into my mind and asked to be revealed on a piece of paper.
A scene turned into a chapter, that chapter turned into two, and slowly yet surely, the collection of chapters became a whole novel.
In the story, young Elidana Harserind of Val-K’thor is stuck in a village she doesn’t want to stay in. She knows she’s too smart, too clever and too thirsty to learn more about the world to stay put in the village and marry the kind yet simple-minded Tahm, the local cobbler’s son.
The sixteen-year-old knows no better, having grown up in and spent her entire life in the village, and accepts her fate when her engagement to the young man is announced.
But strange things are afoot in Val-K’thor; the game is disappearing from the forest, and nobody seems to know why. One day, an angel arrives as she is working in the family field. Michael and Elidana share an instant chemistry that is inexplicable and intriguing to both the reader and heroine.
Michael’s arrival changes everything - Elidana can longer stay put, and even though a part of her longs to remain in her familiar village, things are now out of her control. Michael’s arrival heralds the beginning of an adventure that takes her far away from home, where she meets a cast of fantastical characters and creatures who will help her to try and save her village and Greater Earth itself.
The New Angels is a story that came to me as I tried to figure out my own path forward - towards a life that was more authentic, more mine, rather than one where I would be resigned to the designs of my family and community.
I see a lot of myself in Elidana, a young woman trying to balance the demands of family and tradition with the unceasing, relentless voice inside her head telling her: this can’t be everything.
I never would have guessed that my first book would be published while I was living in Albania. The demand for English-language books here is pretty low.
But at the end of the day, it’s not about where you are, but rather, what you discover along the way.
And I am grateful for what this country has given me - the opportunity to find and be myself.
The New Angels is out on Amazon as both a paperback and Kindle eBook. I’m also selling physical (signed!) copies in Tirana (feel free to get in touch if you’re around and would like one).
Congratulations and good luck with the new book!