The 3 levels of distance from home

and why they matter.

First let’s define home. Home is were you live¹, but in this post when I say home, I mean the place where your parents live; in some instances also the place where you grew up and where you still have childhood friends.

I call both Denmark and Greece home, because they are both my home; however in this post I will refer to Denmark as residency and Greece as home. This post assumes that there is a place you call home. If not, this post might not be of much use for you.

Now that we established the terminology, let’s talk about distance. If you are living abroad, the distance from home is something that is relevant to you. Most likely you do not actually measure it in distance units, but in time; i.e. you don’t say that you are 1823 km away from home, but instead that you are 3 hours away by plane.

I like to think that distance from home can be split into 3 categories. The reason is that depending on the distance, you might not be able to do certain things with or for your parents. These categories are:

• Be there in a couple of hours, any time of the day.

• You can go for a long weekend.

• You need at least 2 weeks to visit.

Be there in a couple of hours any time of the day

To be there in a couple of hours, you need to live very close. Like, nearby-city close. To be there any time of the day, you need to have access to a car or to public transport that runs throughout the day. You can figure out if your distance from home belongs in this category by asking yourself:

• Can you help your parents with some chore for a couple of hours and then go back home on the same day?

• Can you go and water your mom’s plants after work?

• Can you grab a coffee with a friend on a random Sunday and then go back home?

Most importantly:

In case of emergency, can you be there in a couple of hours?

If so, then indeed you can be home in a couple of hours, any time of the day. The fact that in all these cases you can show up home really quickly, offers a bunch of benefits:

• You can help your parents even with small stuff, that they may be having a hard time with: big grocery shopping, moving stuff or driving them somewhere. The older they are, the more things they will need help with, so being there for them, makes a big difference.

• You can see old friends more often. You will not be home every week if you are living 2 hours away. That would be too much and you would end up living a double life: you would be physically in one place (residency), but all your social life would be somewhere else (home). However, you can plan to be home maybe once a month, have a nice dinner with family and catch-up with a friend.

• Lastly, you are there for your parents in case of an emergency. Not much elaboration needed here.

Being close to home has all these advantages, but if you are reading this post, chances are you are an expat. And if you are an expat, you live abroad. And if you live abroad, most likely you are not that close to home.

Photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash

You can go for a long weekend

Next level is when, to make the visit worth the effort, you need to go for at least a weekend. Usually that means that you live a couple of hours away by plane. If you add the time you need to get to the airport, the fact that you need to get there earlier and the time you need to get from the airport of arrival to your home, that would add up to half a day. And another half to return. So if you need a day to travel, you most likely won’t do the trip for less than a weekend, preferably a long one.

Since you are not that far away, both places are in a similar time zone and you can probably prolong your weekend, by working remotely. That way you get to stay a bit longer, without spending vacation days. Win-win.

I belong in this category. Home is in Greece and residency in Denmark. I will usually try to combine my visits with some remote work. I don’t manage to do so many more things when staying for a week instead of 3 days, but it seems to have a soothing effect on my parents. They feel calmer having me there, as if Greece is some kind of safe haven.

You need at least 2 weeks to visit

A good friend of mine is from Australia. Going back to see his family took proper planning and did not happen the first few years he was in Denmark. And when he went there, he took a few weeks off. First, because he needed a day to get there and a couple of days to adjust to the time difference. And secondly, because it could be a while until the next time he managed to repeat the trip. On top of that, he didn’t have an option: he had to take the whole time off of work. Having such a large time difference, makes it almost impossible to work remotely.

Photo by Antek on Unsplash

So, what?

Lists about distance from home, lists about language fluency, lists about what to look out for when migrating. What is this obsession with lists and most importantly, why do I need to know in which category my distance from home belongs to?

Fair point, you don’t actually need to. My intention is to point out how this distance might affect your decisions. It might do so in the future, or it might have already happened.

For me, it has affected my job search radius. I haven’t been offered a job in another continent, but I would like to experience living and working in the US. I did so only for a very short while and I would have loved to stay longer and getter a better feel of the place². But, even though my parents are healthy and self-sufficient, I feel it would be too much, to live so far away. So I decided that, at least for the time being, I did not want to live in a place that I need at least 2 weeks to visit.

While in the US, distance was not an issue, but it was for sure a challenge. Being so far made me feel useless; if something happened back home, I couldn’t do anything. I could only hope to be back in less that 48 hours.

But is not just the physical distance; time difference is also a challenge. When the European day is half-over, the American day is just starting. You are on the phone the moment you wake up. Maybe the calls are also longer, because both sides feel they need to compensate for the hours of the day that one of them is sleeping. And believe it or not, that can be exhausting.

I was listening to a podcast, where an American couple described how they decided to move to Japan and ended up living there for 26 years. Their kid was born and raised in Japan, but eventually they decided to return to the US. The reason?
Every morning, the husband would spend a good hour trying to fix problems his parents had, back home. After some time, this simply became too much and they decided to move close to them.

Till the day I left the US, I didn’t manage to solve the time-difference problem. Every morning, I would take a long break from work, to be on the phone. It could be with parents, or friends. Not to solve any problems thankfully. Still, I would spend a good hour just keeping in touch with people³. It is not that I did not want to talk to them. But having to do so in the middle of the day, with the work clock also ticking, often turned it into a chore.

The Bottom line

I like living in a place where I can visit home for a long weekend. It gives me the ability to visit often, should I want to. It doesn’t take much planning, since I do not necessarily need to take time off. It also makes it easier for friends and family to visit me.

Would I want however to try out USA or S. Korea for a few years, without being stressed about distance? You bet I would.

Has distance from home ever influenced your decisions? And if so, how?

1. Captain Obvious, reporting for duty.

2. Eventually I will get to write about that experience.

3. If you add on top of that, that to catch my colleagues in Europe I had to start working at 07:00 am, by 10:00 my head was spinning.