The math never adds up the way I want it to. I keep running the same numbers in my head, different currencies, different cities, different versions of a life I haven't lived yet, and every time the spreadsheet in my brain spits out the same verdict: not quite. Not quite enough to justify leaving what's easy for what's uncertain.
There's a particular kind of exhaustion in being in a holding pattern. Not moving forward, not moving back, just circling the same runway, waiting for a signal that might never come. I tell myself I'm being rational. Weighing net income against cost of living, career acceleration against comfort, ambition against the quiet life I've built somewhere far from where the opportunities supposedly are.
And then there's the other person in this equation, whose life doesn't fit neatly into my spreadsheet. Every city I consider, I have to consider twice. Once for me, once for us. That's not a complaint, it's just arithmetic with more variables than I know how to solve for.
Some doors close on their own before I even decide whether I wanted to walk through them. Ghosted. Rejected. Cooled off. Maybe that's the universe doing the deciding I couldn't.