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Old 10-29-2019, 06:36 PM
 
2 posts, read 2,710 times
Reputation: 22

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I'm going to provide you with some background on my life - I'm a 31 year old, single female who grew up in South Jersey (about 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia). I lived there for the majority of my life until I moved to Philly in my mid-twenties. Let me start off by saying, I LOVE everything about Philly - I could sit here for hours listing the things I love, the amazing memories I made and awesome people I met. But t came to the point where I wasn't happy with my life for these reasons: 1) my love life was non-existent, 2) I wasn't happy with my career - I was highly underpaid and applied to hundreds of other positions with no luck and 3) with most of my friends getting married/starting a family, I started seeing them less which meant not going out as much. I wanted a change for myself.

I have a sister who lives in the Charlotte area (little older with children) and my parents will be retiring to Hilton Head within the next two years. So about six months ago, I decided to start a new chapter in my life and relocate down to Charlotte, NC. The past couple of weeks, I've been questioning myself if I made the right decision. I like Charlotte, but I don't LOVE Charlotte - Uptown is a complete ghost town and lacks the culture that Philly has. Also, I only have one friend at work (who I barely hang out with). However, I have a job that I enjoy and am paid more than what I was making up north. I'm just lost at this point and am looking for some opinions on what I should do? Has anyone moved to Charlotte and felt the same way? Do I need to give it more time?


Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
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Old 10-29-2019, 06:48 PM
 
4 posts, read 3,235 times
Reputation: 10
Sometimes it's not all about money, but it is nice to be around family. Keep applying for jobs in philly and I'd apply in nyc also
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Old 10-29-2019, 10:08 PM
 
Location: The place where the road & the sky collide
23,809 posts, read 34,505,004 times
Reputation: 10256
Quote:
Originally Posted by chloemariep View Post
I'm going to provide you with some background on my life - I'm a 31 year old, single female who grew up in South Jersey (about 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia). I lived there for the majority of my life until I moved to Philly in my mid-twenties. Let me start off by saying, I LOVE everything about Philly - I could sit here for hours listing the things I love, the amazing memories I made and awesome people I met. But t came to the point where I wasn't happy with my life for these reasons: 1) my love life was non-existent, 2) I wasn't happy with my career - I was highly underpaid and applied to hundreds of other positions with no luck and 3) with most of my friends getting married/starting a family, I started seeing them less which meant not going out as much. I wanted a change for myself.

I have a sister who lives in the Charlotte area (little older with children) and my parents will be retiring to Hilton Head within the next two years. So about six months ago, I decided to start a new chapter in my life and relocate down to Charlotte, NC. The past couple of weeks, I've been questioning myself if I made the right decision. I like Charlotte, but I don't LOVE Charlotte - Uptown is a complete ghost town and lacks the culture that Philly has. Also, I only have one friend at work (who I barely hang out with). However, I have a job that I enjoy and am paid more than what I was making up north. I'm just lost at this point and am looking for some opinions on what I should do? Has anyone moved to Charlotte and felt the same way? Do I need to give it more time?


Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
What do you like to do in your spare time? That could make a difference.
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Old 10-30-2019, 09:12 AM
 
Location: Kansas City MO
654 posts, read 622,636 times
Reputation: 2189
Philadelphia is such an underrated city, it has almost all the amenities of NY/Chicago but without the cache or glitz. It is truly a big city and can hold its own with major cities in Europe. You have moved to a typical mid sized car centric US city where anyone who is anyone lives in the suburbs and occasionally drives into the city for an event. Philadelphia is a REAL city where people actually live and work in a city like it is a city, not a re creation of a city.
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Old 10-30-2019, 09:17 AM
 
5,291 posts, read 6,116,197 times
Reputation: 5462
Look into the "research triangle" of Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh. Lots of young people in that area and more culture. Charlotte seems to be all about business and getting ahead.
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Old 10-30-2019, 09:47 AM
 
Location: East Mt Airy, Philadelphia
1,119 posts, read 1,456,342 times
Reputation: 2200
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wells5 View Post
Look into the "research triangle" of Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh. Lots of young people in that area and more culture. Charlotte seems to be all about business and getting ahead.
I used to live in Chapel Hill, and would get to Charlotte occasionally. It never budged my "wow" meter. To be fair, that was 11+ years ago, before moving to Philly. I think Wells5 makes a good suggestion recommending RTP, and I'd focus it even more on Durham - an astonishingly boring place when I arrived in Chapel Hill in 1974, but now thriving. Lots of night life, minor league baseball, good and varied restaurants, etc. etc.

Normally I'd say come back to Philly, but since family is important to you Durham/RTP have the advantage of being kind of close to Charlotte (2.5 hrs+/-) and vaguely close to Hilton Head (maybe 6 hrs drive or a short flight).
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Old 10-30-2019, 10:00 AM
 
650 posts, read 767,224 times
Reputation: 198
Philadelphia doesnot have similar bad areas you want to avoid?
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Old 10-30-2019, 02:18 PM
 
Location: Philadelphia
2,539 posts, read 2,283,222 times
Reputation: 2696
I would stick it out as long as you can in your current job, leveraging the opportunity.

I had a friend who was from Philadelphia and went to school in Lancaster so growing up all his friends/family were close by. He got a positive job opportunity in Wichita, KS and took it. He was MISERABLE while living in Wichita. BUT he focused on his job, and just recently moved back to Philadelphia, after he leveraged a better opportunity and now makes 30k more than he made in Wichita.

Stick it out is my advice, focus on your career and once you can leverage an opportunity move back.
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Old 10-30-2019, 06:03 PM
 
Location: Philadelphia
558 posts, read 297,145 times
Reputation: 415
Quote:
Originally Posted by rowhomecity View Post
I would stick it out as long as you can in your current job, leveraging the opportunity.

I had a friend who was from Philadelphia and went to school in Lancaster so growing up all his friends/family were close by. He got a positive job opportunity in Wichita, KS and took it. He was MISERABLE while living in Wichita. BUT he focused on his job, and just recently moved back to Philadelphia, after he leveraged a better opportunity and now makes 30k more than he made in Wichita.

Stick it out is my advice, focus on your career and once you can leverage an opportunity move back.
That sounds right. I moved to Chicago from Denver after college. It was a good career move but I hated it for a while. Looking back, those Chicago years were instrumental in many ways. You can always come back here if/when the time is right.
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Old 10-30-2019, 06:38 PM
 
Location: Levittown
967 posts, read 1,127,615 times
Reputation: 663
I work in Virginia and North Carolina fairly often. One thing I can say from my experience down there is that you are in the south and from the north, which for itself speaks volumes. Now I haven't really explored the "triad" or "triangle" specifically. Most of my time down there has been spent at truck stops along the interstates in little no name towns like Graham, Pleasant Hill, McLeansville, Kenly etc. - and Cook Out restaurant chains for what it's worth, and Smithfield's BBQ in Mebane on occasion - so I've been in my fair share of backwoods places. Some remote places can be outright scary, yes some segregation still alive and well not to mention black-on-white descrimination, but these eating establishments have been what I look forward to most when having to trek down there on occasion for work.

A co-worker of mine remarked how clean and litter-free the roadway around the Pilot truck stop in Mebane looked. Half-jokingly I said they probably charge you with a felony down there for littering, after getting caught speeding in Virginia back in May and learning "reckless driving by speed" there is a class 1 misdemeanor, which if not faught will leave you with a criminal record. And the police WILL target you if your plate bears the name of a northern state. Of course if you already live there it will be less apparent, until they notice your accent lacks the "twang".

So that's my "south" experience. I've learned to stay out of there unless I have business being there. As for the friendliness and "southern hospitality," I have always sensed an insincerity about it too. You are not one of them and never will be.
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