Honest Thoughts on Relocating Interstate as an Adult

Today We’re Getting a Bit Introspective

I’m writing this from my kitchen in Brisbane, drinking a green tea I didn’t particularly want, looking at a packet of gluten free crackers from Aldi that taste like polite cardboard. And I’m thinking about Norwood Foodland. I’m thinking about it the way you think about an ex you probably shouldn’t have left. With a bit of distance. A bit of clarity. A growing suspicion that you made the wrong call.

This isn’t one of my usual articles. There’s no punchline waiting at the end. I’m not going to wrap it up with a neat little lesson about choosing yourself or trusting the process. Today we’re just sitting with it. The leaving. The settling. The growing realisation that the grocery store I used to wander on a Saturday morning was actually the canary in the coal mine of my entire life.

Because I left Adelaide for Brisbane, and now I shop at Aldi. And those two sentences are doing a lot more heavy lifting than they look.

Norwood Foodland Was a Personality, Not a Supermarket

If you’ve never lived in Adelaide, you don’t get it, and that’s fine. You can sit quietly while the rest of us mourn. Foodland is not a supermarket. Foodland is a destination. Norwood was mine. Frewville and Pasadena edged it out in the bougie stakes, but Norwood was the one I knew like the back of my hand. Saturday mornings. Wednesdays after work. Random Tuesdays when I just wanted to feel like a woman with a life.

As a celiac, Foodland was a small miracle. An entire range of gluten free products that wasn’t the same sad three items on a bottom shelf. Cheeses I still genuinely dream about, including a buffalo haloumi I’d marry if it were legal, and a Crottin de Chavignol I’d once had in Paris and never expected to find again. But there it was, sitting in the cheese fridge in suburban Adelaide, like a little goat shaped gift from the universe. Every spice you could think of. A deli section that made any foodie weak at the knees.

I left all of that for Aldi. Aldi, bless her, is doing her best. The savings are real. My grocery bill is a fraction of what it was. But there’s no deli. There’s no cheese fridge worth lingering at. The gluten free section is roughly four sad items, and the spices are whatever ten herbs Aldi has decided are essential this quarter. I do my whole shop and self checkout in under twelve minutes, and the only person who speaks to me is the security guard checking my receipt at the door.

Brisbane Is Awake at 5am and I Am Not

Here’s the thing about Brisbane that no one warns you about. The city gets up at five in the morning. The gym at six is packed. The cafes open before the sun is properly up. The whole place is humming with productivity before I’ve even opened my eyes. And to be fair, I’ve adjusted slightly. I’m up at seven now, which feels chaotic for me, with a small lie in for Lulu snuggles because he is not a morning cat and I respect that about him.

But there’s a difference between waking up early and actually doing anything. Brisbane wakes up early to go to the gym, drink a coffee, and then sit in traffic. Adelaide sleeps in, then cruises through the entire day, and somehow ends it with more done, more seen, more lived. The beaches are five minutes away. The hills are fifteen. There are vineyards within an hour in three different directions. There are pubs with fireplaces and proper beer gardens, the kind that have been there for a hundred years and don’t need to try.

Brisbane has none of that. The beaches are an hour away, minimum, and require a car I don’t have. There are no vineyards. The pubs are all trying very hard to be modern, with exposed Edison bulbs and concrete benches and a menu of small plates that cost too much. The “What’s on in Brisbane” TikToks are all about cafes. Always cafes. Sometimes a new cafe. Occasionally a cafe that’s opening soon. A city cannot live on flat whites alone, and yet here we are.

What I Actually Left Behind

When I lived in Norwood, I had two garden centres within walking distance. Two. I could buy a plant on a whim, walk it home, and have it in my window by lunch. I had actual boutiques, the kind that aren’t chain stores, run by women who knew their stock and remembered what you’d bought last time. I had cafes that weren’t auditioning for an aesthetic. I had pubs that felt lived in. I had the Adelaide Central Market, which is a love language in building form.

I had a city that didn’t need me to drive. I could walk to almost everything that mattered. The bus actually went places. The trams existed and worked. I could go a whole week without thinking about transport because transport wasn’t a problem to be solved. In Brisbane, transport is the problem. Every single outing is a logistics meeting. Can I get there? How long will it take? Will I get stuck somewhere with no way home? It’s exhausting in a way that drains the joy out of plans before I’ve even left the house.

And the cheese. I’m sorry to keep coming back to the cheese but it really is the whole thing. Foodland sold me Crottin de Chavignol, the same little goat cheese I’d eaten in a tiny restaurant in Paris and obsessed over ever since. A suburban Adelaide supermarket carried it. Casually. Like it was nothing. That’s the level we were operating at. Aldi sells me a block of generic feta that tastes like salty disappointment, and I’m supposed to be grateful for the savings.

Sydney or Adelaide, and Why I’m Even Asking

Here’s where the introspection turns into a proper question. Brisbane isn’t my forever city. I’ve known that for a while. The real question is what comes next, and at the moment I’m sitting in the middle of two very different futures, and neither of them is obvious.

Sydney is home. I left fourteen years ago, and it’s where my career lives, where my oldest friends are, where the food is genuinely world class, where the city actually feels like a city. Going back to Sydney is the sensible choice. It’s the choice that keeps my ambition fed and my income healthy and my professional life intact. It’s the version of me that has a career and a calendar and a life that looks impressive on paper. But Sydney is also expensive, fast, and a bit ruthless, and I’d be going back as a different person to the one who left.

Adelaide is the heart choice. Adelaide is the city that fed me, in every possible sense. Going back means accepting a smaller career, a slower pace, fewer professional opportunities, but it also means living a life I actually enjoy. Garden centres. Boutiques. Pubs with fireplaces. Vineyards on a Sunday. A supermarket that feels like a Saturday morning ritual. The question I’m sitting with isn’t Brisbane versus the rest. It’s whether I follow my career or my life. And honestly, today, in my kitchen, with my polite cardboard crackers and my green tea, I don’t know the answer. I just know that Foodland to Aldi was never about the groceries. It was always about this.

Brisbane Has Always Been the Holding Pattern

Here’s what I’ve realised. I’ve lived in five different cities now, and Brisbane has always been the in between. Never the destination. Always the waiting room. I grew up in Sydney, moved to Brisbane at nineteen, spent my entire twenties flying back and forth between the two for work, for boys, for opportunities, for whatever the next chapter was meant to be. Brisbane was where I lived. Sydney was where things happened.

Then I went overseas. Then I came back. Then I went to Adelaide and finally felt like I’d landed somewhere that actually fit. And then, for reasons I am still slowly unpacking in therapy and in articles like this one, I came back to Brisbane. Again. The same city I’ve been cycling through since I was a teenager. The same holding pattern. The same waiting room with slightly different wallpaper. It’s embarrassing when you say it out loud. Brisbane is where I go to figure out where I’m going next. It’s never been the answer. It’s always been the question.

And maybe that’s the actual realisation. Maybe the reason the Foodland to Aldi shift hit me so hard isn’t just about cheese or garden centres or pubs with fireplaces. Maybe it’s because every time I land back in Brisbane, I shrink a little. I make my life smaller, more functional, more about coping than thriving. I tell myself the savings are worth it. I tell myself the slower social life is fine. I tell myself I’m being practical. But practical isn’t a personality, and Brisbane isn’t a destination, and I think this time I’d like to actually choose somewhere on purpose. Sydney or Adelaide. Career or life. Either way, the holding pattern ends.

A Supermarket, a City, and a Decision

So here we are. A 1500 word article that started with a grocery store and ended with a life crossroads, which is exactly how my brain works on a quiet Saturday afternoon. The Foodland to Aldi shift was never really about gluten free crackers or buffalo haloumi or even Crottin de Chavignol, though I will continue to mourn all three. It was about the slow, creeping realisation that I’ve been settling for a smaller version of my life and calling it a budget.

What I’ve learned, sitting here with my green tea and my introspection and Lulu silently judging me from the couch, is that the small things tell the truth. The supermarket you shop at. The way you spend your Saturdays. The pubs you go to or don’t. The amount of effort every single outing requires. These aren’t small. These are the texture of your actual life. And when the texture starts to feel wrong, you can ignore it for a long time, but eventually it catches up with you in the cheese aisle and you have to face it.

I don’t have the answer yet. Sydney or Adelaide. Career or life. The sensible choice or the heart choice. But I know I’m not staying in the waiting room anymore. I’m not going to keep buying the polite cardboard crackers and pretending they’re fine. I’m not going to keep telling myself Brisbane is enough when it never has been. Somewhere between Foodland and Aldi, between Sydney and Adelaide, between who I was and who I’m becoming, there’s a decision waiting. And I think I’m finally ready to make it.

We Need to Stop Clapping for Basic Decency – Chaos, Crumbs and Clarity

In today's episode of Chaos, Crumbs and Clarity, we're unpacking why we need to stop clapping for basic decency. You know the script. A man texts back within twenty-four hours and we're screenshotting it to the group chat. A man plans a date more than three hours in advance and we call him a unicorn. A man manages to listen, pay attention, and behave like a fully formed adult, and our nervous systems short-circuit because we genuinely don't know how to receive it.Here's the truth nobody is saying out loud. The bar has been dragged so low that Satan himself needs a chiropractor after a competitive round of limbo. We've been culturally trained to be grateful for behaviour that should not require gratitude. We've been told these things are bonuses when they're actually the entry requirement. And in the meantime, women have been quietly doing the basic decency thing forever, without applause, while men get standing ovations for outputs we generated for them.Today we're talking about why a great man is genuinely just an average woman, who benefits when the bar stays low, the invisible labour women have been performing for free for centuries, and the friend-test that cuts straight through every excuse we've ever made for mediocre men. Let's get into it.For more visit BryJaimea.com or follow over on IG @BryJaimea

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