moving to Austin - advice needed

Sorry to post twice in the space of half an hour, but I just got an email that has me totally unable to sleep. It's like this:

I lived in Austin, Texas for five years while a student. I have returned to Texas after living abroad since then, and I have been working and saving up money while living with my parents for the last six months. I was planning to move to Austin around April 1st, when I estimate that I will have about $3000 saved up, or before then if I can manage to get a job (since August, I've had two interviews and, obviously, got neither of them!). Right now I have $1000 saved, but I have monthly outgoing of at least $600 ($210 student loans, $175 car payment, $85 insurance, plus gas, some food, incidentals) and I take home only about $1200. I only have $1000 right now because I a) bought a car; b) bought some necessity items, a bit at a time, to get ready to get an apartment (like sheets, dishes, etc.). I have probably more furniture than I will be able to fit into an apartment in storage with relatives, waiting to go.

Now. Here is my dilemma. One of my friends has told me about another friend, who I don't know, who wants to sublease his furnished room in a 3/2 house downtown (!) for $325/mo plus utilities, available Feb 1st. On Feb. 1st, I will have about $2000, as I prepaid my student loans/car payments with my Xmas bonus and they are not due until the end of Feb. I am SICK of being stuck here in Hicksville and desire nothing more than to get to Austin and get on with my life (my parents are allowing me to stay at their house for free and pay no bills except some food, but will not actually loan or give me any money to move for some reason!), especially since I am back here because of a bad breakup and, as long as I am stuck here, feel that my ex's decisions are still controlling MY life. I want to just get on with it. And of course be someplace that ISN'T 'Bush Country'. It's driving me nuts. Slowly.

Should I jump at this chance?

I figure that to have an apartment that costs a meagre $550/mo, make my standing debt payments, and eat, I will have to earn a minimum of around $30K/year in Austin. At my previous job in the UK, I was an administrator making about $40K plus great benefits including company car and all that jazz. I am now working in customer service for peanuts in Podunktown. I figure if I take this opportunity and move into this house for Feb/March, that might be just the jumpstart I need to get a job in Austin (it's understandably hard when you are about 400 miles away!). I am willing to waitress, temp, or whatever, in the meantime, and, if it really came down to it, I could always put my loans on hold (with interest), though I have been desperately trying to avoid doing this for the past 2.5 years. I cannot count on any relatives to help me with bills if I can't make it, so factor that in.

If you were in my position, what would you do? Thanks in advance.

Do you want to have a room mate.

Sometimes it's better to wait for what you may really want out of life.

How long is another couple of months if you really look at it?

but I need to get down there to get a job, and, at the rate I am going, I am ont even saving enough money here to make it worthwhile. I only earn $1200 a month and I have the outgoings listed above!

But, yeah, I am kinda leaning toward your reaction. :)

and even harder if you're far away from the city you're looking for a job in.

The only advice I can give is really look at the whole picture. Maybe start a list of positives/negatives and see which side out weighs the other after some deep thought and serious critical thinking.

Emotional reactions and decisions to bad (or undesired) situations rarely lead to productive or positive results.

waitress and do what the hell I like and dye my hair purple like I really want to. Since pimping myself out to the corporate whoredom won't get me anywhere ultimately, anyway, looks like. If only we had free health care like I did back in Europe.

I would be content to work in Book People for the rest of my life except for the damn student loans. I should've bought a house in 1997 instead. Sold a lie.

and I see no future there. No retirement benefits and health care, what's that....

Sounds like you need a bunch of change both in location and employment.

It seems you already have some goals and plans laid out, but that they just aren't happening fast enough for ya (I've been there several times myself).

A good friends (30 year lifer in the USMC) advice comes to mind here:
piss poor planning provides piss poor results.

You seem to know what you want and that's a great thing. Maybe you just need to have patience to have your goals fall in to place. If their not happening fast enough try to find solutions to achieve the results you're looking for. Jumping at straws is usually not productive.

Hated it, of course. To make a long story short, I got my masters in English/Art History in 2002, planning to go for a PhD/tenure track. But the MA burned me out totally on the whole, BS enterprise. I was in the UK to be with my partner, who I had known for six years, so I worked waitressing and retail jobs for a loooong time while waiting on my immigration issues to get sorted out by the damn Home Office. They kept my passport for a year, I missed the funerals of two grandparents, and I couldn't get a 'real' job with an up-in-the-air student visa. I didn't, and don't, want to get married. So we finally got the domestic partnership visa in spring 2004. I had been working in a temp-to-perm position in one of the '100 best companies to work for' in the UK since Christmas, and as soon as the visa came through, they promoted me and put me into a professional-track position with good benefits, company car, and about $40K/pa USD. In three years, after getting some further training, I would've been able to get about $70-80K. Everything seemed finally to be working out after my years of hard work and doubt and then boom! my partner tells me one day after work that he wants out and convinces me that we need a 'trial separation'. He convinced me to get a sabbatial from work and go home for a nice long visit for a couple of months (like I said, I had been tortured the whole time about whether I wanted to go back to Texas or not, partly for the football, partly because I knew that I wouldn't be working in retail with a masters degree if I had stayed in Austin to begin with, as I had a state job and some connections at the time). Less than 48 hours after I got here, he told me to start looking for a job in Texas. Seriously. All this six months before I would've qualified for permanent residence in the UK, independent of our relationship. Then he sent all my possessions back to me in boxes. Then he moved to the Alps. No shit.

So I have been working in an $18K/pa job here in Hickville since October, trying to save money. My connections no longer seem to pan out, and of course, the job market is much, much worse than when I left in 2001. And now I have a long break in my work history (I don't want to put my current job on as I am taking a more than 50% cut in wages/status). I deeply resent having to come back here. I left when I was 17. It's filled with typical Bible-thumping, W-loving, gun-toting people who seem totally crazy and delusional to me. I love Austin.

My parents can't/won't help me out. My dad said the whole time I was abroad that he would be so happy if I would come home that he would help me out, but all he will do now is buy me food, let me use his water/electricity occasionally (I spend most of the time with my mother - they're divorced), and make calls to the few connections we can scrape up in my job search. For some reason, he won't even loan me enough money to just freaking move to Austin and get a shit job down THERE. But there are longstanding issues between me and my dad. He is a control freak. My mom would help, but can't on her salary. In a few short years, I fear I will have to come up with a way to support HER (no healthcare or retirement).

I am applying to the distance MLIS program at TWU and hope to become an academic librarian within 18 months, but the way things have been going for me for so long now, I wouldn't be surprised if I spend another $5,000 on THAT degree only to be completely unable to find work. But I gotta bite the bullet and DO something, I figure.

So, yeah, I feel like things aren't happening fast enough. And haven't been for the last, oh, five years now.

What would you do? (I do not mean this sarcastically.)

months, what's the point? You'll be in far worse shape than when you left.

Stick with your original plan. Find a job, then an apartment.

It's SO hard to jobhunt when you are far away from the job market. And $325 for an apartment in downtown Austin is DIRT CHEAP. Plus, it's furnished. So you don't have to pack your stuff. Think of it as 2 months in a motel, basically.

So just take what you need -- don't do a full-on move yet. And get down there! You can use the 2 months to jobhunt intensively and I think it might not be too hard to pick up some fill in work. At the end of the two months what have you lost? Nothing except the 2 months of rent. IMO the opportunity to jobhunt IN the place where you want to go is invaluable.

Just don't do the full move yet, because that IS timeconsuming and expensive.