On Monday, my final day in Charleston, SC, I took a walk around downtown in the early afternoon. I walked through the College of Charleston campus, where I first explored upon arriving in Charleston as a 17-year-old freshman in 2011. I was not expecting to be hit with such a powerful wave of emotions.

I took a right turn off Calhoun street into the live oak canopies of the central campus, headed for the Cistern Yard. As I reached the iconic clearing, site of both convocation and graduation, it started to come over me. I was clamming up, unable to control the tears rolling down my face.

It was just supposed to be a quick stroll through on my way to grab lunch, but my lunch plans quickly went out the window and I sat down on a bench on the George Street side to reflect on the departure of my youth. At 31 years old, I am far removed from the wide-eyed freshman I was in 2011.

More than a decade’s worth of memories washed over me and I spent fifteen minutes on that bench just letting it flow. Many of my old friends have moved away, and while the city does still have some of that same charm that drew me in, the time has come to move on and leave my college years behind me.

Charleston has changed, and I have also realized that if I don’t leave now, I will be there for the rest of my life. That wouldn’t be a bad thing, but I’m not getting any younger, and you only have so much time to live and explore the world before the years really start to catch up with you.

My next destination is Austin, Texas, where I hope to grow Extra Chill, my music business, to a level where it can comfortably sustain me for long-term existence. As a business that thrives on a strong local community, Charleston does not present a large enough opportunity to sustain a business like Extra Chill, especially with the changes.

Austin’s status as a central hub for the music industry seems to be an ideal location for me to spend the remaining years of my youth, chasing this dream of making Extra Chill into one of the top voices in music nationwide, and even worldwide.

I know it is possible, the question is how long do I have before I run out of time? I do hope to find a girlfriend and eventually a wife, and maybe start a family. But before I do that, I want to devote my time to building this brand up to what I know it can become.

Extra Chill has been with me since the very beginning of my college days. I started the blog as a freshman, discovering my passion for writing late at night and tapping away on my keyboard until the early morning. That passion has remained as I’ve built the blog up to its current state, which is a good one, but still not financially viable.

I was living off SEO income from music history articles, using my writing talent and music passion to fund the business in Charleston. I could have reasonably kept doing that if it wasn’t for Google’s algorithm changes, and ultimately the evolution of time and technology past the expiration date of my original strategy.

I’ve seen the possibilities for income levels off this business, and the project remains now to bring it back up to its former glories, surpass the former level of financial success, and sustain it long term.

So, I’ve had to leave my beloved home in Charleston behind, in order to achieve the things I want to achieve with my life. I left behind a home that I own and a boat, and I hope to return one day with a bag of money and live out my days by the water in Charleston.

Currently, I’m sitting in my parents’ house in Florida, getting ready to hit the road for the long drive to Austin by the weekend. “Sitting in Limbo” comes to mind.

Everybody has to leave their youth behind. There’s no way around it. For me, that sadly meant moving out of Charleston in search of the next chapter.