Not long ago, I decided I would move a time zone away. Past Cain, the Cain that made this decision, thought that it wouldn’t be all that difficult.

But I am learning that thought was not entirely accurate.

Around November, my girlfriend Danielle, who was living in Natchez, Miss., decided that she would go to graduate school at The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill for Library Science. I, in Oxford, Miss., still at The University of Mississippi completing my bachelor’s degree, had a say in the manner like many Southern gentlemen would, and that was, “Yes, dear.”

So basically, I knew at the time that I would come to the area to live nearer to her. All that had to happen, I thought at the time, was the easy thing of finding a job, and I’d get everything moved over no problem.

First, the job. I figured, that since I was an overachiever in college that finding a job would be easy. I applied to many places in January. I heard a lot of positive things about my resume, but the basic response was, we want someone now. I figuratively said to myself, “I guess I’ll start applying closer to graduation, then.”

March, April and May came, and I discovered that there were not a whole lot of jobs popping up. In fact, almost every job that did pop up was too far away from Chapel Hill. Come May, I had resigned myself to working freelance at area newspapers and magazines and getting a real job waiting tables or something else not degree specific.

As soon as I had given up, Steve Stewart with Tidewater Publications contacted me about an opening. I was interested, interviewed and luckily got the job.

I did get a job, but it wasn’t easy. Now, to actually moving across the country.

When I got a job, the first thing I went out and did was buy a new car. I had a clunker of a Chevrolet Cavalier that maybe got 20 miles to the gallon on a good day.

It was also on its last legs, but its object was to get me through college, and somehow, it did.

I bought a Ford Focus, which gets much better gas mileage. But it still had one problem that it and the Cavalier share. Where was I going to put everything?

It fit little more than my clothes, a TV and an air mattress. The rest of it is still in Mississippi, spread out in both Natchez, my hometown, and Oxford.

The rest of what little I own will come up with the girlfriend, as she and her family will use my mom’s trailer to bring her stuff to Chapel Hill.

So I’m here, facing a weekend with an air mattress, a television, a laptop computer, my clothes, and a few kitchen supplies that I have purchased. I can’t really do a lot with the television or the computer, either, since I don’t have cable or a cable modem yet. It is an empty apartment, to say the least. In fact, it is so empty, that my bicycle has its own room.

Moving to Oxford years ago was so much easier. Someone told me while I was in college that while I may think life is as difficult as it can get, that the real world would be harder simply because it was real life, whereas college was not.

Regardless, it seems like moving across a time zone really does make a difference.

Cain Madden is the managing editor of The Tidewater News. His email is cain.madden@tidewaternews.com.