How to Start a New Life

There are few problems that can’t be successfully avoided by a few thousand miles or an ocean, which is why doing a geographic is still the #1 way to solve a problem for the mobile and immature. Broke up your best friend’s marriage? Move across country. Get fired? Go to a new city. Kicked out of college? Relocate to a new continent, where your father can’t find you and demand the remainder of your year’s tuition. Don’t wait until the problem is too big to flee from and follow these steps to start a new life.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. See the problem. Got caught cheating on your finals at Harvard Law School? Slept with your step-mother in high school, and DNA tests have now disclosed to your confused father that your step-brother is really your son? Harbored illegal aliens subsequently detained at an undisclosed location for an undisclosed crime and the FBI would like to talk with you?
2. Stay cool but act swiftly. Minimize your physical baggage by only keeping essentials: Money, identification, credit cards, a change of clothes and any legal documents that may someday lead to an inheritance or blackmail opportunities.
3. Dump any emotional baggage like a hot potato. Lose the girlfriend via email, pass the pets on to an animal loving friend, leave the potted plants outside the door and resign any paid positions if they owe you money.
4. Arrange transport. Buy a plane, train or bus ticket, borrow a car you never intend to return, book passage on a cruise line with foreign ports of call or hike into the wilderness, emerging elsewhere under a new name.
5. Start a new life in your fresh location, with new people, new bosses and a new persona, allowing time to pass before getting into contact with anyone from your former life: two years for collegiate infractions, four years for big debts, seven years for felonious behavior and until any offspring reach adulthood in DNA-oriented sprints from parental responsibility.
6. Visit your former life to feel out the water, without necessarily disclosing your new location. Are federal agents waiting for you? Is Dad ready to forgive and forget? Is your seeming affluence overcoming any sore spots about squandered tuition?
7. If the stormy waters have cleared, return home the prodigal son or daughter, offered another chance at redemption, though in all likelihood you’ll get into the same kind of gnarly trouble before long, and start a new life again.

Tips & Warnings

• Pre-plan so that you can travel to the places you'd most like to visit; in case you get stuck in exile, you want it to be somewhere nice.
• The world is smaller than it used to be, thanks to cell phone, surveillance cameras and satellite images, so use caution on your flight from justice, due process or ethical responsibilities and don’t leave a paper trail.
• Starting a new life can become a habit, leading to a “Peter Pan” reputation and avoidance by the more staid and respectable of your fond relations and friends, once you reappear.
• Don’t run away if you want to keep a healthy sense of self-respect. While it is tempting to run from a broken heart, a bad choice or an awkward situation of your own creation, it won’t solve the problem in the long run and only leads to living fast, dying young and not necessarily leaving a good looking corpse.
• Instead of hiding from your problems, try being honest and say "I’m sorry." It can be more bother than it’s worth; try the easy route of confession and contrition before packing your bags.

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