Should I stay, or should I go?

I remember the first time I heard “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by the Clash. I was on a school bus somewhere between Ashland, Oregon and Redding, California, heading home from a Shakespeare festival field trip. My yellow Sony Walkman picked up a valley radio station I couldn’t get in the Sierra Nevada foothills. From the first few chords, I was hooked.

Darling, you got to let me know / Should I stay, or should I go?
If you say that you are mine / I’ll be here till the end of time

That song plays on loop in my head these days, especially when I think about our visa status in the United Kingdom. We moved here in fall 2024 on my husband’s Skilled Worker visa, pivoting from our original plan to move to the Netherlands. Moving to Scotland was on my list of things I’d regret on my deathbed if we didn’t at least try.

A year and a half later, I can say with confidence: this was one of the best choices I’ve ever made.

Coming here let me recover my creative self. Burnout had consumed me, leaving my soul exhausted. As an overachiever, I still earned the highest performance ratings. My projects still delivered. But my inner landscape looked like a California hillside after a wildfire: scorched, empty. I had nothing left for myself.

Leaving GitLab last July gave me space to recover. The first six months were rest and gentle exploration: not learning to solve work problems or push harder, but the curious wandering that lets a fire-wracked region absorb rain and collect windblown seeds. Now I’m experiencing a creative spring unlike any in years. Ideas are sprouting everywhere: short stories, poems, strategies, book concepts, conference talks, academic papers. Soft green shoots of poppies before the super bloom.

Studying part-time at Edinburgh Futures Institute is a dream made real. My freelance work is stronger, coming from abundance rather than desolation. For the first time in years, I feel like I have agency to change the world instead of spending every spare moment trying to recover myself.

When we moved to Edinburgh, we laughed: “Worst-case scenario, we get to live in Scotland for a few years.” No big deal, right?

Except now that we’re facing the possibility of leaving, it turns out it is a big deal. We have friends, and locals recognise us at our favourite restaurants. We have fallen in love with this verdant, storied country. And we might not get to stay.

Fall of 2025, they laid off my husband and his product partner, citing a change in product direction. But the actual story is bigger than one company’s pivot. The tech hiring landscape has transformed in the past year and a half, especially in engineering. When you only need half the engineers, demand for engineering leadership dries up. Jeff is looking, but the outlook is grim.

We’ve already pursued the Global Talent Visa route for him with no success. Applications are up, rules are being enforced more strictly, much to our solicitors’ consternation. Now I’m sizing up my own chances.

I have things benefiting me: I’m doing genuinely innovative work at the intersection of software design and narrative futures. I’m exploring how software teams can use narrative to envision products in transforming landscapes. My academic paper on using OOUX and city-planning governance models to help enterprise teams “vibe code” at scale was just accepted for presentation.

But I also have things working against me. Like being a woman in tech. Only 25% of successful Global Talent applicants are women—some of that is pipeline, but there’s bias there too, making it even harder to sell myself for the endorsement.

We can’t count on it. We have to plan in parallel.

There’s always the Netherlands with the Dutch American Friendship Treaty. I could finish my MSc in Narrative Futures online if needed. Spain and Portugal both have their appeals and pains. Starting over again from scratch in another language sounds exhausting. We didn’t leave the US because of politics, but the news these days doesn’t exactly inspire a return.

Well-meaning people ask about my student visa status; that’s a non-starter. I’m part-time, and recent rule changes around taught versus research degrees mean I can’t bring a spouse even if I were full-time. I could return to full-time work, but I’m wary of resetting our visa timeline now that indefinite leave to remain has moved from five to ten years. I want to work and add value. But the 40-to-60-hour corporate grind in design leadership drains me. I genuinely believe I add more value enabling product-led businesses 20 hours a week while pursuing research and writing the rest of the time.

I’m feeling defeatist after our most recent rejection. I spent yesterday afternoon in tears. I’m tempted not to bother applying for Global Talent. But I know myself—I’ll always wonder if I would have gotten it if I hadn’t tried. 

So I will apply. And in my mind, The Clash will play as I wait for acceptance or rejection.

This indecision’s bugging me (Esta indecisión me molesta)
If you don’t want me, set me free (Si no me quieres, líbrame)