When did I first realise I had made a huge mistake? Was it when I almost missed a work deadline because the cafe wifi kept cutting out? Or maybe it was when I looked around me in the street and saw more mobility scooters than people my own age.

Perhaps it was the moment I realised that checking out of city life and going off-grid was also a hugely performative act, that seeking strong community connections and greater depth could be a shallow form of virtue signalling and obnoxious posturing.

The rural hinterland town I ended up in offered no shortage of people who seemed to be shouting, in the quietest way possible, about their disdain for 21st century modern life. I will never forget having to climb over a shirtless man meditating – or was it posing? – in the doorway of a cafe, smiling beatifically as people stepped over his head to reach their morning caffeine hit.

Escape to the country: the best books about the great outdoors Read more

How did I end up here? Blame the late-night viewing sessions of Escape to the Country, my romantic disposition, or the recent purchase of a book of Mary Oliver poems, but at some point I became convinced of my need for a simpler life in the country.

My life, my work, my schedule was packed, and I became fixated on this notion of slowing down so I could tend to a proper veggie patch and connect with nature.

My partner and I are both self-employed, so we decided to spend a couple of months working in a little piece of bucolic paradise, where we planned to eventually buy a house.

The town was charming to a fault. There were Devonshire tea and fudge shops, art galleries and a bookstore. Furthermore, our cottage rejected modern comforts in all of the prescribed ways, with no internet, a compost toilet, and second-hand furniture. It was everything two exiles from Melbourne’s industrial northern suburbs could hope for.

And it was great, perfect even. For a while. Then I realised the very real difference between an optimal place of respite and restoration and a place of permanent address.

It turns out there are a lot of modern conveniences that I am not ready to give up just yet. I am not long out of my 30s and moving into a town largely home to retirees felt like a leap into my future 30 years too soon. Jerks, as I discovered, live in the quiet of the countryside too, and their hostility may come at you at a slightly slower pace, but the barbs are there nevertheless.

Do the birds really have to be so bloody loud?

In retrospect I really should have known better. I have written numerous articles on tree- and sea-changers who up stumps from the city and move their family to a small community to escape the peak-hour rage only to discover that the mundane problems of life follow you wherever you go.

Yet when you are stressed and tired all you can think about is that oasis of calm in a sleepy hamlet, with the open fire and the regional wine. But once you get there and the weeks roll into months and your stress subsides, all you can focus on is the lack of public transport, the kitchens that close at 8pm and the raucous noise the birds make. Do they really have to be so bloody loud?

Sure life in the country was simpler and no one was exasperated by roadworks, but where’s the fun in that? To live a challenge-free existence, lacking in incident, is a terrible fate to navigate.

There was none of the hubbub I’d come to love about Melbourne, the heave of a large city, its energy and dynamism.

So now instead of meditating in rural stillness, I give thanks. Thanks for modern accoutrements and conveniences, such as the 3am kebab on the way out of the bar, ethnic diversity, supermarkets that open past 10pm, people your own age, Uber Eats, car horns, last-minute plans, and reliable phone coverage.

I give thanks, too, that we never listed our Melbourne property and that we have friends and a good life to return to.

My city is far from perfect but it feels like home because of the history that is built into my experience of it, the years I have spent driving through its suburbs, working out of cafes and visiting friends.

To fall in love with your city again, you simply have to leave it, wait a while, and then come back. Then see how much you have missed it.

• Johanna Leggatt is a Melbourne-based freelance journalist