Okay, having set aside the utopian dreams of the young ‘uns in a disagree-but-commit way (as in, I think their premises and reasoning are bonkers, but I support their intentions, wish them luck, and hope I’m wrong), let’s pose the selfish question. How should I frame my version?
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My own premises are based on lessons of experience and middle-aged constraints and risk aversion, rather than forward-looking dreams based on bitcoin libertarian dreams or whatever.
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And the only reason my version even needs imagination at all is that I burned the options to do the normal thing 10 years ago. Most of my peers from college are careerist yuppies in suburban McMansions, VP titles, and kids starting to graduate high school. I’m off that script.
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What have I learned so far?
First, pay attention to why people *leave* the places/situations you are considering moving to. If you leave, you’ll likely leave for similar reasons, so to maximize chances of sticking the landing instead of bouncing away… see reasons for leaving.
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There was a good article about this I can’t find now.
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Second: your movement spreadsheet starts out tall and (more candidate places in rows than constraints in columns) and ends up wide as you age (more constraints than places). Like at 22 I’d have moved anywhere in the world from Mumbai and taken on most immigration challenges.
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Your best chance at solving well is ~32-35, when you have enough experience of enough places to know your preferences, but haven’t gotten set in your ways too much. We *almost* bought in DC when I was ~35 and we were both paychecked and mortgageable (now neither of us is).
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Third, relatedly… most places are illegible to varying degrees. You can’t know if you’ll like it without living there for a bit. But the spectrum is huge. Some places a short visit will tell you 90% of what you need to know. Others, years.
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It’s partly a function of size (Ithaca is grokkable in a year, LA is 2-3 years)
Partly your personality. New York is as illegible as LA, but I knew *I* hated it in 5 minutes. Knock on wood, the universe might dump me there yet, and wife has vague unresolved attractions to it.
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Replying to
How was Ithaca for you? We're currently looking at college towns
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My current bet for a long-term US home is probably some college town in the northeast so that my kids don't grow up inside of a climate disaster
Experimented with NYC, but decided that
(a) too expensive for friends w/o tech money
(b) too much distraction for cohesive community twitter.com/TylerAlterman/…
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Replying to
being around student-dominated communities can get a bit annoying and tiresome

