Also heading east

I’ve been planning on writing this blog post for a few weeks now, Wysz just beat me to it.

Pretty much everything he said is true for me as well…everything except the living alone part, but I still don’t have any ties here except my job. I’ll just elaborate on a few things specific to me:

Location

My entire family (with the exception of one of my brothers) is on the east coast. Traveling back east for holidays, weddings, graduations, etc is just a pain in the ass — usually a pain involving two full days of traveling, several vacation days, multiple flight connections, and $tupid ticket prices. All of that in conjunction with my current financial situation means I can’t make it back for everything. I missed my brother’s graduation. That was lame. I miss my grandfather’s birthday every year, also lame.

Perhaps, if I lived in particularly cool east coast city, I wouldn’t be too far my family, yet far enough away to have some much needed space. Plus, I could watch a lot more baseball games from a certain team. To be honest, my recent trip to Boston was a personal test to see if I could picture myself living there. It passed the test after the first Dunkin’ Donuts breakfast sandwich.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome here in California. I’ve had an amazing time and met a lot of incredible people. But I’ve determined it’s just not of me. Coming out here, my plan was to stay out here as long as I had a reason to do so. Almost two years now and I haven’t found a reason (although an endless supply of avocados was the closest I got).

But at least I tried it. No regrets.

Weather

Can you find my parents house in this picture? Look closely, it’s there somewhere.

I grew up one of the snowiest places in the US (Fulton, NY) and spent my entire life complaining about snow. But now that I live somewhere where the weather is pretty much constant all year long, I kinda miss the stupid cold stuff. Maybe it was just 4 feet of snow overnight that I didn’t like…and that only happens in Upstate NY.

Nonetheless, I like the changing seasons. Autumn is just something that cannot easily be described in words — and never really should be. Winter certainly has it’s “I can’t feel my face, is my nose still attached?” moments, but it can be quite beautiful the rest of the time. Spring just smells alive. Summer is humid, but rolling thunderstorms sure make it worth it.

Timing

The sooner the better. My goal is to make the move in less than one year, two years absolute max. Google NYC wouldn’t be my first choice, but that could be a possibility with my current job, and I really want to stay at Google.

As Wysz said, it’s been fun, California. But I like making big changes, and I think I’m due for another one.

I think the Pontiac has another cross-country voyage in her.