Maybe moving?

[rax]

So if the stuff earlier this week wasn't enough, I found out soon afterwards that Krinn isn't moving to Tucson, you know, Monday as previously planned. This is for a great reason --- she got offered an awesome job in Seattle --- but it still sucks for me, since I was really looking forward to her being here and now... that's not a thing I am doing. :/ (We'd negotiated that she could and should hunt for a job elsewhere up until the deadline, which in retrospect was a really dumb thing for me to negotiate because I hate uncertainty, but, well, education is what happens when you don't get what you want, as Rik likes to say.) This leaves me with a few options, which I'm going to discuss here, in part because it's a useful way to organize my thoughts and in part because I really would like some help figuring out what the heck to do here. Krinn and I are pretty committed to living together, and we're both willing to move to do it, although it would be a bit of a stretch to say that either of us wants to move. (Separately, I am so ready to be done living airplanes-only distance from all of my partners. I would like to be done with that... Well, I was kind of looking forward to Monday. Still a little bitter. If this is still the case for me in 2016 I will be very unhappy.)

Option one is --- I could just move to Seattle! There are some things about this that are awesome: Krinn loves Seattle, I have some friends in Seattle, there's good vegan food, there's a good Pokemon scene (although I wouldn't be nearly as in charge as I am here), there's decent public transit in the city itself, Rik is, at least right now, there. (He, Rowan, and Timber, all of whom I count as important to me, may be leaving at some point, so I'm hesitant to be like "I will settle there!! Rik will be there!!!" but... seeing Rik all the time, that would be pretty great.) The biggest downside is the climate. I get sad in the winter in ARIZONA. I get cold at night IN ARIZONA. I'm actually allergic to the cold, like, I break out in hives, it's bad. I hate rain. I hate clouds. Climatewise, I know with certainty, I will hate Seattle. Seattle's also much more expensive than here; between Krinn and I, we can afford to live somewhere almost as nice as where I live now, but a lot of incidentals are more expensive and owning a car would not feel effectively free [0] --- although maybe I could just not own a car, which frankly, would be kind of okay. (In a city with goodish transit, I would mostly need a car for getting to card game tournaments and for carrying large objects; these can be accomplished with zipcar and asking friends for favors. I'm used to being the friend asked for favors and I don't mind that role --- 1 car per 4-5 people in a social group seems right to me --- maybe I could just not be the person with the car for once?) There are also social issues: Some folks there don't much care for me, which is fine, h8rs gonna h8, but they're in Krinn's social group and figuring out how to handle that is not a thing I look forward to? I think it's perfectly manageable, just, not a source of warm fuzzy feelings, you know?

Option two is --- Krinn could work the job in Seattle for a year, settle debts and accrue savings, and then move down to Tucson in December or something! In some ways I like this solution the best, because dude, I'd get to stay in Tucson. I love Tucson most of all the places I've lived by a wide margin. I have a community here, I'm making the community here better by running events and taking care of children and I'm like. a mentor? I am a mentor here. It's bizarre, it's not what I imagined myself doing, but it's super important to me and I don't want to leave and also the sun is bright and the skies are blue and the mountains are beautiful and I will miss my mountains if I leave oh god. Krinn didn't have a great time when she was here a couple of years ago --- it's a little small for her, it's hotter than she'd like in the summer, and it doesn't have the kind of tech industry that would like to give you piles of money to play with fun computer problems. There's also not much of her community down here, which is a major thing. At the same time, she could build a community, and taking a stab at that while less depressed would probably work better, and she's had a great time when she's come to visit while in a better headspace? So it's not such a bad move for her that I think it would be terrible for her to take it, but it would definitely involve sacrifices for her and that's a thing I'm very mindful of. ...Also we wouldn't get to live together for another year. That part's ass.

Option three is --- We could wait a year and then both move to a third place. We were originally considering a third place before she got an awesome job and my financial situation got tighter, and it's something we could still work towards and achieve. It would probably take around a year, so similar to option two. (And part of the negotation for either of the first two options is that if one of us was like "I just hate this place" we'd move together.) This has a lot of potential upside, but I think we're both pretty much in our favorite places to live now? (Krinn might prefer San Francisco by a hair, I don't think she's sure.) There's also the weird thing that our lists of places we're willing to live are pretty divergent --- mine is like "Tucson, Providence, ooh, maybe Albuquerque, I could survive with Phoenix or I guess LA" and Krinn's is "Seattle, San Francisco, maybe Portland?? San Diego's probably tolerable" and there's a clear pattern where I want to live either in the desert or in my homeland and Krinn wants to live in a large West Coast city. [1] It's likely that we'll live in a large West Coast city eventually because I worry Krinn would like Providence less than I'd like Portland, Oregon? And I want us to find the thing that's net best for both of us but not gonna lie kinda wish I didn't feel like I was going to end up not getting what I want.

Option four is --- We could not live together full-time? The most clear thing in this space, which is really more of a space than an option, would be me being a snowbird at 30 [2], keeping the house down here in Tucson, and living here November-March and whenever I needed to come back for some event or just wanted a few days to myself or whatever, and otherwise living in Seattle. If money weren't an issue this might be the best plan, but money is decidedly an issue. It's one thing to keep the house down here and rent it for a little less than my mortgage payment in exchange for some long-term value and it's another thing entirely to keep it habitable by _me_ while paying to live somewhere else. Maybe we could swing it. Maybe Krinn'd even be able to convince her job that it was reasonable for her to work remotely a bunch of that time and she could come with me. I'm not sure I'd be able to convince the cats this was a reasonable plan, though. :( Can cats actually get used to a thing like that? Selene's almost 12.

Ooh, or I could move to Providence and then move somewhere else with Krinn in a year, and that would get my "not have to fly to get physical affection" box checked off which let me tell you is a big deal, but two moves in a year and change, especially when you own as many nouns as I do (I have a lot of nouns), suuuuuuuuucks. I guess Krinn could just come to Providence after that year? That's a line we could consider? Providence has all the climate problems that Seattle has and then some, though, so I'm not sure that's the best choice for me anyways, and while I think and hope they'd leave me alone there are people there I don't really want to be spending time with, either. So it's not as slam-dunk as it might be even though there are some really great things about it; I'd need to take a room in my place and paint it the colors of desert noontime and just leave a space heater and a sunlamp on basically all the time. And then live in that room in the winter pretty much. The cats, I bet, would really like that room too. I guess that's actually a fine room to have in your house and maybe I should consider having that room here.

We could also just... not live together? But we really don't want to do that.

Any thoughts? ...Help? :P

[0] I have a car that should have stopped running 10 years ago. I have put less than a thousand dollars of maintenance into it in four years. Insurance is maybe $300/year. I don't drive enough that gas is a measurable expense. This is not the normal state of car ownership. But it is what I am used to.

[1] It occurs to me that we haven't really considered leaving the country. 90+% of both of our support systems are here and I'm not sure I could leave three partners even further away, but it's something to keep in mind that there are actually many more places in the world than the ones we've been considering until now.

[2] I am really amused that, when I reread this post to make sure everything is right, I was like "wait fuck I'm not 30, I'm 27" and "wait fuck I'm older than 30 now aren't I." AT THE SAME TIME. "How old are you, rax?" I genuinely don't know.

Comments

[cme]

Uh, hi! I don't know if you remember me from college maybe, or nethack, or running into you and phi and M at breakfast at Wiscon last year.

Anyway, I don't feel like I have any good advice to give, but I live in Seattle, and I know some friendly nerds here, and we founded Seattle Attic together, which might be interesting to you. If you want to talk about what it's like here, I am happy to give unvarnished opinions. (For instance, I think it's *less* dark than New England- I think the cloud cover is less dense and it's definitely less consistent.)

(I spent about a week in Tucson in 2009 and loved it to pieces. That year was the first time I ever saw desert and I fell completely in love (but since I am functionally allergic to heat, it helped that it was October). I still think fondly of Revolutionary Grounds and wish I'd bought myself a tshirt.)

[rax]

I remember you from those last two! It was a good breakfast. :D

The Seattle Attic looks pretty cool and I will definitely check it out if I move there. (I may in fact check it out when I next visit --- it also seems like a thing Krinn and Rik would dig. (Rik especially I should point at this link, like, immediately.)

How long have you been in Seattle? If it's a while, has it held up long-term? Are there things you expected to be there that are missing, or things you expected not to be there that you were surprised to find? I don't know if I have great questions, but yeah, I am definitely information-gathering and anything you're up for sharing I'd love to know.

I could grab you a tshirt (assuming they still sell them, I haven't been there as much since I stopped needing to go to the university) and bring it up with me the next time I'm in Seattle. :)

[krinndnz]

Whoa, I never mentioned the Attic to you? I thought I told you about the time I was sitting on their floor reading David Graeber. IIRC they moved recently, which, good, the old location was mildly tricky to find and was very cramped.

[cme]

We did move recently! The new location is arguably also mildly difficult to find, because Pioneer Square, but it's MUCH larger. It's on Alaskan near Yesler.

[cme]

Sigh, lost a draft of this.

I moved here just over 5 years ago. I wanted to leave Boston and was shopping for a company to relocate me and was willing to pretty much take the first company who offered (I had a few no-go places, but I was expecting to hang around a new place for 2-4 years and reassess, and I was feeling adventurous).

When I got here I was both pleased and annoyed. For a northeasterner, the quality of the produce was amazing (Californians find it substandard, but that's true for nearly every state). The restaurants and food culture here were really exciting to me compared to Boston (again, San Franciscans find it not as exciting as I do, but even they are sometimes impressed). The transit network covers a lot of territory. It's stupidly pretty here as a city- there's a lot more art to planting and landscaping here, stuff is ridiculously green, and the winter grass-and-moss explosion turns the city shocking green. The public art is pretty awesome. Most of the city is really safe. People leave their laptops unlocked in coffee shops when they go to the bathroom. When the skies are clear, there are mountains in every direction. It doesn't really rain here as a northeasterner understand rain- it mists a little, frequently. If you put on a hat, you'll be okay. Also, I find the weather pleasingly changeable. In Boston, if it rains, it's going to rain for 3-5 days. Here, it will rain for 30m-3h, and then the sun will peek out, or maybe the wind will pick up. Sometimes there is really cool fog or amazing rainbows.

But the transit network is pretty thinly spread (most buses come every 20 minutes, you need to be able to walk about a half a mile on either end of your trip and that might involve a big hill, the bus lines don't have a good agreement about what is "late"- some buses stop having much service after 7, some after 9, some after 11). The library has 37 holds on every book I want to request (even the 15 year old ones), and the terms of interlibrary loan show the economic tensions between Seattle and its suburbs in neon lights. The traffic really is awful in ways that aren't necessarily deterministic- you can find a two-hour traffic jam on a Saturday afternoon without trying hard. Seattle has a lot of geography which means that people are often unwilling to go on outings to a different neighborhood (myself sometimes included) because the geographic bottlenecks combined with infrequent buses means it's a haul. It's very white, and very segregated.

I'm going to post this for now, and keep thinking about whether I have more things to say!

And I would love a shirt, if you come here, if they still have them! Straight-cut XL?

[damerell]

Ah, poly housing lock. Most inconvenient. If you do move cross-Atlantic, come and have a pint sometimes. Ours are bigger. :-)

I know Rik's maxim as "Oh, no, not _another_ learning experience."