Next step

A few nights ago, I dreampt I went to Raleigh, NC for a visit.  And somehow, even though I hadn't lived there for 10+ years, my apartment and my furniture were there.  I had two apartments, in fact.  My nicer one, and this weird dump which had my and someone else's furniture in it.  The thing I liked best about the dumpy place was its picnic table, which was made of stone and was very tall, like 10 feet tall, and which was in the street, blocking the right-hand lane of traffic.  Somehow, during all those years, no one had moved it out of the street or run into it.  So I sat there and ate a picnic.  Then I returned to my dumpy apartment to find a weird blonde dude who I kinda sorta knew just getting out of my shower.  I don't know what happened after that.

So it got me thinking... is my dream telling me I've already decided to move to Raleigh?  True, I like it there, but I like a few other places too.  Maybe it's telling me it's time to stop putzing around and start planning my future?  I'll pick door number two.

Obviously, over the past several months, I spent time thinking about where I'd like to live.  You all know that.  Other than visiting several cities around the country, though, I haven't made a systematic effort to figure this out.  So that is what I will spend the bulk of my "work" time over the next couple of weeks doing.  I still might not know at the end of these few weeks where I want to end up, but I will narrow down the list.

Now here's my system.  I've made a list of all of the cities that are still possible contenders.  Every city in which I've lived, every city I liked when I traveled, and two other cities are on the list.  Of the new cities I visited, I only left off three that I knew wouldn't make the cut -- Charleston, Austin and Nashville.  So it's a pretty big list.  But that's OK, because I think much of my research will all be found in a narrow band of research tools (Weather.com, US Census data, etc.) so the project won't be that much longer just because I have more to think about.

I also made a much longer list of everything I want to consider about each city.  Some of it is from my impressions of the cities when I visited them, and are already written in my blog.  The rest of the items on the list will take some research -- some easy, some hard.  But I've got time on my hands.  Not an infinite amount of time, but time to think and learn as much as possible.  Once I have the data in front of me, I will probably employ a simply ranking method for which elements are most important to me, as well as a method to rank the data within each category.  For example, one of my categories is "Sports."  The category itself won't rank very high because (outside of two discrete sports) I'm not a huge sports fan.  But I suspect I'll find that a city like Chicago will rank higher in that category than, say, Des Moines.  You get the picture.

My goal in this stage is to narrow the list of cities to a short list of 3-4.  Well, if I'm lucky, a clear favorite will emerge, but I doubt it.  If a clear favorite didn't emerge while I was traveling, I don't think one will now just because I stick my nose in a couple of books.

I know from past experience about making big decisions that I am comfortable with my choices if I let my brain learn as much as I can about each option, then let my heart decide.  Not just comfortable, that's how I feel I make the right decisions.  It feels like, first I educate my brain, then my brain educates my heart.  Do I know for sure that will work with this decision?  No, but it can't be worse than picking a city out of a hat.

And now... drum roll, please!... here are the contending cities, in no particular order:

Cleveland (my hometown)

Raleigh (lived there previously)

Washington (lived there previously)

Chicago (an old favorite)

Columbus (another old favorite)

Des Moines (audition city)

Philadelphia (old favorite, audition city)

Asheville (an impromptu audition city)

Denver (audition city)

Portland (audition city)

Los Angeles (added in retrospect when I kept thinking about how nice it was)

And the list of things I will research about each city:

My blog reviews

My impression of people

Ease of transport: Cars

Ease of transport: Public transportation

Ease of transport: Access to airport

Ease of transport: Airport flights to loved ones, costs

Driving distance to loved ones

Average commute times

Variety of neighborhoods

Number and type of neighborhoods that suit me

Walkability

Cost of housing

Percentage of people in my peer group who are singletons or child-free

Weather: Yearly rainfall, number of rainy days/year

Weather: Winter lows, summer highs

Weather:  General climate

Proximity to fresh water

State water laws that might affect access to water

Major industries in the area

Job prospects in my field

Reciprocal bar membership?

Education: K-12 city (expenditures, class size, pass rate of levies or other taxes)

Education: K-12 metro area

Education: Universities -- proximity, number & size

Arts: Museums & other visual arts

Arts: Performance

Sports

Restaurants, bars & casual nightlife

Size of city

Size of metro area

Terrain

Beauty/ugliness: natural and man-made

Number of friends and loved ones in the area

Gay friendliness

Political leanings of city

Political leanings of state

Special items not available elsewhere

If you have any questions or any suggestions about things I'll want to think about, please chime in with an email to me or a post here!

And if you're still reading my blog, thanks for your patience.  I think I needed a few weeks of sitting around doing very little before I was ready to start this next big project in my life.  I'll continue to update the blog about what I'm up to, and wrap up 2011 too.  :)

To Ohio

So here I am in Ohio, writing from my parents' house.  Lakewood was nice enough to greet me with about 4 inches of snow, but that was probably a good thing.  For several months now, I haven't been sure what month it is.  It's felt like summer since January (with rare patches of different weather), so seeing snow all over the place kind of emphasized that it is, in fact, December.  [Update:  Now January!  How did I ever have the discipline when I was overseas to write every day?!]

Cannon Avenue

Frozen water in a neighbor's gutters.  Don't ask me what that bag contraption is all about.

On my way to Lakewood, I stopped to see Anton and Gary again at their farm.  You might have read about it already, as I visited last fall and learned a few things about being a farmer.  I did less work this time.  Frankly, I was beat from the travel.  I was tired of motivating myself to do something almost every day (back in my "real life," there were a lot of outside things that motivated me -- my job, the invitations of friends, the empty refridgerator telling me to go the store, etc.).  So I don't have as many photos or stories from the farm as I did last year, although the visit was personally very pleasant for me.

I met this dude on a walk around the farm.  Charming, but a bit standoffish.

Nicky and Brian came to Lakewood for Christmas, which was fun.  The past several years we celebrated Christmas (and Hanukkah) in D.C.  Our traditions were mostly the same, just in a smaller space, filled with nutcrackers.  Speaking of nutcrackers... a few days before Christmas, mom and dad and I spent several hours getting all the nutcrackers out and setting them up.  When I told a friend it was nutcracker day, I guess he wasn't thinking about the wooden toys, and thought it was a day we bust my dad's balls or something.  I told him we bust dad's balls every day, and that nutcracker day was the day we got the decorations out.

Speaking of my dad and nutcrackers, here is a nutcracker that looks like my dad:

Dad or a wooden toy?  /scratches head

And here is one of the best presents:  Brian's lottery ticket where every single scratch off won a prize!  Sorry ladies, this rich man is already taken!

Brian and the magic nickle.

Since Christmas, it's been on and off cold, and on and off snowing.  I've done some stuff, which I'll write about later, but mostly I've been very slowly preparing for the rest of 2012, which I've devoted to figuring out where to live, what kind of job I want, and actually securing that job.  I'll keep writing about this, at least at first, because writing should help me to figure out what I want to do.  And maybe will encourage some of you to chime in with opinions or advice.  :)  So stay tuned ...

Oh, and I want to do a wrap-up of 2011.  The best, the worst, my favorites, surprises, etc.  So even if you don't care about my boring old job search, stay tuned for that.