I’ve never had to make a decision about where to live. Like most people, it has always been an unavoidable consequence of family, school, or work. In 3-5 years, I will no longer have any geographic work obligations, freeing me to live anywhere I can afford.
Like a circus elephant suddenly released onto the savannah, I should be happy, but instead I’m just sort of staring and trying to get back on the truck. It feels sort of open ended and final, not fun at all.
Web questionnaires have been unhelpful. The top results from one were Columbia SC, Columbus OH, Colorado Springs, and Cumberland WV. What do these have in common besides initial consonants?
How do I go about figuring out where I want to live? What worked for you? Feel free to tell me where to go (you know you want to).
If you want to remain in the U.S., get a fairly big paper map of the country and start by marking off large sections of the country where you think you would be happy based on what you know. Proximity to friends and family may play an important role in this.
Next, pick your environment (rural, suburban, urban, ultra-urban etc). Look for suitable areas within the geographic areas you marked off in step 1 and shade those in.
Do research on the shaded areas using tools like Money magazine has available online. Cost of living, demographic data, climate, and economic health indicators are key criteria here.
Use all this to come up with a list of several places where you think you would be happy and then try to find a job there. Move to the one where you get a decent job.
Out of the list you presented, Colorado Springs is very nice and quite beautiful. I go there on vacation every summer. It sounds like your preferences are towards mid-sized cities. There are a bunch of good ones out there. I always wanted to move to Charlottesville, VA for example.
As you can see from my location, I have lived lots of places and loved every one of them (well, I can do without cold and snow now).
I think your best bet would be to start doing some traveling when you have a break or two in the next couple of years. Go get in the car and just drive away, or get on a plane and just go somewhere. This will show you what you like or don’t like. I can guarantee you that there will be some place that will just “grab you” and make you want to go “there”!
I would narrow it down a bit to your interests - are you more of the big city type, wanting 24 hour fun and lots of things to do? Or are you more of a nature type who likes the great outdoors? Interested in foreign destinations/languages/history? Are you looking for a certain climate (warm and sunny by the beach, or cool and lots of forests and mountains?).
Again - take these few years and try to take a short vacation/trip to some areas you think might interest you. Of course, it helps if there might be some employment opportunities there, but if you have enough drive and determination, my guess is you will find something no matter where you go.
I once had an online vote on where I should move to- I’d just got back from a year overseas, and had no real ties to anywhere. I wanted to pick somewhere good for my, at the time, new hobby- fire performance- so had a vote on a fire arts forum.
An important clarification: I won’t need a job, because the plan is to wait until such time that I can continue working for this organization as a long distance telecommuter, or no longer need to work at all.
I like this stepwise approach you detailed, will have to give it a go when I have some time.
San Francisco and Colorado Springs are similar in that I’ve visited both several times and like them. Of course, visiting a place is very different than living there. I’m sure that some (most?) of the places I’ve adored while on vacation would be terrible choices for permanent residence. Maybe the trick would be to take a long vacation, and try to act like I live there, ie. go to the supermarket and DMV.
-Big or medium city, definitely not small town.
-Absolutely must be easy, close access to copious amounts of trees or other places to walk around outside without a half hour drive or advance planning.
-Foreign countries are cool, but we both suck at second languages and there is a baby in need of a couple decades of high quality schooling that I’m not sure would be available to expatriates.
-Leaning strongly towards cool, wet, green, non-flat, near water. More overcast or rain than clear days would be great. No deserts (too dry) or bayous (too hot). Snow is nice, but not 10’ of it.
-Walkable 10 months of the year, unlike, say, Dallas or Minneapolis.
A bold plan, glad it worked out. This process would be easier if I got a hobby or two as tie-breakers. Fire is probably a bad fit, though.
If you want a standalone system, I recall “What Color is your Parachute” had a section on determining suitable locations.
I think it’s along the lines that you basically want to make one grand list of everything that could ever matter to you in a location: Weather, cost of living, walkability, pollution, nature, arts scene, schools, diversity, etc. Then you want to rank them, systematically comparing one to another (“Would I rather live someplace with high pollution and a great arts scene, or someplace fairly uncultured with plenty of fresh air?”). Your top three or four items will be the non-negotiables, and you can eliminate any option that does not fulfill all of them. Then you just move down the priorities, until you find a place the fulfills the most of your priorities.
I do think a better practice, however, is to explain your preferences, and ask people to speak from their experiences.
And to be a little predictable, I wouldn’t eliminate overseas based on the criteria you’ve set out. You can find quality schools anywhere. There are US quality schools in Zimbabwe and Laos and Bolivia and every place else you can think of, often using US curriculum in English taught and managed by very qualified American educators. They may be on the pricey side, but there is a chance that a place with a low cost of living can offset that. And English is a viable language across much of the globe. Just a thought
I visited Oregon, including the coast and Portland, last year. It was really nice, similar to Washington, which is also great, but subtly different. Which brings up a long-winded question:
For years in Oklahoma, I was shunned like an extraterrestrial with tuberculosis because I’m not into politics, religion, or sports. Could not get past “How’s the weather?” with anybody.
Is it similarly hard to get along somewhere progressive if you just aren’t the sort of person who likes to get involved in causes? It’s great that people want to organize rallies or plant community gardens or save things from other things. But if my idea of fun doesn’t include volunteering, will I be socially isolated somewhere like Portland or Seattle?
Good points, the book is languishing in my Amazon cart right now. There’s a few guys I know through work who’ve lived overseas, but due to our industry, it was mostly guarded compound arrangements. Hence, my interest in the opinions of our very varied community here.
I’ve probably unfairly dismissed overseas life because of lack of experience and crippling anxiety about being very out of place in another country. Sometimes I feel like my presence is deeply irritating to everybody in the Korean grocery store, and those guys are mostly native USians.
That’s why they asked me to leave. The meadows are nice, but mountain goat droppings get to be a little oppressive sometimes. Plus, those damn pikas took our jobs. Go back to where you came from! Just kidding, some of my best friends are pikas.
What’s winter like in Oregon and Washington, generally? Not all the way up the mountains or the flat eastern part. Is it anything like San Francisco, kind of middling cold and foggy? How bad is the daylight period variance? Much snow?
Any opinions on Australia or New Zealand? They look nice. Maybe Australia is a bit hot and dry.
How about Hawaii? It’s fun to visit, but does it start to feel small or isolated after a while?
The Alaskan panhandle? Probably too much winter for me, but did/do you like it?
To be fair, there’s a “social freeze” to get beyond when you relocate to either one of these places. People will be a lot flakier than you’re used to and it’ll be hard to get good social traction. That being said, the community in Portland is more “activist” than Seattle. Seattle is more “geeky” than Portland. Neither place is highly religious. Seattle folk like the Sounders, but not to the point of discussing it with strangers.
ETA: winter. Misty. Temps in the 40s. For those used to the east coast, it’s gray like cloudcover on a day you’re expecting a big snowstorm, but the snow never comes. Seattle gets maybe one good snow a year, the city shuts down, and the snow melts within the next couple of days. But, with just a bit of driving, you can find snow very easily, if you want to ski or snowshoe, etc.
They’re all small cities surrounded by lots of natural resources. Do you prefer some aspects of city living but enjoy outdoor pastimes such as camping or hunting or fishing or hiking?
That sounds like my favorite parts of winter weather growing up in NY, minus the impacted frozen slush and sudden clear-sky holy crap cold snaps. So good.
Socially, it sounds a lot like Austin. Is there a “lock the door behind you” mentality? IOW, do people move there, then immediately start complaining about the all the people who move there? Geeky>activist, in my book. Hmm. Flaky meaning “not punctual/reliable” or “eccentric” or both?