SoC: Moving On

Two years ago, I was in my final days at SOE, having given my notice about a week prior, and I was tying up loose ends, handing stuff off, and furiously trying to get those who were taking care of my duties up to speed on the massive amount of duties that were being dumped upon them.  At home, most of our stuff was in boxes, we were packing up everything to move from San Diego to Texas.  My life was chaotic, uprooted, and I was terrified.  As I always am when there is big change afoot.  Noteworthy perhaps – I was around 240 lbs then, so besides the fear of unknown, there was also the discomfort of carrying around an extra emaciated supermodel 24/7.

8 years ago, well, yesterday, actually, we left our Reno basement apartment just before sunrise with our lives in a small u-haul Zliten was driving and our cars, heading out to San Diego to live beside the ocean, leave the fires behind, swim out past the breakers, watch the world die.  In other words, getting the hell out of dodge.  But dodge was where I had spent highschool and college.  Life was chaotic, I was uprooted, and terrified.  At that point, I hadn’t seen a scale in months, but I was at least 200, probably about 215 if I had to guess.  I wasn’t quite carrying the supermodel yet, but I was at least carrying an extra 5th grader.

Besides the fact that I seem to always relocate in June, the other recurring theme is fear of change, but doing it anyway.  Both moves have been pretty bold, desperate changes that have been fantastic for me.  Both changes were definitely after months of wanting, but not set-in-stone for more than a few weeks before I was gone.  Both moves also created a bunch of financial uncertainty.

Leaving Reno after college for *anywhere else* was the plan.  I was pushing for San Diego, but the backup plan was Colorado Springs.  The weekend after graduation, we drove down and looked for an apartment.  Our current 3 bedroom(ish – converted basement) rented for about 650 per month if I remember correctly.  We were in for a shock when we couldn’t find anything in a safe neighborhood near town for under 900.  Discouraged, we drove back to SD to continue packing.  We had to be out of the apartment on the 3rd of June no matter what, so it was either find a place or move back in with the ‘rents.

The next weekend we drove back, with a mission – either find something in the next few days, or the next weekend we would be off to Colorado.  After much more looking around, we found and secured a JUNIOR one bedroom (folks, this thing was a glorified studio with a full kitchen and a wall between the bedroom and the other room) for a price we were comfortable with, saw Moulin Rouge (which was our present for finding a place, and to this day still one of my favorite movies of all time), and then drove back to Reno and finished packing.  I don’t think we even had a goodbye party, we didn’t have time.  As sudden and terrifying as this sounds already, keep in mind that neither of us had jobs there.  I had a tiny savings account but had already started racking up some credit card bills since I hadn’t worked the last couple months of college so I could concentrate on my thesis.

I’ve talked a bit about my time in SD, but it was definitely the best of times, and the worst of times.  Everyone should live in a big, expensive city once in their lives.  Everyone should also live by the beach once in their lives.  I took care of this with one fell swoop!  I found out that to live in paradise, you have to work so much it’s hard to enjoy it.  Our first apartment was in one of the best neighborhoods – we were within walking to tons of local shops and restaurants and bars, and what is now a walk but then would have been a 5 dollar cab ride to the nice area of downtonwn SD – the Gaslamp district.  However, we rarely went out, because we couldn’t afford it.  After the newness of beach wore off, and also once we were on normal people hours and could only hit the sand when it was crowded with tourists, we started going less and less.  I think besides the times work took us for an outing, I can count the beach trips in the last 5 years of living there on my hands.  Sad, for someone who is a pisces and wanted to live by the water more than anything.

Then, we moved up near work to cut the commute down – but we left the fun and funky to live in suburbia chainland tech mecca mesa.  Due to raises and promotions we had much more money to play with here, so we lived on restaurant food, but it was stuff like Chilis and Applebees and Chi Chis.  There were 3 dive bars in the area that were HORRIBLE, so we didn’t go out much, but that was probably a good thing.  Then after 2 years we realized that we were a) fat b) never going to own a house and c) besides the awesome climate, could be living in a big apartment complex anywhere in the country and not have it cost 1500/mo for a 700 sq foot 2 bed 1 bath.

We considered Australia (the studio went under last year, so glad we didn’t go under down under, hehe), and were just about set up with jobs in Vancouver when they fell through.  Then, at the urging of a friend living there, we started looking in Austin, trying to overlook the fact that it was in Texas, and people can carry concealed weapons.  We decided it couldn’t hurt to visit, and I secured a handful of interviews and meetings to look for a position, and off we went on Mother’s Day weekend in 2007.

We fell in love with it.  I had more fun and social interaction with cool people and friends in that 5 days than I had almost the 5 months prior.  Not everyone wore a cowboy hat and carried a gun.  There were tons of cool places to eat and drink and swim and shop and hangout and it was all affordable!  We found our neighborhood and if I would have gotten a job offer, we would have put an offer on a house we found.  I have no regrets because I love our house to pieces, but this one was cheaper and had a pool (and…erm…needed lots more love, but that’s besides the point).

I was back to work for about a week and then on that fateful Thursday evening, I got a call from my current boss’s boss, asking if I wanted to job, for just slightly less than the outlandish raise I asked for.  Out of town interviews are so odd – basically, these people decided from seeing a list of what I had done and spending 45 minutes with me, that they wanted to pay to move me out there and have me work for them.  In 45 minutes with them, I had to make the decision that I was willing to uproot my life for a startup (well funded, but still) that couldn’t even tell me the name of the game they were making.  Zliten luckily landed a job the second week we were out there making gaga looney money as well, but at the time when I accepted, we had no idea how long it would take him.

But it all worked out lovely in the end.  This is not my most favoritiest JOB I’ve ever had, but the product is top notch.  It’s good talented people, it’s stable, there are some really awesome PARTS to it, and it doesn’t eat my life so I can do crazy things like train for a half marathon.  It sucks that we’re in a situation where my poor Zliten has been out of steady work for so long, but at least we live in a town where we can get by on what we’ve got.  We’ve got a great circle of friends, and pretty much any day of the week, Austin has some sort of event going on, more than anywhere else I’ve lived in my life.

I guess the moral here is – feel the fear and do it anyway.  You just might learn something.  Very few choices are true forks in the road – if a choice makes you unhappy, you can always go back.  Or make another one.  A good, hard life shake up is sometimes just what you need to get yourself right again.  The move to San Diego focused me into finding a career I love instead of becoming a professional waitress/student like I was leaning towards (because it was what I knew).  The move to Austin reminded me that being successful is not everything.  Having a social life is worth the effort, and so is being active, even though it’s not directly helping me achieve the goal of world domination, fame, and riches.

While I’m hoping we stay here for a while, I doubt Austin will be our final resting place.  I wonder where our next adventure will take us?  More importantly, I wonder what our next adventure will teach us?  Oh, I’m sure I’ll feel the same way – chaotic, uprooted, and frightened, but at least now that I have 2 under my belt, I probably won’t be as much so as before.  I get attached to spaces and places more than things, so leaving an apartment or an office is usually a pretty heartwrenching goodbye, but once I lock the door for the last time and say my adieu, my goldfish brain is already thinking, “What’s next?”.

I watched Pump Up The Volume recently, and something that’s always stuck with me was Happy Harry Hard-on’s words after the suicide.  If you’re so unhappy you’d consider ending it, why not do something else crazy that’s not so…final?  So if you’re feeling unhappy or unsatisfied with something in your life, why not go nuts?  Do something drastic, paint your canvas with bold strokes with wantan regard for the end result, because doing SOMETHING, even if it might not be the RIGHT something, is usually better than nothing.  Chances are, you’ll end up somewhere cool, even if it’s not perfect, and you’ll surely learn something from the experience!