I'm trying hard to fall in love with San Francisco. This is the place where my career would flourish. The culture fits me well. There are beautiful green pastures that my horse would love. Napa Valley's amazing wine country is close by. Back in the day, I would have loved to live here.
The problem is, I'm in love with San Diego. I love the Mexican influence, I love the warmth, the beautiful sun, the cleanliness of the city, the restaurants, the place my horse lives and the people I ride with, the fact that my boyfriend and I could realistically buy a house in the next couple of years, the ease of driving around, just about everything. In fact, I can't think of anything that I don't like about San Diego.
However, it's a barren wasteland for the game industry. There are only a couple companies, and none of them are social games. The one social games company down here is the one that I left last summer and I have no intention of going back. The job I have is remote, and they want to move me to San Francisco. I could basically have my pick of social game companies and the sky would be the limit as far as potentially moving up in the industry.
Also, I don't really have many friends in San Diego. My best friend Caitlin (who also lives with me) is of course a huge reason to stay...but everyone else I know has already moved up to SF. Luke and I don't really hang out with many people because we don't know anyone and we're not good at making friends.
We could try Los Angeles, but it's basically San Diego except dirtier, more crowded, and more expensive. I don't know what the point of that would be other than giving us a change of scenery.
Sigh. We're feeling like something has to change. I don't want us to leap into the decision to move to the Bay Area and then regret it. I hate life decisions.
(Grr, Google just ate my comment. Let me try again.)
ReplyDeleteThat is hard. :-( Though, I will say: I thought I was going to miss Boston more than I did when I moved out here. (It's nice to visit there occasionally, but most of my friends there have since moved away, which I guess makes it different from your situation since your friends seem to be leaving San Francisco before you?)
I do like the idea of setting down roots - one of the things that bothered me about the academic lifestyle was the rootlessness that the process of finding a position enforces. I'm pretty weird in that I've really only lived in three places my whole life; but both of the moves that I made did turn out quite well.
Let me know if you want to wander down the Peninsula some time while you're here, to see what that's like. (I guess you saw a bit of Mountain View when you were at Playdom, but not much?) It is a noticeable commute from Mountain View to S.F. - there's a reason why I ended up at a local company instead of one up there - though there is a new social game company in San Mateo that I'm sure you're well aware of...