Cripes, another 2-week lapse! Time flies. Sorry.
I guess I’ve been busy doing outside writing, buying CDs, and seeing movies that can be described as original (Gosford Park was well worth seeing, and rent Manny & Lo and Oscar and Lucinda).
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Just found another local weblog… Laurel Krahn‘s the real deal. She’s been weblogging in Minneapolis since 1998. I’m sort of curious who’s doing the same thing I’m doing in roughly the same location I’m doing it. I mean, I’ve hardly bothered to get to know anyone here…. perhaps I’ll run across someone I have something in common with (that’s less superficial than location and hobby).
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Every year at about this time I come up with a list of goals for the upcoming year, and attempt to gauge how much I’ve accomplished in the previous year. I’m not going to burden you with the details, but I will mention that the first one is this:
- Move to California by September.
Yep, and I’m serious about it. I’ve been talking about moving to California, specifically the San Francisco Bay Area, since before I graduated from college. I held myself back in 1998, though, because of my lingering, slow-to-die tendency to take the path of least resistance. I already had a job pretty much lined up in Madison at the time, and I had lots of friends there, etc. So I never scraped together the guts to make a change so big. Of course, 2 years later, I acted quite impulsively when I found myself getting in a rut, and it’s too bad I didn’t move to a city with more to offer. Anyway, 2 more years later, I’m ready to try something new, and circumstances are favorable. Astrologically and otherwise.
I am somewhat uncertain about writing on this site about moving, since people at work are aware of its existence. But I don’t think they really look at it very often. I guess I’ll find out, won’t I? It is genuinely true that one of the bigger reasons to stay here is that I genuinely like my (stable, challenging, interesting) job (in which I have a lot of freedom and am compensated well). I also have to consider that I’ll be much farther from all but 4 people that I’ve met in this world.
Anyway, I’ve been looking for personal writing on the web about either moving to San Francisco or moving out of Minneapolis. Not a lot out there, but here are a few sites that are interesting:
- Planet Soma: this guy is somewhat jaded, having lived in SF for 10 years; he says San Francisco is “the most overrated city in America.” His objections about the place are either not that bad, irrelevant to me, or are trade-offs I already knew about. For example, no place could be as corporate as Minneapolis. SF may be more corporate than it once was (and, sure, stay out of the tourist traps), but it’s certainly better than here. And he says it’s hard to find a place to park. Fine, I’ll get rid of my car—I hate driving anyway! I would love to live in a city with good public transit. Anyway, it’s good reading.
- Alfredo Jacobo Perez Gomez loves San Francisco. This balances the last view. Check out his neighborhood photo tours. San Francisco and the surrounding area are really gorgeous.
- Apparently indispensable is craigslist.
Here’s my rationale: What’s the point of life if you don’t try new things and go where you want to go? I can always come back to the Midwest. It’s really worth it to me at this stage in my life. Plus nothing is set in stone right now. It’s just important to me to start really seriously considering it.
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Oh, yeah, two more sites that fail the test/test test (“t3” from now on [heh]): the state “portals” of both California and North Carolina. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but I’ve been one of many committee members peripherally involved with the design of the new State of Minnesota site (of course, I’ve skipped the last few meetings since I’ve been so busy with the DNR redesign), which is what made me think of checking those sites.
