Where to go in Journal of life stuff

I can’t make up my mind, so…let’s write about it! I had a great interview today. It’s actually for a fully remote position, so for the first time in my life, I may just get a job where I can live anywhere I want. This brings me to the fundamental problem: where do I live?

I grew up in the south, I went to the north for college, and then I’ve moved around from job to job. No, seriously, the closest any two jobs have been is 800 miles apart. Up until the last year or so I could fit everything I owned into my car. For better or worse I now have a few things that won’t fit into my car anymore so I will need a moving truck to move from now on. I can, actually, still move by myself without help, but I wouldn’t turn down a friend or hiring someone to help me move the two 100+lb items I have.

Anyway, nowhere is home for me. I’ve often said that I don’t have family. It’s mostly true. They are, in a biological sense, still alive. But I haven’t spoken to any of them for 10+ years. The friends I have are tenuous at best. All are married and over the age of 40. They have their own lives. If I get to see them, I get to see them once a month, at best. So I’m not abandoning any valuable friendships either.

So…what do I want in the place I move to? Here’s my un-ordered list.

• Low taxes on crypto trades. TN, for example, has a tax on mutual fund income, but it’s not clear that crypto trades would be taxed by the same law.
• Not super progressive. So, basically, not Chicago, California, Portland, Seattle, or New England.
• Single women.
• Internet that doesn’t suck. Municipal fiber > shit-cast or scam-izon. Don’t even get my started about AT&Terrorist or Time Whorener.
• Reasonable rent (<= $1000/mo for one br).

In the next two years I expect to have a captail gain, in the form of crypto investing, to the tune of around $4 million. That’s conservative. On one hand, I look at having to pay a state (say, Indiana) $200,000 of that gain and say “Dude, you have 2.8 million left over instead of 3.0, what the fuck?” On the other hand, I say “If you lived in Texas, you’d not only have that 3.0, but your short term gains would also be taxed far less heavily.” There will be a few short term gains in there as I must flip some coins back and forth and I doubt I’ll be able to hold them for 1 year in between just due to how the market will move. I’d love to be wrong, but I don’t think I will be. I would say this is either my number 1 or number two issue overall. Actually, no, it’s firmly my number two issue.

My number 1 issue is not being in a super progressive place. All cities are more liberal than the places outside of those cities. Liberalism is a side effect of population density. To be clear, I have no meaningful issue with liberals. Joe Rogan is a liberal and I’d not have any serious problem with him. What I have a problem with are the progressives who are so militant that they may as well be Hezbolah or ISIS. The types who scream and yell at anyone who dares have any opinion even slightly out of line with their own personal beliefs. The type of person who exists purely in an echo chamber and not only can’t understand dissent, but treats it as an active threat on the same level as an active-shooter.

I live near Boston. I’ve had my fill of people who think like that. I want nothing to do with that style of thinking. I visited Seattle when Amazon interviewed me. Seattle is a place I’d definitely go back to and visit, but just like NYC, living there is absolutely out of the question.

How would Dallas or Indianapolis be any different? In truth, I don’t know for a fact. I’ve never visited either. I really should. Every single reasonable person I’ve ever met, with rare exception, has been from the midwest. Reasonable meaning that even when you disagree, they want to either understand your point of view, or still view you as a person worthy of their time and attention even if you don’t see eye to eye. I want to be around people who are willing to think, change their points of view, or at least consider new information that challenges their existing beliefs.

I also want to be around people my age. All of my friends are 40+. I want friends who are in their 20s and 30s, and preferably a few who are single women. I have been stubborn for too long, and I realize this means I HAVE to live in the center of a city. Not 20 minutes outside town, not where the rent is cheaper, not where traffic is better, no. I have to live in the absolute middle of the city. Why? Because I’m not going to settle for the obese chick. I’m not going to settle for the meth-head. I’m not going to settle for the pot smoker. I do not demand perfection, a model, or someone who’s unreasonable perfect. Far from it. But I have lived in the suburbs long enough to realize that the single women here are not what I want, and the few that are have the pick of the litter. Well, fine, I’ll change the situation of the game to make it more to my advantage.

The catch is, when I look in a mirror, I understand why they wouldn’t date me today. As much as modern media has pushed the narrative that ‘you are still worthy of being loved’, I know that isn’t true. I’ve spent 20 years of LIVING that not being true. So, I need to spend a year and undo the damage of the last 3. If I got this new job, I think that would take enough stress out of my life that I could hop back on and stay on the train to self improvement. So, in that capacity, a part of me says I am willing to compromise on the single women aspect of where I live next because, for the next year at least, it’s a moot point.

Internet. I hate comcast, I hate verizon, and those are the two best ‘big’ ISPs. Indianapolis has municipal fiber. Chattanooga, has municipal fiber. I’m sure there are other cities too. I want to vote with my dollars and give them to an ISP that doesn’t suck. As much as I’ve be ok with living in TN again, I don’t want to live in Chattanooga, and that’s the only place with good internet in the entire state thanks to Comunistcast being fucking evil and the elected officials being scumbags. Plus, at a social level, I remember living in TN. I never made friends there. Bleh. In truth though, this is more of a nice to have thing. As long as I have some form of internet and can do my job, that’s good enough. I already know that the VPN to the company that might hire me is so terrible that any internet I get will be faster than their VPN.

Reasonable rent is pretty straight forward. As long as you stay out of the biggest cities in the country, finding a nice apartment for under $1000/mo is pretty easy. Most of them will fall over themselves to rent you an apartment if you can prove you have a stable job at a normal company and aren’t some sort of self-employed person who ‘promises they make money’.

Ok, so, looking back, clearly it’s the people aspect that matters more to me than anything else. When I lived in Memphis it was nice to have the walking tracks and empty roads around my apartment. If I were to move back there, I’d find great joy in buying a bicycle and riding around the duck pond, or riding around the deserted strip mall parking lots after dark. If I live in the middle of a city, that would far less safe and certainly not a good idea. Hm.

Well, I know what I need to focus on now.