How do you decide where to live?

I spend too much time thinking about where I should live. My optimization brain is never satisfied and I go down rabbit holes contemplating my “ideal” place to live.

I have never understood people who choose to live where they grew up (even though this is most people). It seems so boring to me! Why would you want to run into people you went to high school with at the grocery store?

I am from the Bay Area, the “East Bay” to be exact. I spent the first 7 years of my life in Martinez, CA. We lived on the border of Martinez and Pleasant Hill so if you asked my mom, we were from Pleasant Hill (because it sounded better class-wise). We moved less than 8 miles south to Lafayette, CA the summer before I started second grade. Lafayette had much better public schools and much more wealth.

Most of my classmates had never lived anywhere else and they had known one another since preschool. I still (!) feel like an outsider because I didn’t do those first two years (kindergarten and first grade) with them. The only friend I am still close with from elementary school today still thinks I moved from Sacramento because she had never heard of Martinez and thought it was far away. I think I will always be jealous of people who didn’t move in childhood.¹

For the most part, I love where I grew up. It is not without its problems but I had a very pleasant and safe childhood. My mom is an example of someone who raised her kids where she grew up. She technically grew up in the town over but I went to the same high school she attended (for one year, her original high school closed down after her junior year, which is so bizarre to me). My middle school feeds into two high schools, with most kids attending the high school I did not attend. My brother and I did not have a choice regarding high school. Even though most of our friends were going to the other high school, we had to attend the same one she went to because it ranked higher academically. This meant I had three friends from middle school when I entered high school. It was hard making friends but I think I am better off for it. However, my brother was miserable and begged my parents to let him transfer and they finally relented for his senior year.

The best college I got into was only about a 25-minute drive from our home. I wanted to go to school out of state but my parents refused to pay out-of-state tuition (especially for a school that was not ranked as highly, rankings over everything!!).

A friend of mine,

Rachael Maier

, is a “where person,” in that she decides where to live based on an intuitive feeling in her gut that can’t be explained by logic. I’ve never made decisions this way. I distinctly remember visiting Berkeley on a day specifically for newly admitted students and feeling numb. I wasn’t impressed by the dorms or the campus, I felt resigned. It was the “best” school I got into, so I knew I “should” go there.

I chose to study abroad my junior year but this choice was also constrained. My major required taking a foreign language, so I continued studying Spanish. I knew studying abroad in a country where I could speak the language was prudent, so I went to Spain. Would I have preferred to have gone to Italy? Absolutely, but I am ruled by logic! I am also grateful that I didn’t go to Italy because I still managed to gain a ton of weight even though I dislike Spanish food (perhaps it was my daily bottle of wine consumption?…). Things would have been much worse if I had had constant access to delicious sandwiches and pizza.

I don’t say that I lived in Berkeley for 4 years. Many people say this about the city where they went to college. But I think going to college somewhere is very different than actively choosing to live in that city. I would never have chosen to live in Berkeley otherwise. I don’t think being a student in a city is comparable to living in a city as a non-student. I did graduate a semester early and start working so I suppose I “lived” in Berkeley for 6 months. I didn’t like it, but mostly, I didn’t like working.

When I finished school in December 2013, I began frantically applying to jobs. The only thing I knew was that I wanted to leave the Bay Area. My college roommates were from the East Coast and many of them were eager to stay in the bay. This made sense to me. But I never understood why so many people from the East Bay wanted to remain within a 40-minute drive from where they were raised. I viewed going to Berkeley as a strike against my independence. I needed to live elsewhere. I interviewed for a job in Madison, Wisconsin but didn’t get it. A recruiter called and asked if I’d move to Vancouver. “Canada? Absolutely!” I said. “No…Vancouver, Washington,” she replied. “Oh…sure!” Turns out Vancouver, WA is just outside Portland, OR. The company flew me up on a beautiful day in April and I was smitten. The pay was terrible and the job (Investment Associate) was unbelievably vague but I didn’t care. I was starting my own independent life!

I enjoyed living in Portland (and met my husband a year and a half after moving there). Maybe you could argue that I moved there because of a gut feeling but in reality, it wasn’t that intentional. My goal was to leave the Bay and I didn’t care where beyond that.

After 3.5 years (and 4 moves in that time) in PDX, I wanted to live in a bigger city, with more career opportunities, so my partner and I moved to San Francisco. Our rent skyrocketed but so did our paychecks. I felt a bit smug that I had waited a few years before moving to such a high-cost-of-living city, since my college friends had “rooms” that were just sections of the living room with makeshift curtains instead of walls.

The longest I have ever lived in one place was our one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco (2.5 years), which is funny because I can hardly remember living there. By the start of 2020, we knew we wanted to live elsewhere. I was pushing for Denver and my partner pushed for San Diego. When COVID hit, we fled to my parents’ house in Lafayette for 2 months. I got a job offer from a company based in San Diego and we decided my partner could get a job in SD a few months later once COVID ended (lol). I ended up working for the SD company for over 2 years without ever stepping foot in the office or meeting a single coworker in the flesh.

Our experience living in San Diego was mixed. Our “house” did not have AC or insulation, so more often than not, it was 80 degrees inside. We didn’t have a garage or a driveway and street parking was a nightmare. But we went to the beach almost every weekend! That was heavenly. We lived there only for one year and it was during peak COVID (June 2020-July 2021), so I often feel like we didn’t REALLY live in San Diego. We didn’t make new friends, or go to Padres games, or concerts. But we did get a puppy (best decision we ever made)!

Once it was clear that remote work was here to stay, I got antsy. I convinced my partner to put our stuff in storage and take off on an adventure in my Jetta. The fact that we did “Nomad life” in my lil VW Jetta (with a dog!) is so impressive.

Our first stop was Bend, where we spent the month of August 2021. It was magical! We had no plans to live in Bend at the time, it was our happy place. It was here that we ended up getting engaged and where we knew we wanted to get married.

After Bend, we spent two months in Denver, CO. I was convinced we would fall in love with Denver and decide to live there forever. The opposite happened. We enjoyed the trips we took OUTSIDE of Denver (Rocky Mountain National Park, Telluride, Moab) but we did not like living in the city of Denver one bit! Denver was out!

Next, we went to Park City, UT and I fell in love. Close to an international airport? Check! Beautiful mountains? Check! Insanely expensive small town? UGH, check!

Next, we spent two weeks outside of Jackson, WY, just for fun. We stayed in an adorable log cabin and worked our silly little corporate jobs while snow fell and a fire crackled. This was also magical.

We spent the holidays in Phoenix, AZ with my in-laws and realized that Arizona is absolutely lovely in the winter. We checked out Flagstaff for 2 weeks and really enjoyed it.

Then it was back to Utah for two months. Except this time, we decided to check out Salt Lake because Park City is $$$. This is when I told everyone we were moving to Salt Lake City and everyone doubted my sanity. Who cares if we weren’t Mormon? That doesn’t matter! Spoiler: that does matter.

At the beginning of April, we flew back to our storage unit in San Diego to trade our winter clothes for summer ones. As we walked around University Heights and ate at one of our favorite rooftop restaurants, I realized that SLC didn’t hold a candle to San Diego culture-wise. Salt Lake was out!

Back to Bend! We spent May - August 2022 in Bend because summer in Bend is the best. We also got married in June and spent the month of September in Europe! At the end of the summer, we felt called to give San Diego another shot. I think this is the only time we tried to “listen to our gut.” We felt like we didn’t get the “real” San Diego experience and we wanted to try again.

We decided to try living in North County (Encinitas) instead of San Diego proper. North County has the best beaches but (another spoiler) it is also insanely expensive! The VRBO we had booked for the month of October turned out to be disgusting and unlivable. Gas prices were absurd and we could not find an affordable place without going much more inland than we wanted. After a week, we abandoned our San Diego dreams and fled to Scottsdale, AZ.

At this point, we were exhausted from the precarity of the nomad life and wanted all of our stuff back (mainly our king-sized bed). Bend seemed like the only logical place left. We got our stuff out of storage and made the journey from San Diego to Bend in November 2022.²

I love Bend but no place is perfect. This is my first time living in a place with snow and it has been hard for me. The airport situation is…less than ideal. I would love to snowbird between Bend and Scottsdale (like

Chris Blahoot

lives in Vancouver and Capetown). But we tried to do that this year and our Arizona rental fell through at the last minute. I don’t know if I have the energy to procure a short-term rental every winter.

Where does this leave us? Longingly looking at San Diego houses on Zillow. We could do it, but our stress levels would go up (since I no longer work a corporate job). Will we ever be satisfied or will we always want what we can’t have? How did you choose where you live?

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Moving Summary:

• Age 0-7: Martinez, CA

• Age 7-18: Lafayette, CA

• Age 18-22: Berkeley, CA (+semester in Spain)

• Age 22-25: Portland, OR (4 apartments in 3.5 years)

• Age 26-28: San Francisco, CA

• Age 28-29: San Diego, CA

• Age 29-30: Nomad Life (6 states over 18 months)

• Age 31-Present: Bend, OR

1. My parents sold our childhood home at the end of 2020 and moved out of state. I haven’t been back to the Bay Area since then. Does anyone else feel irrational rage when your parents decide to change? I wanted them to live in that house forever!

2. I lost a piece of my soul during this drive. Our dog was attacked in Bakersfield. My husband had to drive separately in a U-Haul. I had a mental breakdown. Never again.