The story of how I came to be in Durham, NC

Many years ago I made a list of the 200-odd largest metropolitan areas in the USA.  Why just in this country?  I don’t know, I guess that was the Wikipedia entry I started with.  I know the list was actually just the continental US, ’cause it didn’t include San Juan or Honolulu.  Then I cut the list down, city by city, using different criteria.

Here’s how it worked

• I hate the cold, so it needed to not be cold.  (There go Chicago & Toronto, and NYC!)

• I love the seasons, so it needed 4 of those.  It would preferably snow once a year, but not a whole lot more than once. No slush accumulation at all costs.

• I love the ocean, so it needed to be close enough to one of those. Ok, I didn’t know if I loved the ocean yet, but I had a strong suspicion.

• I’m poor enough, so it needed to have a cost of living that didn’t priced me out from the get go (San Francisco I’m talking to you!)

• I grew up in a very diverse neighborhood of Chicago, so it needed serious diversity, and preferably a historical minority middle class.   I.E.– not just statistical diversity like Omaha had, but some high level of integration, both racially and economically.  E.G. black doctors and university professors living next door to white ones

• I like the small town feel, and I like walking and biking within a neighborhood, so it needed to be a town without a big car culture.  (There goes L.A.!)

• It needed to have excellent universities near by, because there’s a good shot I’ll go to grad school, and might even someday end up wanting to be a college prof.  Moreover, if I’m ever going to meet the smarter-than-me intellectual wonkishand self confidant woman if my dreams someday– having some good colleges near by would better my odds.

• It needed to have good affordable private schools, or good public schools since I’m raising a family.

• It needed to have a thriving music and arts scene, since playing music is my true true love and passion (and I still secretly hope to start a band and make it big.  Or at least have 5 minutes of mid-sized Indie Fame sometime)

• It needed to be a city that was going to grow and expand economically and demographically, rather than stagnate and wither, since the next few decades could be pretty hard on America (that ruled out the whole state of Ohio, 90% of Pennsylvania, and Michigan if they weren’t out already. It also ruled out Florida, Arizona, Louisiana. )

• I work in politics, so it needed to be a state that’s not so liberal everything is uber-establishment and corrupt (like IL or NY or CA) but not so conservative that only really crappy Democrats win, or dems can’t win at all (like SC, AL, KS, SD, ND, GA, NE…)

• Preferably it would be a state with lots and lots of close competitive elections, just so I always have job security. Metropolitan areas with off-year elections is a plus.

• I have a long term dream of owning a small plot of land (50-100 acres) about 15 minutes outside a city, having a couple dogs, and working from home.  This is like 10-20 years from now, but it still affects where I relocate.  I learned in Nebraska that I love the farm/ranch life; but I know from experience that I’ll die if I don’t have a big city within easy distance.  That’s why it needed to be a place where, if I’m making less than $100k per year, I can still afford to buy some land outside of the city without that land having to be 3 hours from the city. (There is affordable rural land within 15 minutes of my house right now!)

• There were more things I was looking at, but these ended up being the big factors.

When the dust settled and a few years had passed, I had a top 5 final contenders:

• Portland, OR
• Seattle, WA
• Austin, TX
• Nashville, TN
• Raleigh/Durham, NC

Nashville was only still in the running because of the music dream.  At the point I was moving, I wasn’t quite ready to commit to that dream over more practical and progressive options.  Having lived in Austin for a summer once before, I knew that Austin was really a bit too hot for me deep down.  Also, Texas politics has huge potential in the next 40 years… but not a lot of potential in the next 10 years, which are really the only ones I know for sure I’ll be working in politics (it’s a field people et burnt out on pretty easily).  I have pretty bad S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder), which kind of scuttled the Seattle idea.  Finally narrowed down to Portland or Raleigh / Durham– I chose East Coast over West Coast based on a pretty random factor.  I knew I had a better chance of getting my Brother & Sister (who I love dearly) to move out East (and thus be easy to visit) than to move to Portland or even the West Coast.  My brother in law has family out on the East Coast, and my sister has talked about moving to NYC in the past.  My actual brother might end up out here in order to be closer to Puerto Rico w/ my sister in law, or because either of the two of them could end up as proffesors at an east coast school (where most colleges in the United States are located).

If my brother and sister both ended up on the East Coast, and I was in Portland, that would have been terrible, so I decided to start the trend and come east first.

And now I’m here, and I don’t regret it at all.

You should come too!