I’ve been neglecting this space. But I have a fantastic reason. I moved to the Bay Area in late-March! I’ve been getting settled, rehabbing a busted finger, and trying to figure out my new environs. But it’s time I returned to posting occasional life updates.
A few weeks before I made the move, I got an email from a friend. It read: “I can’t wait for you to leave the Beast Coast and join all us cool kids on the Best Coast!”
The jury’s still out on which coast is better, but it’s now been more than six months since I moved to Oakland from my beloved Brooklyn. It’s very different here, and I’m still adjusting to the lifestyle and pace. This is an early-to-bed, early-to-rise-type place. I’ve never been told by so many people that they had to leave a weekend night hangout because of some sort of hike or other outdoor activity the next morning.
I think the long term outlook is that the move will be better for my health. Except for two things: One, public transportation here is a joke, so I now drive pretty much daily. I don’t have an actuarial table handy but that can’t increase life expectancy. And, two, I broke my right, index finger playing softball in mid-May. (That’s an X-ray of the dislocation and fracture above.) The bone and tendon have healed, but I’m still having trouble restoring the full range of motion to my finger. In my nine years of living in New York, I don’t think I ever saw the inside of an emergency room. I was in one within two months of moving here.
There are parts of the culture here I really like though. People don’t seem to be as obsessed about their jobs, though I sort of still am. (Old habits die hard, but it’s nice that other people are more lax about it than me.) And people are earnest. Very earnest. And nice. Oh, and my fiancee lives here, so obviously that’s its trump card. In that respect, this is the best coast. But, I’m still mulling over whether that’s objectively the case.
