Driving long distances by yourself tend to lend itself to thinking deeply about things that usually don’t occupy much time. It occurred to me yesterday that I’ve officially lived here in Memphis for three years now. Of course I’ve really been here about six months longer than that, but for purposes of keeping the official record, I’ve decided not to count time spent living in a hotel in that figure. Buying a house seems to be the definitive announcement that you have arrived somewhere and are digging in for the long fight. The ironic thing is that I really never had any intention of staying here as long as I have. I had planned on coming to Memphis, picking up a promotion or two, making a quick buck on a house that should appreciate, and heading back to the DC area in a year or two and get back to my life. The first part of that plan worked out fairly well at least.
The recession and housing collapse have seen to it that the second part of the plan wouldn’t work out as I had envisioned. And, as usual, something unexpected happened… I got comfortable here. That’s not to say that I love Memphis as that would be an outright lie. Memphis is a necessary evil much like every other city I’ve ever lived or worked in. But the ridiculously low cost of living, relative ease of getting around, and ability to get “back east” within a day’s drive or a three hour flight have really made me question whether I’m willing to go back to DC… and the two bedroom condo and three hour round trip commute that I would find there. The fact is that I rather like getting to the house 30-minutes after leaving the office.
I dearly miss the proximity to power that you can only find in DC and given my druthers, Memphis would have a more sophisticated feel and figure out a way to get itself unstuck from 1953, but for the foreseeable future, I think I’ve slowly come to accept that I’m going to be here… Until something comes along back east that’s just too good to pass up. So if anyone up there is in need of a slightly used logistician/process improver/policy writer/strategist let me know.
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