Location, location, location...

[camwyn]

Just for the hell of it I went to http://www.findyourspot.com and took their quiz. It's a series of questions about what you want in a place to live and what kind of stuff is important to you in your general area, and a little bit about the work you do and your political/religious/social beliefs. There's also some stuff about how much you'd be willing to pay for a house or an apartment. I took the quiz and sat back to see what came up. The first screen's worth of suggested places? Virtually all of 'em were in New England. That'll teach me to put museums and cold weather into the 'very important' category. Portland, Oregon was on the first screen, though, so that was cool too...

Thing is, my instinctive response was 'noo! I want to get away!'.

I love my family. I truly do. They're wonderful people and better by far than 9/10 of the families out there, at least from what I've seen. Both my nuclear family and my extended family are chock full of people I actually like. But... I don't want to live near them. I want to get away. I want to be somewhere that I know if I screw up, I'll be the only one to bear it; where I can reach my family by phone, but anything else takes a lot of preparation; where I can live on my own and not worry about pleasing/displeasing my relatives because they aren't there. All of my family except for a few isolated pips live within three hours' drive of New York City. Seeing that many New England cities crop up on the list of suggested semi-affordable spots to live (Providence, RI was the number one match) made me want to scream.

I can't wait until I finish my master's degree. I love my family, but I'm young (28), I've got no kids, and I inherited my great-grandfather's gene for wanderlust and Doing Big Time Stupid Things. (I don't think normal people would have stowed away on a boat from England to Australia before 1925, do you?) I want to live somewhere else, somewhere without my relatives, so that I can feel unique and make my own damn identity without being one of the big extended clan unless I need to be.

*sigh* Congratulations, I just had my teenage spasm of 'I wanna escape the family' about thirteen years later than schedule. Ah, well.

TEN MINUTES LATER:

Tweaked a few answers, incl. the statement about wanting a thick heavy blanket of snow during the winter. Removed Little Rock, AR, and New Orleans, LA from the list of spots. I mean no offense to the residents of those cities but sweet mother of mercy I don't deal well with summertime south of about Cape May, NJ. Okay, re-score, please...

... jeebus. What part of 'not interested in the Southwest, not interested in warm climates' didn't you understand? Albuquerque?...

Well, heck. Half the rest of the list is cities in Oregon, incl. Portland, Eugene, Bend, and Corvallis. The also suggest Honolulu (I think because I was strongly in favour of national parks, hiking, and similar outdoor activities) and Sheboygan, of all places - but they mostly suggest Oregon, a handful of New England cities, and Sacramento, CA. Interesting.

Comments

[skyschemer.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes...Portland. Beautiful place.

Since it made your list, that obviously reaffirms my suspicions that you have excellent taste. But if anyone from CA asks, the state is closed and just keep heading north 'til you hit Seattle. ;)

[lwood.livejournal.com]

I gave a raft of answers that should have skewed a SF response and came up with a bunch of New England answers, too -- the game's rigged, obviously, and I'm going to blame walkyrja because she wants me to move to Connecticut. So there.

-- Lorrie, "Rational? What's that?"

Oregon

[mlion.livejournal.com]

Nice place, if you can deal with lots of rain and grey during the winter. Summers are usually in the high 80s/90s, a few 100 degree days, very little rain during the summer.
Very little to no snow in the Willamette valley (Portland, Eugene, Corvallis) but snow and good skiing/mountains are within an hour/two drive. Ocean's about equal distance, opposite direction. Bear in mind that the snow is on non-dormant volcanoes. ;) That tends to bother some people, especially after St. Helens blew.
Bend is lovely, but high desert; lots of sagebrush and juniper, much drier and colder.
Economically, the area's depressed; we've had the highest unemployment in the country until August or September, when we gave it back to Washington state.
Also, check out Washington; they have a lovely lot of state/national parks, and more snow than Oregon

[firestrike.livejournal.com]

Don't go for Sacramento. It doesn't get snow. It's near snow, but that's using the Califonia definition of near. Under that usage, Porpentine & Cadlha live near each other. If you drove that far in New England, you'd might be in another state.

I'd be wary of any location survey that gave Eugene, OR as one of it's choices. Personally, I wouldn't even want to visit there. (Sorry, Karen. It's the truth.)

-M

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Sheboygan Michigan, right?

Oh, Wisconsin. If it were Cheboygan, MI, that'd make /some/ sense, since it's near the Painted Rocks and the general Great Lakes area. And, you know, it's COLD in the winter.

Shrug.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

Well, I did that once, but I went back to the site and did their quiz again. We'll find out when they mail me my results (it's already been several hours) how I came out. I've been working on my list of 'things somewhere has to have to get me to live there,' too, and will probably post it sometime.