So Long Cleveland

I was offered an awesome gig at Hotwire.com. Pure user experience, and no code. (I love code, when I don’t have to bastardize it.) Suck it IE6, you can tangle with someone else now. The job comes with awesome travel perks, and just so happens to be in one of the most beautiful cities in the country. I’d even speculate it is THE most beautiful, but there are a lot of places I haven’t been. So in just a few weeks I’ll be dragging all my remaining belongings and two wiggly dogs cross country to San Francisco.

I feel a little bit like a hypocrite for leaving, but I have my reasons. Cleveland has a lot of great things other cities do. When the weather is nice, parts of it are beautiful. I even find some of the industrial decay charming. There really is nothing quite like fall in Ohio. The lake can be pretty. We have tons of awesome restaurants, there are some good record stores, and some good bands come to town. I have no idea where I will find awesome kraut and pierogies after I leave. But what I’ve realized is everything cool Cleveland has, bigger cities have times ten. I guess if I had a spouse and kids I’d be more inclined to stay, there are some good schools, the cost of living is very cheap so you can afford a big house on a pretty street without having to make a lot of money. It can be quiet. But I’ve had it with snow, I don’t like 3 months of oppressive weather that keep you from going anywhere. Did you know most people in Ohio have a vitamin D deficiency? Yeah thanks crappy weather. In the summer time it’s incredibly hot and humid. I’ll be grateful for a moderate climate.

Dealing with the overwhelming local “mistake by the lake” attitude is pretty daunting. It’s hard to like where you live when so many other people here hate it. Parts of Cleveland are pretty suburban, I’m definitely interested in a more urban lifestyle. No more strip malls, no more ladies in puffy paint holiday sweaters with mall bangs, no more Kmarts, no Applebees, no offended old people staring at my tattoos as though I might rob them, no more soccer moms with double wide strollers trying to mow me down at the grocery store.

I got to be part of a wonderful organization, the Cleveland Web Standards Association, which definitely kept me around here a lot longer than I ever planned. These folks showed me what having a community was all about. We had great and informative presentations every month but the best parts have always been geeking out over a couple beers afterward, and swapping war stories about clients, bizarre RFPs, and IE6 induced grey hairs. More than professional colleagues, these folks have been awesome friends, and I don’t think I could be doing the things I am now without them.

It’s hard to leave family and friends, but I’m hoping living in a great city will entice everyone to visit. My grandma lives in the bay area, so I’m very excited to make up for lost time with her.

Professionally I realized I needed to grow in ways I wasn’t anymore. I started turning to personal projects and illustration to fulfill my creative needs, and realized that wasn’t why I put myself in student loan debt for life. I’m paying too much money to not be psyched about work every day. I felt I owed it to myself to try something new, something has been not quite right for a long time and I made a lot of excuses for why I wasn’t changing it. I guess I finally ran out.