flâneur

moving - by jaron - the way home

wayhome.substack.com · 767 words · saved by 1 readers

Common factors on deciding where to live: number of friends, job opportunities, city culture, quality of life. I considered all of those things when I decided to move to San Francisco. But none of them ultimately was the compelling factor. My decision was almost entirely based upon a single reason — San Francisco was the major city where I knew the least people. I wanted a clean start. It feels silly, certainly, to hold tight onto the romantic promise of the unknown, to feel like a small child running from home. At parties I tell people it's exciting to start over, to embrace the blank canvas. Implied: The endless possibility! Implied: The reinvention of someone who leaves their past behind! In actuality, building a new community is an often fruitless task. I'm reaching out to people I haven't spoken to in months, years even. I'm attending events where I don't know a single person. I walk alone to museums and cafes and gyms and the grocery store and google jazz bars sf and check transi

Sheep, Age of Empires II (1999) Common factors on deciding where to live: number of friends, job opportunities, city culture, quality of life. I considered all of those things when I decided to move to San Francisco. But none of them ultimately was the compelling factor. My decision was almost entirely based upon a single reason — San Francisco was the major city where I knew the least people. I wanted a clean start. It feels silly, certainly, to hold tight onto the romantic promise of the unknown, to feel like a small child running from home. At parties I tell people it's exciting to…

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