A little explanation about my decision to go to San Francisco

I think I said in my post about getting fired that I knew I wanted to move to San Francisco within minutes of getting the news. Several people have asked me how I could make such a quick decision. The answer is that I already thought about this a lot.

This was my third winter in New York, and the third time that I felt like jumping off a building when the temperature dropped below freezing. By the middle of December I was talking to my therapist about this city every week, and I was exhausting myself by constantly thinking about what city I should be living in. After one therapy session, I realized that I could make a decision model out of this problem and finally have an answer and be done with it. So I sat at home one night and got intimate with Excel. Here is what I found:

On the left I listed the characteristics of a city that affect my happiness. I rated each of those characteristics on a scale of 1-10, and then rated my favorite cities on those characteristics. Then each city was assigned a weighted score, and the pink box at the top finds the city with the highest score and displays the city name. I kept playing with the numbers, and no matter what I did (while being true to myself), San Francisco was my #1.

So now you can understand why I knew immediately that I wanted to move to SF. My analytical extremism had already been applied to the situation. My model really confirmed what my heart knew. San Francisco is home, and while I might be a bit disappointed that Sydney didn't win, it is going to be great to be home again.