Dear blogger friends,
As I've mentioned in the past, there is a lot of crazy stuff going on at work. Office mergers, booze cruises, reorganizations, etc.
Friday afternoon, my boss and I discussed a potential job opportunity. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but if I'm unable to find another position before this office closes in late November/early December, I will be without a job. That being said, this potential position is located in our Rochester office. I have a gazillion mixed feelings about it.
It's always nice to have a job, especially when you're paying off things like student loans and credit cards.
The position is in Rochester. I mentioned that already, didn't I? In general, I don't really like Rochester. Over the past few years, I spent quite a bit of time there with my mom in the hospital. Luckily, I have a few very good friends that live in the Rochester area which makes the idea of moving there less bleak. Should my mom have any more hospital visits or the lung transplant we've all been hoping for, it would be nice to be so close.
Then comes the housing dilemma. Getting a decent apartment in Rochester is expensive. For the same price I would pay for a respectable 1 bedroom apartment, I could make payments on a 2 bedroom condo. I spent a good 3 hours on the internet yesterday doing my research. The grown up in me thinks buy. The just out of college, new to life in the real world part of me thinks that's a scary leap to take.
I've moved three times since July 2006. I've only been in the Twin Cities for 10 months. For as long as I can remember, I've always wanted to live here. I just don't know if I'm ready to move again, especially away from the metro area. In a way, I see moving to Rochester as a downgrade because of the population size and variety differences.
If for some reason if the job doesn't work out, I would be in a town with a significantly smaller choice of financial firms and office locations and potentially a condo. However, going into the Rochester office could be a good opportunity too.
I have no idea which way to go on this one.
Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Comments?
Monday, September 24, 2007
a quandary
Posted by theresa at 2:03 PM
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8 mindblowing comments:
Hey, Rochester has 100,000 people in it now (it recently surpassed Duluth as the 3rd biggest city in the state). I've lived there for over a decade and quite enjoy it. It's much less hustle, bustle than the Cities, fo sure. Do as you will.
So would you moving to the Rochester office be like Jim moving to Stamford or Ryan going to corporate? Hee.
That's a tough call for you to make. The grown up in me says it's a good opportunity and you should take it and buy a condo, because you know, you can sell it on e-bay, but the Team Chipotle member in me says you should stay here so we can eat burritos and cover a chipotle calendar with Office and HIMYM references and get "this much drunk" together.
comfort. i have no words of wisdom.
i know you love your boss, but this is business and more importantly, this is your life. string the company along and take the next 8 weeks to try to find something else. if all else fails, you gotta take the roch. gig, but in the meantime, fight like hell to find something worth staying for.
and if you go, don't buy. condos are hard to unload espec. in that size community, the real estate market is kind of effed up right now, and you don't want to be tied to rochester just because you own property.
Down, down, down... :-(
Boy, that's tough. I guess part of it might be whether you think you have a long-term future with your company, especially if at least a good chunk of that is in Rochester. And really, it's just difficult.
Sarah has offered good advice, I think. See what you can find in the Twin Cities in the next two months. And all of us Twin Cities folk will really, really hope you find something.
I received this advice last year in South Korea from Dr. Karl Schmidt, my international studies advisor. I'll paraphrase.
When Dr. Schmidt and his wife were looking for jobs they really wanted to live in a metro area. Once they started looking at jobs, houses, and commutes they decided to re-evaluate what was important to them and why they wanted to live in the metro. They looked at everything they did in a month and compared it to what they could do if they didn't live in the city. The things that drew them to the city (the theatre, the nightlife...), they didn't partake in often enough to make city life worthwhile.
They decided they didn't need the city and that they could afford the drive if something came up they really wanted to see/do.
Where did Dr. Schmidt and his wife end up? Brookings, SD.
Now, I'm not saying shun the TC Metro and come to the Roch. What I am saying is you need to rationally evaluate the pros and cons of each living/job situation. Like Sarah and the others said, string your employers along for a wHile and look for another job just in case things don't work out.
And if you do come to the Roch there are lots places with cheaper rent especially if you look at outlying communities like Byron, Zumbrota, and Pine Island. Even I don't plan on buying for another year or two.
Hope it helps.
yay! i'm glad people are agreeing with me. i was in a bit of a rush when i posted that and i was afraid my comemnt came off as bossy. i had actually come back to apologize for that... sorry for being bossy. :hugs: you're in a jam right now, to be sure. good luck.
I agree with Sarah too. Spend the next couple months looking for something in the Cities and continue stringing your current company along. If you do end up moving, I'd think long and hard about buying - especially a condo. In a tough buyers market, condos are really hard to offload, particularly if a lot of them were recently built in that area.
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