The problem with having a bird in the hand is you usually need a Kleenex afterward

Fri, 06 Sep 2013 12:49:36 GMT

I recently got word that my apartment house has been bought out from under my bankrupt former landlord, and received notice that if I have a written lease, I will be permitted to stay until the end of it, but otherwise, I'm going to be moving soon. (If I ever did have a written lease, it has long since vanished into the mists of time. I've been living here for twelve years.)

So, sez one of my brothers, you're going to be moving anyway. Why don't you move to Indianapolis, where your other brother lives? Oh, don't worry about the job thing, we'll help you find one. (I haven't heard how the other brother feels about this idea yet, and I can't even guess whether my parents will think this is a great idea or a terrible one, though I expect they will all soon let me know.)

Yeah, like it's that easy to find another job. If it were that easy, I'd have something in my degrees now, instead of making ten bucks an hour helping people with their TVs over the phone, and doing a bunch of paid writing on the side to make ends meet. Thank you, college, for saddling me with fifty grand in debt and still not landing me a real job.

It's so hard to tell whether this is really a good idea. On the one hand, it would be nice to live in a big city like Indianapolis, that much closer to where a lot of my friends are on the east and southeast coasts. On the other hand, Springfield is the place I know by heart, with the things I love in it.

It would be nice to have a better job. Certainly the one I have now is easy enough, if a little soul-crushing, and I regularly receive high acclaim in my performance, but I have a dream of someday getting something higher-paying that only someone in my degrees could do, not something they could teach a high schooler off the street. I would guess Indianapolis has better prospects than Springfield for something like that. (Even if it's absolutely horrible to drive in. Seriously, Springfield traffic in no way prepared me for the rat's nest of multilane one-way streets that is downtown Indianapolis.) And we are just about to get into the insanely busy part of the year, so if I'm going to leave, this would be the time to do it.

I wish I knew what to do. This is the kind of decision that you can't turn back from. If I move, I've thrown out everything stable in my life for an uncertain new future filled with the agony of job-hunting and knowing I'm going to be a drain on my brother's resources until and unless I find one. If I don't, I've missed my chance and I'm stuck in Springfield for the foreseeable future.

Keep the bird in the hand? Or go for two in the bush?

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robotech_master

The problem with having a bird in the hand is you usually need a Kleenex afterward