I recently moved to Chicago from Leander, Texas (what folks call a "bedroom community" to Austin). My family and I moved to Leander back in 2015, after I graduated Texas State and started work at IBM. When I tell people this, in Chicago, they always ask why - did I have family here? Was I perhaps moving for work-related reasons?
My offered answer never fails to provoke amusement, when I say I moved for the weather. The truth, like most things in life, is much more complicated.
Yes, I love the prospect of four real seasons, and I dearly love cold weather. I also yearn to live somewhere where I can walk to most places, and take public transportation for the rest. I appreciate the occasional respite of flitting around small towns and absorbing the untamed beauty of wide-open spaces, but I can't live in the sticks. I need the pulsating energy of the city, where there's always something happening and something open no matter how late the hour.
Other reasons include my wife no longer feeling safe living in a state that treats their women and immigrants so shamefully, and my desire to work in an office that still had a good culture and where the employees were treated with just a bit more respect.
Finally, and perhaps most compelling, was the rising sense of time running out. My wife has had several major health challenges, and with the rise of the LLM's (or "AI"), and the current administration, I expect severe disruption in the near future. I don't necessarily think it'll cause me to lose my job, but it well could. All of these factors pushed us into a "make hay while the sun shines" frame of mind.
Life in Chicago
I've now been living in Chicago for just over a month. My wife and youngest, who is 17, stayed behind in Leander so my daughter could finish high school with her friends and boyfriend. I expect that counts as the "honeymoon" period still, so consider what I'm about to say with a grain of salt.
I flaming love it. I do. All of it. So far it's everything I had hoped it would be. The weather has been pleasantly frigid, our new apartment is within walking distance of practically everywhere I want to go, and the view from our new place at sundown is enough to make a man weep.
Working in my current company's Chicago office has been fantastic too. Gone are the infuriating mandates to leave a clean desk at the end of the day, along with the requirement to "reserve" a desk at the start of each day. I have my own desk. There are many like it, but this one is mine. I have co-workers who not only consistently come into the office, but who sit next to me. My grandboss, my SVP, and a few other muckity mucks are all here in the office too, and visibility never hurt anyone's career. Except maybe Andy Byron's.
The hardest part of the move, by far, is being apart from my family. My wife will join me after graduation, my daughter at the end of summer, but visiting with my parents, my brother and his family, and my other three daughters will require visiting Austin, which we will (probably) never be able to do often enough to suit. Time will tell whether that fact pushes this entire decision into the realm of regretful mistakes.