Alyssa Thoughts on Lifestyle (aka "Lifestyle Thoughts")
2023-03-03 · ~962 words
Probably the biggest factor in where to live for me is "quality of the intellectual community". This is a huge reason to live in San Francisco, despite all of the other disadvantages. Boston is also great for this reason. NYC and DC probably a bit less so, but much more so than some random American metro like Phoenix or Milwaukee.
It is great to be close to friends; group houses are the solution for a lot of people I know, although this gets trickier when you have a family. Having a group of parents and other people who can trade off watching the kids is super valuable, since kids need a lot of watching.
A lot of cities in America are super ugly, which is sad. NYC and Boston have the advantage of not being ugly, and even more so, being well-designed; it is actively fun to walk around them, in the same way that it's fun to walk around MicroCenter. Walking around for twenty minutes in a typical American city is an exercise in frustration that will make you want a car.
In big metro areas, owning a house is probably over-valued as of 2023; one can judge this by looking at price-to-rent ratios (<https://rhsfinancial.com/2019/06/04/rent_vs_buy/>). There are some nice perks to owning a house (being able to rebuild stuff, etc.), but none that would be worth paying All Your Money or having a long car commute.
Traffic jams suck. Long commutes suck. Long commutes by a car on congested freeways, that you have to do every day, are The Absolute Worst and a huge quality-of-life malus. I have heard real estate agents use the phrase "drive until you qualify", this idea needs to be taken out and shot.
E-bikes are awesome, and the best way of getting around many major cities, they're also fun as all hell.
Thunderstorms are great, I missed them when I was in the Bay Area. I am glad DC has many more of them.
I've said this before, but products are generally very cheap relative to services. Roughly speaking, given my financial equilibrium right now, one month of rent is equivalent to a single vacation for both of us (assuming we're paying full rate for hotel + airfare + car + food + etc), three days of consulting or tutoring by someone with average-ish skills, eight haircuts/re-colorings, eight professional furniture deliveries, ten house cleanings, ten computer upgrades, 20 one-hour electrolysis sessions, 40 reasonably priced dresses, 50 couple's dinners at a pretty good restaurant, 50 sex toys, 100 tanks of gas, 200 books, 250 cheap-ish pieces of jewelry, or 1,000 candy bars.
Building physical things is great, I want the opportunity to do lots of this :)
Dogs are great! I've talked about wanting a puppy, but it might be easier/more reliable to adopt an adult dog that has already been housetrained.
The house I grew up in was 2,300 square feet, for a family of five, two dogs and around a dozen cats, and this seemed like a pretty good size. This is larger than most DC (or NYC or SF) apartments, but is actually a bit under the average for new American homes (2,500 square feet). Lots of upper-middle-class people put all of their time and money into owning an especially large house, and this seems like a Big Mistake.
If we have a lawn, it would be cool to fill it with plants that are interesting and colorful and fun and/or tasty and not just Generic Green Turfgrass. Generic Green Turfgrass sucks.
Spaces should be designed for people to hang out in, and then to be aesthetically pleasing; a lot of city backyards are neither and are basically just bare concrete slabs or garbage piles. This is bad.
https://www.facebook.com/kelsey.piper.9/posts/3115785015378917 is pretty much the best thing I can imagine for childhood education. If this exact thing isn't available, I'd value having something reasonably similar. The local environment/community should have kids around, and activities for kids. Events should be kid-friendly when reasonably practical.
Lots of rich people buy old houses, and then rip up all the beautiful architecture and furniture and rooms and redesign it to be Barren and Minimalist and Modern; to my eyes this is very dumb. Spaces should be designed for people to do things in, they should be cozy and warm and inviting and have at least some objects in them. Nothing should be so expensive that you aren't allowed to (or don't feel like you can) actually use it.
Rural areas are nice to visit, but I don't think I'd want to live there long-term, it's too isolating.
When choosing a good to purchase, or a company to be a customer of, or a government to live under, reliability is very important. Things should Work. They should not Constantly Break, Be Annoying, or have Bizarre Errors in Eldritch Languages. My electric bike is great for this, I've had it for nine years and it is reliable, it basically never just stops working or displays bizarre error messages. Once, four years ago, it overheated on a 100 F day while going straight up a 2,000 foot hill, so I had to let it cool for a while before continuing. Otherwise, no. Also, I am busy and most things I buy/use will go through a lot of wear and tear, it is great if they hold up to this; half of Amazon products do not and will break within a few months.
Good trains are awesome, unfortunately most of America's trains suck. Still, the Acela is pretty good and the DC metro is much better than nothing. I'd definitely enjoy visiting the trains in Japan.