On July 12, 2013, I stood on the precipice. By that day I’d had a phone interview with LinkedIn, visited Mountain View (with my lovely wife) for an in-person interview with them, and received a formal offer of employment. It was decision time. Stay with current company, continue to live in Celebration and work from home, or work for an exciting Silicon Valley company and (but?) move to California?
Today, August 1st, we are committed. The new position is accepted and we’re working with the relocation people. I’ll have three months of corporate housing near work (probably Sunnyvale), during which I need to buy another car and find a place to live for the next year. The house needs to be in a safe area and in the right school district. Once a house is found and lease signed, we have to plan to move a 3100 sf home into what will probably be 1600 sf. Packing, strategizing, storing, selling, disposing… all this while starting the first new job I’ve had in 11 years.
I fly out on August 24, with my first day of work on the 26th. The plan is for me to be in California by myself for a little while, in corporate housing, to give me a chance to settle in to the new job and find a suitable place for all of us to live. Mid-September I’ll fly back to Orlando for a week to visit, work remotely, and help pack. Movers will come at some point after that, with the timing dependent on how much success I’m having renting in California. The family will join shortly after the movers leave Florida.
At this point I’m more excited than nervous, though this is a recent flip-flop. The wheels are in motion now, the decision is made, so there’s no use agonizing over it unnecessarily. We’ll focus on making and executing plans instead.
Somehow I always figured I’d live in California at some point. I just didn’t think it would be so soon!