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I’m late to the conversation, but:

I have been reading this post over and over this morning.

Dave, thank you for writing this. I grew up in Kentucky, moved to Minnesota for college (where I met my wife), moved to New Mexico for a job, moved back to Kentucky for more education, moved to North Carolina for more education, and then four years ago we moved to Baltimore for, yes, more education.

When we arrived I got a job in Columbia, and spent my first 3 years almost completely unconnected to Baltimore. We found ourselves in love with the Waverly farmers market, but I was spending all my time driving to, working in, and driving back from Columbia, so my relationship to Baltimore went nowhere. I came in telling myself it was temporary, and let myself live that way even when the facts had long since failed to support that story.

In that time, as my wife continued her studies, I started a software company. One year ago I quit my day job and began working for myself full time. ( http://figure53.com ) I was joyous. Finally given the opportunity to give full attention to the work I loved, I spent another year buried in building a company. The work paid off, and now I’m expecting to hire at least one more guy for the team. (Take that, recession.) But amidst all the undeniable excitement and satisfaction, I was still ignoring Baltimore.

And while my wife has been much more connected to the city, there’s been nothing for us to do as we’ve watched nearly every friend we’ve had in B-more move away for, you guessed it, school and jobs.

So here we are. My wife is about to graduate. For months we’ve struggled with the question of what we do now. The friends we’ve known from college have scattered widely across the country. Our families have done the same. We’ve plotted and triangulated endlessly, and come out the other end with almost nothing to hang a home on. Do we stay? What’s keeping us here? And yet where else do we go?

Reading your post, and reading the responses of other young couples here, has given me a cautious infusion of optimism today, if for no other reason than the realization that: holy crap! You people sound great! And you live in my city!

Moreover, it may give me a little courage to say, in my next conversation at the dinner table: “Let’s just do this. Let’s find a place in Charles Village, and let’s just go for it.”

Sorry for this overly-long comment, but this whole thread has struck me where it resonates. Thanks to all for your contributions.

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Addendum: Well, we did have a conversation at the dinner table. I shared this blog entry with my wife, and we added it to the considerable pile of ruminations that preceded it in the last 12 months. Long story short, I contacted a buyer’s agent this morning and asked how we can start the process of finding a lender and a house in CV. Cheers.

P.S.: If any of you have leads on a nice place, let me know.

And yet I believe that most everything that you said, Dave, may still apply to to most any arbitrary locus of population, whether a small town or a city, given some finite radius. The difference being that a larger population of a city does statistically increase the likelihood of several individuals with closely aligned interests within a smaller radius.

While I have lived here for six months, in that time, I have slowly managed to find small pockets of my “nerd” community. It is possible beyond the boundaries of city-life.

I contend that the crucial element, that IIRC you cite, is a dedication to “home”, to a place of personal consequence, and the intent to become a part of it.

Maybe we need a local conference on this topic?

However, the notion that education/vocation *requires* a divorce from place strikes me as disingenuous. It is increasingly possible for someone to get a decent education in any subject in their own backyard. This is especially true in our area.

There is almost no reason for us to be exporting people anymore, and the geographic randomization that comes from asking a high school student what they want to study, and proposing a list of schools based on that, strikes me as a silly, outmoded, and destructive practice.