Since graduating college, I have moved fifteen times in fifteen years. At one point, it was so frequent, I was moving almost every six months, which roughly corresponds to the minimum lease term for most rentals.
It wasn't all rentals though. There was a condo I bought and sold within a few months, house sitting for friends who were vacationing in Europe, a misguided attempt to be "more social" by moving into a house with a few roommates who I hadn't previously known (the highlight of which was one of them cutting off part of his finger while cooking), and living in a guest house in Brentwood, which was not all that dissimilar from Kato Kaelin's arrangement with O.J. Simpson.
With some distance (and relative stability in my life), it's hard not to look back on this time period as some sort of psychosis.
Even today, all the moves in my life didn't strike me as that many until I actually tried to remember all the addresses. When this proved too difficult a task, I came up with the idea to look up my Amazon order history to find out all the places where I've shipped packages to. (In the process, I discovered I placed 143 Amazon orders in 2009 -- clearly another form of psychosis.)
So I guess the question is... why? Why on earth would I move so frequently?
The word that popped into my head was wanderlust. However, I feel like wanderlust is reserved for people who want to wander the Earth. Not for people who move from say, Palo Alto to Menlo Park to a house in Menlo Park, to San Francisco, to another place in San Francisco because it's near the train, and then back to Palo Alto.
Maybe the problem wasn't where I lived, but what I was doing.
The strangest thing is that all the moves had a very strong underlying logic.
There was making a list of cities where I didn't want to work (which only consisted of Seattle; because of the rain). Then Amazon called and off I went to Seattle.
Or the time I realized I was working all the time and needed to be more social, so I moved into a house with Craigslist roommates. A few months later, I realized I hated living with roommates -- Craigslist or otherwise -- and promptly moved out.
Or the time I was depressed being in my cubicle every night at 6:45pm and thinking I needed to move to San Francisco because that's where all the cool people lived. Of course, an exhausting 40+ mile commute each way made me realize I cared much more about sleep than I did about living near the cool people.
And then there were my Kato Kaelin years in that Brentwood guest house. It had a pool and a lemon tree and a giant hill that you had to hike down just to reach. That eventually proved too transitory, so I found a more normal apartment elsewhere in Brentwood. It was the perfect compromise -- practical yet just a couple of miles to the beach (which I always dreamed about when I was a kid) and still close enough to everything else.
Of course, a couple of miles meant never going to the beach, so I finally bucked up and found my current place, actual walking distance to the beach -- which I now go to all the time.
Then there were all the mini-moves (e.g., closer to the train station, a slightly better apartment), the major work moves (Seattle, Silicon Valley, New York, Los Angeles), and of course, the transitional housing while I tried to get my bearings. Add it all up, and it's 15 times in 15 years.
It's only when I step back and look at the full list does the insanity sink in.
As I've grown older, the frequency of the moves have definitely slowed. What was almost a twice a year occurrence is now relatively rare. I've been in my current place for over two years, and was in my previous place for over four years.
I'm sure some of it is age, and some of it is just no longer being willing to deal with the hassles of moving. However, I suspect part of it is that my life has drastically changed.
I used to dream of business. How to make great products, drive revenue, and type things like "Q4 Strategic Goals" at the top of PowerPoint slides. But week to week, this life made me very unhappy. I was pouring in hours and largely felt like I was aging. Years would pass and I would question what I had done with my time.
When I was at Amazon, when I would feel particularly low, I would drive the streets at night. I went to no place in particular. I just drove. And dreamed. Imagined what my life would be like. Only I had no clear idea in my mind. It wasn't a tropical beach or corner office, it was just... somewhere else.
That somewhere else, oddly, became acting. I say oddly because I didn't take my first acting class until I was 27. Before that, I knew that actors existed of course, but I didn't have any idea what they did or what acting was.
Acting was staggeringly hard at first. Harder for me than getting to Princeton or working at Google.
There was the subtle and not so subtle derision of friends, family and strangers. No one ever makes fun of someone if they want to work in, say, marketing, or on Wall Street. But try and become an actor? Well, some will out and out question your sanity while others will flash a polite smile while thinking, "How naive."
And then there's the craft of acting or, as one of my acting teachers once said, "It's a nightmare until you can do it."
In my first week of class at this acting school, three women cried. This would be on the high end, but not atypical. I later learned our class was nicknamed the "no love" class.
Then there's the business of acting -- actually trying to get work. I would keep myself busy, but months and years would go by hoping for the proverbial phone to ring. There's nothing so deafening as the sound of an industry not interested in you.
But things changed and improved. I got better. Slowly at first, then faster over time. I remember my acting teacher saying, "Once you can do it in here, they (the industry) will notice -- but a year later." She was right. It took time, but people started hiring me.
I'm not famous. I don't have a TV show. I'm not on any list. But day to day, week to week, year to year, I like my life. I no longer feel like I'm aging.
All my life I've wanted to live in California and to live by the beach. It took a while, but once I set my mind to it, I found a great place two blocks from the beach that my dog and I go to several times a week.
Then one day, a few months after we moved in -- my landlord told me that he was selling and wanted to offer me first dibs. If I wanted it, he would knock ten thousand dollars off the planned listing price.
I panicked. I was quite happy renting. I was used to renting. To always keeping my options open. Besides, wouldn't it be fun to find a new place? A new neighborhood with new people, different restaurants, even the logistics of where I would get coffee or go grocery shopping held some degree of appeal.
But then I realized, I didn't want to leave. I love where I live. It's literally what I dreamed of when I was a kid and it's completely lived up to it. It's as if the universe said, "Ok, you're ready. Not only will your home be available to purchase, but we'll even give you a discount to do it."
I no longer felt that ennui that plagued me for so long. The problem was never the apartment, it was my life and now I liked my life.
Don't get me wrong. It was a reasonable price and the property is likely to retain its value. It's a smart investment. But what ultimately tipped the decision?
After fifteen moves in fifteen years, I not only didn't want to move again, I didn't need to move again.