[warning!  insanely gooey, personal stuff below.]

Change is a wave.  Do I surf it or take a deep breath and hope the undertow isn't lethal?

A week ago a layoff package arrived on my front doorstep.  It's a complex thing involving "voluntary" and "volunteer or else" type overtones.  Needless to say, I've "volunteered" to be layed off.  I chose to surf, I guess. 

After 12.5 years at the same job I can't say I'm sorry to be going.  After all, my resume is stuffed full of skills that were on the decline in 1993 when I took the darned job.  Dice.com says there are a total of 5 jobs open in the entire country for which my basic skillset is desired.  Why did I wait this long?!  Inertia?  I dunno.

Woohoo!  (oh, sorry, meant to keep that bit in.)

The upside is I get to revitalize my career and start a new adventure.  The downside is we will most likely have to relocate to a place where my skills can land me a good-paying job. 

Tampa Bay is a great place to live if your income comes from out of state.  Retirees, the wealthy, and telcommuters love it here.  But the wages are roughly 50% of what they'd be in other states for similar work.  This is marketed here as "Sun Pay".  Working on the local enconomy is gonna give me sun stroke.  So we'll be selling our wonderful, large, historic home with the pool and jungle landscaping for, well, whatever comes next.  Most likely this will be a very small, hugely expensive, fixer-upper in the Western US (San Diego lists high with both tech jobs (me) and medical jobs (Troy)).

Now San Diego is close to family in Central California and Las Vegas, plus friends in LA.  It boasts a decent gay community and is blessed with great weather and arts.  Nevermind the beaches, which I think are some of the best in the U.S.  It is also one of the more conservative cities in California and has had a lot of trouble with political corruption on the city and county level.  And then there's the traffic, which Troy thinks will be better than here.  That'll be an interesting thing to get his opinion on later.

What we leave behind is a Red state with terrible records on education and diversity.  The closer you get to the Northern border with Georgia the worse the racism gets, but even here in Tampa we see lots of unapologetic, public racism.  Culturally, religion is central in the South with most community activities taking place in churches--even secular activities like, say, voting.  Yup.  That's right.  I vote in a United Methodist church.  For those that don't track these things, the methodists are anti-gay as a national organization.  They're hip-deep in the whole "gay reparative therapy" thing.  So I go to vote in a building who's members, local and national, are quite seriously out to get me and change me. 

We also leave behind a neighborhood that's become my own local family.  Friends of all stripes that make leaving here quite painful.  Most people don't know their neighbors very well or at all.  They might be able to recite how many children the family across the street has or pick out cars that don't belong.  I've not only met ny neighbors, I've met their parents and had them all over for dinner at least once.  They have my house key and my truck key and are comfortable comming into my home when I'm away to borrow whatever they need.  (How many readers just gasped or cringed there?)  There is that much trust among us.  And I'm not just talking about someone next door, I'm talking about 8 households that I'm very close to and another 15 households I consider friends.  It feels like I'm leaving home again for the first time. 

I just don't see finding that degree of closeness with my neighbors anywhere but here. I know that is the real price to moving forward with my career.  I can take a low-paying job and keep the friends or I have to move and forever change the nature of our friendship with little hope of finding that same closeness in a new place.