Moving Moving Moving

Moving always has and always will be a huge pain overall. Packing boxes, sorting things, carrying furniture up and down stairs, it’s all just very unpleasant. It doesn’t mean every aspect of the process is negative, though. I’ve moved a number of times over the past few years for school and work—longer moves being Illinois to California to Milwaukee to DC to Boston to San Francisco.

I really enjoyed my nearly three years in Boston. It’s a great city with a lot of character. I made a ton of friends there, and I look forward to going back there to visit sometime once it gets warmer. I definitely wouldn’t be opposed to head back there eventually, but I’ll probably wait for the snow nightmares of this past winter to fade.

It may seem a bit counterintuitive, but I actually like longer inter-region relocations more than more local intra-city transitions. I love the endless open possibilities of moving to a different scene. There are new friends to be made, old friends to reunite with, and exciting experiences to be had with both. While big transitions can be challenging and stressful at times, learning to adapt is part of the fun.

I admit that I sometimes have hoarder-like impulses. I think I keep too much stuff for sentimental reasons, but it may also be partially because of my imagination. I see a lot of possibilities for the stuff that I have, which enables me to come up with excuses to keep things. While I have actually used some stuff I collect this way, more often than not, I just end up with a lot of random junk piling up. I’ve found that a side benefit to moving for me is that it forces me to focus on determining what is important and donate/trash/recycle unnecessary stuff.

For my latest move, I really lucked out in terms of housing. George just happened to be looking for a roommate around the time I was trying to get to SF, and his condo just happened to be in a really convenient place for me in terms of my commute. With most of my longer moves, I’ve had the added benefit of working with corporate relocation, which makes things go a lot smoother.

Kudos to the following companies that have made my move more pleasant:
Jetblue – The flights have lots of legroom, decent snacks, drinks, and board in a logical manner (back to front). It saddens me to know that the company is going to start trying to squeeze out more profit at the expense of the customer :(.
Virgin America – I haven’t ever really had a bad experience flying Virgin. They’re simply one of the best airlines for flying long haul.
Allied Moving Services – I think this is the 3rd time I’ve had stuff boxed and shipped by them. It has been pretty painless every time.
SIRVA Move Management – This is the main relocation company that Amgen hired for me. They fussed over all the details of the move by contacting and coordinating things with different movers and carriers. Pretty much all I had to do was figure out where I was going to be and when I wanted to be there, and SIRVA helped make it work.

Boos to the following organizations which give moving the bad rap it normally has:
United Airlines – I have never seen an airline be more Nazi-ish with their carryon bag policy. They had people pulled out of the security line at their terminal at SFO to try and stuff their bags into their tiny little crates if their bags looked borderline large. They had another check right at the gate that the check-in guy used quite liberally. They have decreased the size of the carryons they allow so all it does is make people jam their bags into the fixture with all their force. I’ve noticed that this severe decrease in fuel price hasn’t affected the existence of a ‘fuel surcharge’ on plane tickets. Ugh.
TSA – One of my flights “randomly” got selected to do “random” security checks on one of my flights. At the gate, we needed to pull out our ID’s again for an additional check and some people were subjected to bag searches. I’m sure the fact that the flight had quite a few Muslims on board had nothing at all to do with this. /s
Taxis – The prices coming out of Logan are totally absurd. I had racked up charges of $17 before we even made it out of the terminal. Good thing I got to expense the trip.
Comcast – This demon-spawn of a company unsurprisingly made it a nightmare to try and cancel my service. Just thinking about the situation starts to make my blood boil, so I’m just gonna skip it. All of the hate they get is totally warranted though.

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