And the winner is...

So, first of all, let me say that I’m very, VERY thankful for all of the advice that I have received over the past two weeks. There has been a lot of very valid arguments for each of the options that we have considered taking, and you have no idea the amount of mental anguish that we have been in every single day. For me at least, my mind was completely made up that we should be doing each of the three options multiple times. And much like the Oregon weather, if you just waited 15 minutes, it changed again. There were very good, solid reasons that we should be making each choice, and even now, I have no idea if the choice we have made is the correct one. I will spend most of this blog explaining my (our) thought process, and apologize to those of you who made impassioned arguments for one of the other options.

But in the end, we have decided that, in the winter, this is very tough, in the winter, we’re not going to take our talents to Salt Lake, we’re going to remain in Eugene.

So, those of you just popping over to this blog to get the answer, and not any of the reasoning behind it, you can get on with your day now. For the rest of you…

The single biggest reason we aren’t going to move is because we simply love Eugene too much. This is where our heart is, and neither of us wants to leave. There were numerous people who made the argument that we should go, and if we don’t like it, just move back. The problem is that moving would cripple us financially, and to then turn around and try to move back somewhere that we’re already struggling financially would be impossible. While I would have the house to move back to (I never would have sold the house, I would have rented it—presumably), I still wouldn’t have a job, Sara still wouldn’t be making that much, and the move to Utah would have cost us about $6K in up-front costs, which is quite a bit more than I have in savings. I probably would have had to raid my retirement fund just to get us out there, and raiding it again to get us back seems rather pointless. So, we knew, that if we left Eugene now, most likely, we’d never be coming back. Advancement in TSA wouldn’t allow me to move back to Eugene. Perhaps Portland, but almost never Eugene. So, with no financial way back to Eugene if we hated Utah and/or I hated TSA, and no way to transfer or advance my way back to Eugene if I did love TSA (which I truly believe that I would), we understood that leaving meant LEAVING. More than anything else, this was the determining factor.

The biggest reason we almost left of course, was TSA, and the long-term stability and benefits that it would provide. This was huge, and for all of you who argued for this position, I agree with almost everything that you had to say. I might never get an opportunity like this again. I might be burning a bridge to any future government work. I will probably never see a benefit package like that, and almost certainly won’t see one in Eugene. And long-term, it would probably be more money than anything else I could possibly do.

The problem with TSA is two-fold. First, I’m only going to get 20 hours a week for the foreseeable future (I talked at length with the Utah people, and she said that picking up hours is very difficult in any time other than holidays, and that full-time employment has a long-list of people waiting for it—and it’s seniority based). Now, I could have transferred to other airports where that might not be the case, but we also have no desire to live a nomadic life. Anyone who knows me at all knows that I crave stability, and the allure of “treating it like an adventure” really doesn’t hold a lot of sway with me. The second part of the problem is that TSA is not, despite what it might seem like, my dream job. I don’t have a dream job. I am very much a work to live person, not a live to work person, and as long as I can find something that pays enough to cover my bills and thrills, gives me some semblance of reliable health care, and is a job that I don’t actively hate (i.e. Royal Caribbean), then I’m going to be happy there. But other than WSOP Main Event Champion, and/or professional lottery winner, I really don’t have a dream job. TSA would have been a career, it would have been something that I was very, very good at, and it would have given me stability and peace of mind. All of those are powerful and valid arguments. But for those of you who argued that this was something that I’ve “wanted for so long”, etc., you’re right only in the fact that TSA is so damn unorganized that it took them two years to get around to denying me the Eugene gig and forcing me into this conundrum in the first place. Had I just been hired at the Eugene airport, all of this would have been a moot point, as it’s a great job if I don’t have to leave the area.

Poker played a pretty major role in the decision as well, from both financial and social aspects. I went back four years in my poker income, which allowed me to include both the highs (the second half of 2010 and all of 2011) and the lows (all of 2008, and the first half of 2009). Averaging it all out, between AIPCO and my home game, I’ve averaged about $450 a month playing poker. That income would be lost entirely if we moved to Utah, and diminished if we moved to Portland. Poker has kept me solvent for the past two years, and while good runs like this don’t last forever, for the time being, it’s not something I can afford to give up.

As much as the financial impact of poker played a part, the social aspect of it did as well, for a lot of different reasons. First of all, poker is my biggest social outlet. Both the games I run at my house, and the AIPCO tournaments, are some of my most enjoyable times. The people that play at my house every week are like family to me. They are some of my closest friends, and giving them up would be very difficult. Poker has also given me an outlet for my writing, which I’m able to do every month for AIPCO. I’m even looking into creating a blog and possibly even a podcast dedicated strictly to poker, and my thoughts, strategy, etc. And for the most part, all of that would have gone away if we had moved to Utah. Portland would have been able to give me some of it, but not all, and I’m a greedy bastard who wants it all. ;)

Another thing that came down in Eugene’s favor was the current rental market in Eugene. At one point we had a couple of different options for friends possibly renting my house here. But when both of those fell through, we had to start looking at what was going to be needed in order to rent the house here. There were going to be some ample up front costs in getting the house ready to be rented (more money out of retirement), and then the rental market here is currently fairly brutal. I would not have been able to ask much more than my mortgage, which means I’d have almost no safety cushion as far as repairs, etc. And I have friends that own rental property here that they had to sit on for 4-6 months without a tenant, and I don’t have that kind of money. It would also have been much more difficult to deal with any problems that arose from 1000 miles away. I would have had to use a property management group, which would have cost more money, and with the financial problems already stacking up as far as living in SLC, it was just one more negative aspect for leaving.

One of the other things that played a part was finding Sara a job. It seems that people just don’t own pets in SLC, as there are virtually no jobs for vet techs there. We were going to need her to have a job lined up before we could move out there, and that was proving very difficult. My income alone would most likely not have allowed us to qualify for much as far as rentals go, and without her securing a job, we weren’t going to be able to line up suitable housing. (Keeping in mind that we have 7 pets, so we need enough space to handle that, as well as someplace willing to accept dogs, cats and reptiles). We already knew that it was going to be difficult for Sara to do much of anything other than fall back on the vet tech field in the beginning. Changing careers, which is her long-term goal, was going to have be put on the back burner. But I went through and figured out a realistic budget for us if we made the move, and she was going to have to be making about $14-15 an hour at a full time job in order for us to survive the first year or two, and we just weren’t finding anything even remotely close. Now, we could have just gambled that she’d find something, and moved anyway, but that’s a pretty big gamble right now, and wasn’t one that we wanted to take.

Some of the smaller things that played a part in making the decision one way or the other:

The weather. Sara was okay with that level of snow, I most definitely wasn’t. I also wasn’t relishing the 100 degree summers. Basically, my two favorite seasons are fall and spring, and those are the two that are the shortest in Utah.

The kink factor (feel free to skip this paragraph, mom). We are so well established in that community here, with public performance venues that we have access to, a solid base of friends and play partners here, and no need to feel as though we have to hide that aspect from our friends. I’m also looking into making some fetish furniture in coming months/years, and possibly getting into working with leather, etc., to make some extra money. That would be much easier to do with a network of friends already established within the community, and an ability to market it without being “underground”.

Our overall budget: Once all things were figured in, both costs and income, Eugene was the cheapest place to live, at least in the short term.

I do actually have a part-time job lined up with Lane County. It’s what’s called a 520 position, so it’ll only average about 10 hours a week, and there’s no benefits to start. But, it pays fairly well per hour, and it’s a foot in the door at the county. Hopefully I will be able to either progress or laterally transfer easier this way. But it is at least something here, and when added into all of the other things, just helped make the cost of staying a little less, and the cost of leaving a little more.

Other community and/or social ties: Babe Ruth baseball, my bowling league, etc. These are things that I would have been able to establish anywhere, but they’re already established here, and therefore it gives an ever so slight advantage to here.

The cheesecake business, which doesn’t pay REALLY well, but does pay enough to need to be factored in. This is also on our list of things that Sara and I made to come up with other ideas to make more money. I will hopefully expand the cheesecake business some in the next year.



So, there you have it. It was not easy, and I won’t know for years if we’ve truly made the right choice. But we’re following our hearts, and whatever the outcome down the road, I’m going to be okay with this choice for that reason alone. It’s funny, but when we first thought about Portland, that seemed to be the logical choice because it had so many of the positives that both EUG and SLC offered, but in the end, the fact that it had the negatives of both places ended up dooming it rather quickly. We realized that it really was boiling down to a choice between Eugene and Salt Lake, and in the end, the arguments for Eugene were just ever so slightly ahead of those for Salt Lake. That being said, I’m still applying for the occasional management level job in Portland, and if the right combination of pay and benefits is offered to me there, we wouldn’t have much difficulty in moving there.

Thank you all, again, for your thoughts in this process. For those who thought SLC was the better choice, you might very well have been correct, and all the reasons you pointed out were solid ones. They just weren’t the right ones for us.

I love you all, and am so happy to have you in my life.