Adios to Atlanta

Not too long ago, I was writing a post about my move from Seattle to Atlanta. While we were hoping to stay in Atlanta for several years, the old adage "life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans" proved true for us in this instance.

In mid-April, my husband’s company cancelled the project the Atlanta office was focused on. While the office hasn’t been completely closed, nearly all the staff was laid off. This included my husband.

So, he set about looking for a new job within the brief severance bridge. Ultimately, he ended up with three offers. One would allow us to stay in the home we just bought, though it would have been a bit of a pay cut and the company wasn’t quite the direction he wanted to go in. Another semi-local offer had the potential of allowing us to stay in our home, but there was also potential that the commute would have been too much and we would have to move eventually. This company was more in line with the type of work he was interested in, but the position wasn’t his ideal. The third option was a great balance of a company he’d love to work for and a role that really fit his career goals. However, it is located in Southern California.

He accepted to the last offer, and we are now in the process of making our cross country move.

In the space of a year, we’ll have moved from Seattle to Atlanta, purchased our first home, moved from Atlanta to SoCal, and sold our first home (hopefully – if it sells before the end of September, it will have been within a year of our purchase. I am really hoping it sells quickly).

This post is about Atlanta.

I found we settled into Atlanta life smoothly and easily. I had connected with a local Geek Girl group and made some friends that I was looking forward to get to know better. We purchased a beautiful home that had everything we needed, plus room to grow and change things here and there to really make it ours.

My favorite routine we established was attending monthly Cineprov events. Cineprov is a local movie riffing group very similar to MST3K, only they improv the Riffs rather than script them in advance. The first Thursday of every month, we would go to The Majestic Diner for dinner and then pop over to The Plaza Theater to have a good laugh.

We’ve also had the opportunity to take in several shows in Atlanta – two at The Tabernacle (Janelle Monae and Archer Live!) and two at The Fox Theater (Book of Mormon and Eddie Izzard’s Force Majeure).

In addition to the local events we enjoyed, I took advantage of being closer to my family. My father and brother visited me for Thanksgiving. My mother, step-father, brother and his girlfriend visited to celebrate Christmas in mid-December. My father visited again on my birthday in early February, and we visited my mother and step-father in Virginia in mid-April. I am so very happy that I didn’t wait to do host and visit thinking I would have had plenty of time, because it turned out that I didn’t. I feel like I really used the brief time I had being close to my family well and I am very thankful for it.

The one other trip I’m glad I didn’t wait to make was visiting The Biltmore in North Carolina. I have wanted to visit the Estate since I was in high school and either never had time, money, or was too far away for it to be convenient. We were less than a days drive while in Atlanta and made time between Christmas and New Year’s to finally see the lovely landmark.

I am grieving the need to leave our beautiful house and go back to a renting lifestyle (because buying property in SoCal is just… no). I am grieving the loss of the Majestic/Cineprov routine. I am grieving leaving the friends I made in Atlanta as well as those I could see becoming closer fiends over time. I am exhausted at the idea of moving cross country again, though at least this time we are downsizing and I have more energy thanks to some improvements in my health and medications.

As I write this, I am on a flight to SoCal for our house hunting trip. I am excited and nervous, but mostly eager to get to know the area that will be my new home.