Category Archives: Urbanite

May 13 Comments comments
Entrepreneur, Goal-Setter, Urbanite

A Tale of Two Cities: Working and Living 150 Miles Apart

Hi! Welcome to Twenty Set. Here you will find 4-5 insightful new articles each week about personal and professional development. I write candidly from personal experience.

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As many of you know, I live/work in Madison, WI now. Sort of. Because I actually live/attend school in Chicago. Sort of. Confused yet?

Here’s the update on my new job:

It’s going great, except when I’m not working.

When I accepted the job at Brazen Careerist, my only stipulation was that I didn’t have to move. I have nothing against Madison; in fact, I enjoy the charm of the downtown area. But I have a life in Chicago that I love, and obligations in Chicago which I can’t leave.

So we decided I could commute to Madison two or three days a week. Which turned into five, I think. And to be honest, the whole commuting thing is not going so well.

Here’s my dilemma:

The difficult part about doing the job you want is you also want to be present for it. So I want to be in Madison, working in my little office, just about every day.

But not actually. Because Chicago is my home, and it’s where my heart is. It’s where my family is. It’s where my wonderful friends are. It’s where the skyscrapers that inspire me and captivate me are. So whenever I’m in Madison, I want to be in Chicago.

Chicago. Madison. Chicago. Madison?

It’s tough having two lives that pull you in different directions, and for awhile I really thought I could reject my time in Madison as “my life.” Instead, I would come here on vacation every week, sort of like a summer home. And I didn’t need a ton of friends in Madison, because I already have a lot of friends in Chicago. And I didn’t need a real place to stay and call my own in Madison, because I already own a condo in Chicago.

Here’s the lesson learned:

I was delusional to think commuting would be easy. Yeah, really. Delusional. And everyone tried to tell me this before I took the job, but I decided not to listen.

So here’s the one thing you need to consider when starting a job in a city you don’t live in: how much you love the job. Because trust me, if you don’t really love your job, you are not going to make it.

But for what it’s worth, I’m happy I didn’t listen to the naysayers. Because if I had thought this job opportunity through a little better I would have gotten too scared to do it. And that would have been stupid.

So here’s to the bright side of my double life: I have great coworkers. I’m doing something I love. I get to spend the summer in the beautiful state of Wisconsin. I get to buy all the clothes on the sales rack at Madison’s Urban Outfitters and wear them in Chicago where they would be double the price. My parents and husband are excited for me, and supportive of my career path. The Capitol is pretty when it’s lit up at night.

And I live in Madison. And I live in Chicago. Sort of.

Popularity: 26% [?]

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Mar 30 Comments comments
Urbanite

Because Where You Live Matters

I have a confession: last summer I fell in love with a city.

I love Chicago.  I’ve lived many different places, but none have ever taken hold of me the way Chicago has.  I love jogging down the lake shoreline on hot July mornings, watching the crowds gather on the sandy beach.  I love walking through my neighborhood right after a snowfall and soaking in the crisp white, the dead beauty of the silence.  I love taking public transportation, eating out at local restaurants, and watching professional sports.  Chicago has captured my heart, and I can’t see myself leaving here anytime soon.

This poses a question we all have on our minds: should you choose a place to live and then find a job, or should you find your dream career and move to wherever it takes you?

I’m still not sure what my answer is.  I feel my personality type thrives best in a large city, so a move to NYC or San Fran wouldn’t be a huge stretch for me.  But moving back to St. Louis would require a pretty damn good offer.  Luckily, a large city means a ton of opportunity, so it’s difficult to imagine not being able to maintain a job I love right here.

How do you choose?  Is where you live more important than what you do?  Or the other way around?

Summary of answers:

It turns out when I wrote this I oversimplified the question.  From the responses, people have a lot of different reasons for choosing a place to live.  Here are some of the most interesting points:

1.  Jaclyn points out where you went to school matters - this is probably true for most people.  Not only are you going to stay close to where you went to undergrad (if not moving back to where your family is), but the school’s name recognition and reputation only stretches so far.

I went to a liberal arts school that was billed as “The Harvard of the Midwest,” when really the school’s name is only recognizable in St. Louis and other parts of Missouri where it’s located.  Moving outside of that bubble to Chicago was a huge pain because I always have to explain where my alma mater is located.

An option is to go to a nationally recognizable school, which is what I insisted on for my grad school education.  But I’ve found that the majority of grads are still concentrated in Chicago (I go to University of Chicago).  So even if you go to a large state school that has national name recognition, the reputation of your program might not carry if you move too far away.

2.  Networking is key - A few people mentioned they don’t want to move because they’ve built a professional (or personal) network in a certain city.  Building a network is difficult and it’s also tough to find friends and get a steady social life after moving.  If your job revolves around the strength of your network, it might not be a good idea to move.

At the same time, you can sometimes expand your network by moving, as long as you can maintain relationships at your old place of residence.

3.  Cost of living - an obvious but important factor.  You have to strike a balance between finding a job that pays well enough to live in the city of your choosing.  You also have to consider whether the type of job you want is available in your city of choice, and that can affect whether you settle there or not.

4.  Partner or spouse - things get more complicated when you have two people to please with both preference and career.  My husband and I went through this before we finally settled on Chicago, which has a school for his profession (and ample opportunity afterwards) and also has a ton of technology businesses for me.

Thanks to everyone for the comments - there was some great discussion on these questions.  Feel free to keep the conversation going by leaving your own thoughts!

Popularity: 20% [?]

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Mar 03 Comments comments
Careerist, Learner, Urbanite

How Gaming Has Become the Newest Trend in HR Recruiting, and Life

Over the past few months, I’ve become a gamer.  I didn’t seek out gaming, but it has infiltrated my life so subtly that I’m convinced it is going to be one of the hottest trends in companies, homes, and even on my daily commute over the upcoming years, thanks to companies like Nintendo who are targeting the mainstream, casual gamer and providing incentives for smart people to adopt the technology.

At the end of fourth quarter, my company turned one of our conference rooms into a game room, stocked with a 52-inch LCD flat panel and a Nintendo Wii plus games.  I can’t prove it, but my theory is that this is one of the best things the HR department can do for a company.  It makes sense: gaming promotes teamwork and relieves stress through laughter and work breaks, which increases productivity and engagement, which increases the bottom line and employee retention rates.

Of course, putting a game room in won’t work at every company - actually, it will work at very few companies judging from the feedback I’ve received from people at other companies.  My company has a younger, laid-back workforce where nobody glares at their coworkers for leaving their desks to play an energized match of Wii Tennis.  Where the managers cheer us on as we rock out on Guitar Hero.  If it weren’t for the company culture, the game room would sit empty and be a huge waste of money.

So it seems that the first step is getting a company and its employees to buy into mainstream pop culture in the workplace, which is happening already with Web 2.0.  I think many companies will get there eventually… or not be able to recruit Generation Y, one of the two.

The gaming benefits don’t end at the workplace.  In fact, my husband and I recently bought a Nintendo Wii for our home, after I took him to Best Buy four times to play for free.  He finally caved, and now our Nintendo Wii is just about the only thing we can agree on, aside from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  On a serious note, Nintendo Wii brings families together.  It works in the workplace to span generational differences, and it will work at home too.

The final benefit of gaming is that companies are finally coming out with games that aid in personal development, which is what Twenty Set is all about.  Nintendo found me through Twenty Set a few weeks ago, and after a few meetings decided I’m a huge fan of Nintendo (I am, they are marketing geniuses).  So they sent me a pink pocket-sized Nintendo DS Lite in the cutest BCBG Maxazria bag I’ve ever seen.  The irony of the pink case is my husband, who isn’t sold on the benefits of my blogging career anyway, can’t steal my Nintendo DS Lite for his own use.  Points to Nintendo for that one.

The system also came with two games, Mario Kart (my favorite childhood game from Super Nintendo) and another called Brain Age.  I first read about brain neuroscience in the December issue of Vogue - the idea is that as we get older, our brain gets accustomed to using the same neuropaths to disseminate information.  (Maybe that’s why older generations seem so stuck in their ways to us twentysomethings.)  It turns out the best time to start combating this brain aging effect is in your twenties, and games like Brain Age make it easy, fast, and fun to re-train your mind (read more here).

The Nintendo DS Lite is perfect for urbanites interested in personal development on the go; who commute to work and want to spend those 20-30 minutes productively.  In other words, me.  And Brain Age is a much more productive use of my time than Brick Breaker on my Blackberry.

By the way, I’m helping host a party for the Nintendo DS Lite, and you are invited, as long as you are a female between the ages of 25ish and 40ish (I’m 24, so there is leeway) and you want to come to Chicago the weekend of April 11th-13th.  Email me if you’re interested: m at twentyset dot com.

Popularity: 18% [?]

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Feb 27 Comments comments
Activist, Urbanite

How I Accidentally Became an Environmentalist

Image Source: Jerry Law

There is some debate about the best way to help the environment, but it all boils down to two schools of thought. There are people who think that since they recycle or do street cleans with their church they are environmentalists. For them, it’s all about the little things we each can do to lessen our impact.

Then there are people who believe that large lifestyle changes are the only way to help the environment. For example, protesting the whole meat manufacturing industry, or minimizing the impact of your commute to work. This is where I fall.

So how did I accidentally become an environmentalist? I moved to Chicago. Yes, it was really that simple.

Moving to a large city enabled me to get rid of my car.

When I first moved to the city, I worked an hour away in the suburbs and drove over 60 miles one way every weekday. Not only did this commute take up about 3 hours of my day, but the additional pollution I was causing nawed at my conscience and I eventually realized I needed to change jobs.

Now, I work and attend school within four miles of my condo, and with the price of parking and gas in the city, it’s much more cost-efficient to take public transportation or walk/jog/bike everywhere. So we got rid of one of our cars and when I need to go more than a mile or two I take public trains and buses. While I miss driving, my daily routine is much more efficient because I can do something productive on my commute (like write this post).

Moving to a large city enabled me to become a vegetarian.

Becoming a vegetarian is not easy for most people, especially people who are very busy. Any new diet comes with a learning curve of how to substitute and prepare new foods, which busy people don’t have time for. Another concern I had was how becoming vegetarian would affect my social life. When I lived in rural Missouri, fine dining was Americanized-Mexican and dollar margaritas, and trips to fast food establishments happened every other day.

Living in the city provides a support system that addressed all my concerns. Since moving here, I’ve met so many people with special dietary needs. Like my vegan marketing professor who assigned a three page case write-up about cruelty to hens in poultry egg production. Or the guy on my team who only eats kosher meat. Also, while there is an unending supply of restaurants to eat at in the city, few of them are fast food establishments. It is fairly easy to find vegetarian food anywhere I go, and the impact of this new diet on my social life is negligent.

Moving to a large city enabled me to stop buying stuff.

Our tiny condo was more expensive than my parents’ mid-sized suburban home, but the benefit is that we can’t fit much stuff in it. We’ve been forced to get rid of things, which has been good for my closet. This also forces us to think about whether we truly need an item or not, and we’ve made a rule to get rid of two items for every one item we bring home (which my husband happily reminds me of every time I go shopping). Our lack of space has been a blessing, and we are slowly but surely embracing a simplistic, minimalist lifestyle.

Moving to a large city can help the environment? I know it seems counter-intuitive to some people, but this is my story. It’s certainly not the only way, and I don’t claim to have gotten here completely consciously - the title does say “accidentally” after all. Still, I can’t help but notice how many more tree-huggers there are in the city compared to the suburbs, and the three things I listed above give the most impact to help the environment.

Becoming an environmentalist is a way of life, not a once-monthly chance to wear a t-shirt that says “Support Organic Farmers.” Have you considered how your life choices are impacting our world?

Popularity: 16% [?]

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