And now to Miller Town

[Jesse]

It was only five months ago that I'd written about the good and the bad about adapting to life in Madison, and now I'm preparing to move off to Milwaukee. It's almost hilarious to think that I was expressing concern over the size of Madison -- a city of 500 thousand people -- and now I'm moving into a city with almost 2 million, yet somehow I'm not concerned.

Sure, Milwaukee is notorious for its crime rates. And yeah, the traffic is insane and the commute to the UWM campus will be as much as an hour each way. But at the same time, it's a brand new slate with brand new opportunities -- a sort of cleansing from the disappointment I've found here in Madison.

Now, Madison is a great place, mind you. There're plenty of neat little niche stores to explore, lots of very unique and interesting sights to see, a great downtown area, and the people have been almost absurdly friendly. When I call Madison a disappointment, I mean no disrespect to the city or its people. Somehow or another, though, we've had pathetically abysmal luck ever since moving here.

It started with a frustrating job market. My wife is an experienced CNA -- Certified Nursing Assistant -- and has rarely had trouble finding a job... until Madison. And myself... while I consider myself a fairly skilled web developer and an adequately competent writer, neither of those traits stand for shit in the work force without a degree to back them. As far as potential employers are concerned, I might as well have spent the last few years playing computer games in my parents' basement.

Then there was difficulty finding childcare. The places within our affordability range were dubious, and the places that looked perfect were too expensive. Perhaps we're just spoiled by the quality and affordability of care in Wausau and Stevens Point, but we just couldn't find a place we felt comfortable leaving our kids. Moreover, the cost of daycare -- even the cheaper ones -- was actually higher than the level of income that either of us could bring in. Which means that if we both worked full-time jobs, we'd actually be worse off financially than if one of us stayed home with the kids. How's that for a social statement?

And then there was the college. It's a bit of a long story, so I'll summarize by saying that we'd discovered too late that Madison requires 2 semesters of Foreign Language -- semesters of which my wife and I do not have. Our options, then, were to either flounder around at the Community College for a year or to pack up and move to Milwaukee. We've chosen the latter, obviously.

With all of this put together, it's really no surprise that college freshmen have one of the nation's highest suicide rates. This has been an incredibly stressful period for my wife and I -- and it's only compounded by the fact that we're in a strange town with no friends or family in a 150-mile radius. If we didn't have each other for support, my wife and I would have certainly collapsed by now.

And so, we're off to Milwaukee. Sure, it's mostly the "greener pastures" effect that's making us so excited, and we'll likely discover all of its flaws after we've settled in. But for now, it's giving us hope and excitement -- two things of which have been in short supply here in Madison.