On Leaving Silicon Valley

6FPS V3#3 - Photography and More
A Newsletter by Chuq Von Rospach
March 8, 2021

Welcome to the new issue of 6FPS.

This last month has seen a bunch of things that have been slow-moving, long-term projects, all seemingly happening at once. The most notable is that I am in escrow to sell the house I own in Southern California.

This is a house I inherited from my mom when she passed. It is rented to a wonderful family, and they are long term tenants -- well over 20 years. The house was my grandfather's, and happens to be next door to the family house I grew up in and which mom lived in until her last day. As mom's health and mobility declined, these tenants were friends, were a lifeline to mom, took on an ad hoc role as caretaker and watched to make sure she was okay, and just generally did stuff way above and beyond the call. So when I took over ownership of the house, I sat down with them to map out what they wanted and how I could try to make that happen. And yes, they wanted to buy the house and stay there permanently.

We have been working to make that happen since. It's the primary reason I still have the house down there, since I didn't want to sell to anyone else or force them to move unless their buying it proved impossible. I have no interest in maintaining a property down there -- it is, literally, the last tie I have to the southern state I was born and grew up in, since my sister also passed away a couple of years ago.

We thought we had this ready to go for the middle of last year -- and then Covid. Of course. So we just slowed things down and let things continue. And in the middle of January, I got the text letting me know their loan had been pre-approved. I quickly sat down with their real estate person (and hired her to represent me as well); it took us about 20 minutes to agree on a price, contracts were signed, escrow was opened, and I have writer's cramp.

But unless something unexpected crops up (and my god, even the title insurance people seem almost satisfied with things -- I did have to sign a notarized document affirming that my claim that the house had no loans and was free and clear was, in fact, correct), around March 24 they will own the house and I will have a small bundle of money I can put into savings until I need it for something else.

That something else will be a new home up in Washington, and so 2021 will now be dominated by the logistics of moving there. We will have the luxury of not needing to rush out of our place here in Silicon Valley, so we can be thoughtful about finding the new place and then migrating us, our stuff, and the animals, and then handing over this house to get it cleaned up and updated for sale and sold.

I'm talking about the why of the move later in this issue, and I expect it'll be a topic of discussion for a while. Right now my focus is on finalizing that sale. The PODs unit I mentioned last issue has been filling up and should be ready to head off to storage this week. It's main advantage is I can fill it with stuff we won't need access to until post-move, and arrange to have it delivered to the new home when needed. Having that stuff in a storage locker would have required hiring people to pull it all out, pack it up and move it with the rest of the house, and so this simplifies that move a bit.

Where will we be settling in? Our primary location is in and around Poulsbo on the Kitsap Peninsula, although the greater region, which extends out to about Port Ludlow and up to Kingston and Susquamish, is on the radar. We've ruled out Silverdale and Bremerton, since we want something not quite so populous, but we're not going as rural as my mom's old house up in Paradise Bay was back in the day.

What's kind of amazing is just how housing prices differ from region to region. Without getting too specific, the house in SoCal will be selling for more than $350 a square foot. The houses we're targeting in Washington seem to be running in the $225-300 a square foot range. And this house we're sitting in in Silicon Valley? I think $900 a square foot is likely, possibly more.

Yeah. That's Silicon Valley today, but we're at a point, unless something crashes badly in the next few months, to take advantage of it. Is this a bubble that may burst? Yes, but then, people have been saying that for 15+ years and it never really has. I think where we are is pretty insulated from all but the worst contractions -- to be honest, I'm more worried about earthquakes.

But my belief is we can have the house up there bought and have us moved in by September, with our house here sold by the end of the year.

it's going to be chaotic, but I think a really nice improvement for us as we move into this next phase in my life.

I will note I am astounded by how much stuff you can accumulate living in a house for over 20 years -- we moved into this place in 1994 and bought it off the estate in 1997. It makes me wonder if people should be forced to move every five years just to make that decluttering happen. Having just spent a week figuring out how to sell off the settings of China my mom insisted we had to have, the de-cluttering aspect of this move is front and center in the brain right now (see Solving the China Problem for that one).

On photographic things...

I basically haven't touched a camera in the last month. No time. Annoying in one way, but I've been using my time where I take a break to go and bird without a camera, because I really needed to just unplug and relax and recharge. Self care continues to be important, too.

Which reminded me that I took a week off for self-care in December, only to have the vertigo episode hit and eat it all, so I never really got any R&R out of the week. So I have talked to my boss, and since I'm just winding up a big project that has eaten my brain at work, I'll be scheduling that week off again where I can unplug from work and hopefully not have the room spend the week spinning around my head.

And with that, on with the show!

What's New from Chuq?

It was not a great month for new public writing. Will try to do better next month....

On Leaving Silicon Valley

I moved to Silicon Valley and took my first job in high tech in 1982, with my first wife. We settled in Newark, and my first job was with a startup that justifiably no longer exists. That was 39 years ago, so I've lived in Silicon Valley far longer than I lived in Southern California where I grew up. Along the way my first wife and I parted ways about as amicably as those things ever happen, I met Laurie, she joined me here, we married and bought a house here in Santa Clara. We've lived in this place since 1994, and we bought it off the estate in 1997, so I have also lived in this house longer than I lived in Southern California.

These are dates I think we don't ponder often, but in the last month, the life goals for Laurie and myself have shifted from "if things work out right, we may move north this year" to "oh my god it's happening".

That's had me doing a lot of thinks, both thinking forward into what this means and how we'll accomplish it, but also back. The project to get everything into the PODs for storage pending the move has me digging into boxes we haven't touched in over a decade, and some of them, like finding the boxes of china my mom gave us, have stirred up memories and emotions.

It's also got me looking at things I take for granted here -- in a few months I won't have any of my favorite restaurants (although to be honest, thanks to Covid, there are many I've been unable to visit at all and some that are no longer there). I don't even know if I'll be able to have a last meal with a couple, but that's out of my control.

Laurie and I have been talking about this, on and off, for a few years. It got more serious after my mom passed away because the house I inherited down there was a useful asset; I have no real ties or interest to SoCal any more, and while selling it would annoy my mom, flipping it into a house elsewhere that we wanted to relocate to was an obvious plan, whether we bought it and rented it for a while until retirement or moved right away.

Since my day job is 100% remote, it's irrelevant where I live. That makes the decision to move easier, since I don't have to compromise on location as long as where I am has good, fast internet.

But the phrase "leaving Silicon Valley" is nuanced. We like it here. We're comfortable here. We've talked seriously about this being our retirement place. I am not so much trying to leave Silicon Valley as I am starting the next phase in whatever I am. To be clear, I could happily stay here the rest of my life.

But I have always loved the Pacific Northwest. My family owned a house/cabin in the area we're looking to move to, so we have familiarity with it. It creates opportunities -- I love the idea of being a day trip distance from Victoria. I'll be a day trip distance from much of Olympic National Park. The area is near the water, with any luck the house will have a water view (it's on the "nice to have" list). I might buy that boat I've occasionally pondered. then again, I might not.

The water aspect is important for me. I find being near water is restorative. It's where I recharge my batteries quickly. That's one reason I love birding in this area, we have so many open spaces that are along the bay and estuaries -- but it's something mostly missing in the county otherwise. I can drive out to the coast near Half Moon Bay (but... Covid), but still, living closer is a strong attractor.

It gives us an opportunity to move into a larger house for less money; hopefully with a larger yard, hopefully with more green, and do so in a less urban environment. For me, at this point in my life, all of those things are strong attractors.

What is the attraction here? It's complicated, but some key points: less urban; poulsbo is a smaller town but still big enough to have the infrastructure we want. It's in a water environment; Poulsbo is on Liberty Bay, part of the greater Puget Sound area, and has marinas you can moor boats in. The greater area is strongly influenced by the Sound, and is a ferry ride away from downtown Seattle.

It's an opportunity to acquire or create a yard that is less manicured and a better bird and critter habitat. It's maybe an opportunity to set up a feeder setup and blind for my bird photography (or maybe not, we'll see).

It will be an entirely new universe to explore with the camera. I have to admit, I don't find Silicon Valley photogenic in any way compatible with the kind of photography I like doing, other than my bird photography -- and I've tried a number of ways to try to convince myself to like shooting close to home, where it's intimate landscape or shifting to street to.... none of that really worked. It all felt like school project assignments, not fun.

I won't miss the traffic. God, I won't miss the traffic. I will miss the people, the relationships I've built here. I've started unwinding myself from the volunteer commitments, and I'll miss that as well, but I feel good that I'm leaving these organizations in better shape than when I arrived. Will I start up those things again in the new place? I dunno -- but I do believe i need to spend time learning my new home area before I try to start teaching it to others.

For me, I see it as putting myself in a slower paced, more comfortable situation for the next phase of life. I'm not retiring, I have no intention of doing so any time soon but I have found myself sometimes frustrated at being tied into too many things and unable to do some of them well (or at all), and while I've slowly unwound some of that, this gives me kind of a fresh start. With any luck at all, it'll be the last move I make, but who knows what the future lays out for us? I sure don't.

Will I miss Silicon Valley? yes -- and no. Much of what defines it for me these days is virtual anyway. And the parts that aren't have plusses, like my work with Audubon and the ability to visit and bird the many green and open spaces we've protected in the region. but there are also minus, such as the cost of living here. And the traffic. God, the traffic. I won't miss that.

So the current "plan", as I laughingly call it, suggests we should have the house up north bought and be moved into it by September. Once we get moved out down here in Silicon Valley, I can hand this house over to a real estate agent who brings in a contractor to update the house and make it "move in ready", of which there are some areas that are going to need a bit of work (like the bathrooms and kitchen, bits we haven't gotten to the remodel projects on yet). Then they sell it, and we put the money away for a rainy day. Of which, in Washington, we'll see many more than we see here... I consider that a positive, FWIW.

I expect this will be a topic of conversation in upcoming months, as this is going to be a focus of our life for a while until we're moved and settled in. So 2021 has become a period of change -- for the better, I hope and believe. But I'm also aware that as I open up this new chapter, I'm also closing off some old ones. Moving forward from them, not away from them.

So in many ways, the phrase "leaving Silicon Valley" is a lie. Physically true, emotionally not.

But I'm more than ready to start this next new adventure. Can't wait to see the plans start to fall together.

Photos: Tree Canopy

In honor of the decision to move to Washington and the opportunities it will open up photographically, I share this month a photo from Washington. This is an abstraction of a shot I took of the tree canopy while taking the Art Wolfe photo retreat in Olympic National Park back in 2019. That retreat had Art really pushing us to think about the intimate and the abstract, and I both struggled mightily at times and learned a lot, and it really shifted my thinking about landscape photography in ways I wanted but had been unable to do without some outside nudging.

That workshop really forced my out of my comfort zone, and it was stressful and there were times I felt like the village idiot -- but it started clicking and I came home with some images I was proud of, such as the one above, and none of them were images anyone (including myself) would look at and say "oh, I know that photographer".

I feel a bit guilty to have not followed up that retreat with a lot more work in the same direction, but.... well, Covid. And also a reality that I simply don't find silicon valley photogenic from a landscape mindset, and so landscape photograpy tends to be at least a 2 hour drive each way (Yosemite is four-ish), just as the opening gambit. And, well, covid. And time.

Right now, and for the last couple of years, landscape work has taken a back seat to other things, like my birding and bird photography, in terms of which things get priority for my available time.

I am hoping that once this move is finished I will be in a place more compatible with what I want to photograph, and with more time and opportunity to go out and explore. That, and an entirely new universe to find things in, will hopefully regenerate my enthusiam. right now, there are just other things I'd rather do and not enough time to do them all well.

Oh, and I'll be quite close to Olympic National Park; day trip close. Trust me, that's not a coincidence.

More on the Art Wolfe retreat:

For Your Consideration

Photography

Birds, Birding, and the Outdoors

Health and Fitness

  • Keep Breathing: this is an amazing photo documentary of life on the front lines.

Science and Technology

Download one of my books!

Download Now!

All my eBooks are now available and easy for you to get.
My newest, just released, is Birds of Santa Clara County which is my look at some of the birds I've seen and photographed here in Silicon Valley over the years. It contains photos of over 80 species, with images taken between 2007 and 2020.

You might also enjoy ... And the Geese Exploded, a combination of a series of short essays about my birding life, how I feel so deeply for birdwatching, and some of the aspects of being a birdwatcher that mean so much to me. It also includes over 100 of my favorite photos that I've taken over the last decade here in the greater Bay Area, out in the central valley wildlife refuges, and here in the western coastal states in the U.S.

There are now also two chapbooks, collections of images I've taken that I compiled into a printed collection I could keep on my shelves. 2019(1) contains images ranging from 2007-2019, while 2019(2)focuses on the images I created during 2019.

All of these books are absolutely free. You can get to all of the books on my Download page. The store is going to ask you for some information during checkout -- the only piece that matters is the email address so it can email you a download link. The rest -- if you don't want to include your real info, I won't tell anyone. And I promise that information will not be used for any purpose; I would disable that collection if I could.

There are now four titles available for download. This new one, as well as my previous ... And the Geese Exploded, as well as two of my chapbooks 2019(1) and 2019(2). You can get more information about those on the download page.

See you Soon!

And with that, I'll see you in 2021 with the next issue. I'd love feedback on this, what you like, what you want more of, what you want less of. And if you have something interesting you think I might want to talk about, please pass it along. Until then, take care, and have fun.

Chuq

About 6FPS and Chuq

6FPS (Six Frames Per Second) is a newsletter of interesting things and commentary from Chuq Von Rospach (chuqui@mac.com).

Coming out monthly on the 2nd Monday of the month, I will place in your inbox a few things I hope will inform and delight you. There is too much mediocre, forgettable stuff attacking your eyeballs every day you're online; this is my little way to help you cut through the noise to some interesting things you might otherwise not find.

Some links in this newsletter may point to products at Amazon; these are affiliate links and if you use them to buy a product, I get a small cut of the sale. This doesn't make me rich, but it does help pay my web site bills. If you use the link to buy something, thank you. If you prefer not to, that's perfectly okay, also.

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