Thoughts & Noises

The paradox of the American Dream: The best cities to get ahead are often the most expensive places to live, and the most affordable places to live can be the worst cities to get ahead.

This. 

Ever since my experiences living and working in SF last summer, this discrepancy has been on my mind. Environment is such a big part of success- whether understood as increased access or exposure to chance/opportunity/affordances- in part because when the bar is set higher, we work harder to reach it. Being surrounded by creative, innovative people last summer helped me to be more creative and innovative in turn. It's a difference in degree, to be sure, but it's a noticeable one. That kind of exposure to successful behaviors/discussions/ideas is especially important to people trying to enter the workforce or switch career paths. It's also a better model for success, since you're observing and interacting with hard-working, creatively-driven people, instead of people who have already made it (you never got to see their process) or aren't engaged with their work enough to try. Success in this sense is being an integral node surrounded by like-minded but diverse data points to bounce off of.