Constrained Bliss Point

What am I going to do when I finally live in one place?

I’ve moved more than a few times in my life. During my early years I moved within New Jersey, one time that I can’t remember, and five or six that I can. Actually most of those moves were within the same town. Then at some point I went off to college, where moving in and out of one’s dorm room each year is part of the natural ebb and flow of semesters coming and going. Nowadays I find myself living in DC for some reason, and I have the feeling moving will be commonplace for the foreseeable future.

I kind of like moving around. That’s not to say I don’t like staying in one place — because I do. But there is no better way to get one’s material possessions in order than to pack them all up and head on out. One reason college is awesome is that you can pack up all your worldly belongings into a car and then drive away. There is something liberating about living with as few possessions as feasible. Then again, unpacking thereafter is a necessary consequence. I think I still have some boxes still packed in my basement from younger moves, and that’s been quietly nagging at me for years.

The truth is that packing up clears my head. There are never enough opportunities to fit the world so neatly into little boxes with cleanly demarcated edges. Some day I might live in the same house for years at a time. I think at that point I’ll need to take turns every few months boxing up a whole room and then unpacking it into a different configuration.

My optimal strategy for applying to graduate schools could have used work.  I didn’t think about what subfield of economics I wanted to study. I just aimed at the top programs.

I dunno, I think it worked out pretty well. I mean, none of the top programs accepted me, but that wasn’t really the point. I mean it kind of was. And I don’t mean to engage in excessive revisionist history, or seem like a sore winner.

More than anything, my philosophy about these things is that you must push yourself beyond what you think you’re capable of. In Texas Hold’em, if you’re not being caught bluffing half the time, you’re not bluffing enough. I say if you are not failing consistently, you are not aiming high enough. You owe it to yourself and to those around you to make sure you’re always doing your best.

If you only apply to safety schools you don’t know your limits. On the other hand, if you only apply to first-tier schools, you don’t know how far down the second tier you stand. All I know is that I’m in the best econ program in the District, at one of the swankiest universities I’ve visited, in arguably the most happening place for econmic policy in the world. At least I tried, right?