Across the Miles, My Different Lifestyles: The Bay Area, CA Edition

It has been six months since I wrote my introductory Across the Miles, My Different Lifestyles post and I am finally posting my first edition, which I had actually started a few months ago. A large part of the delay was due to procrastination fueled by uncertainty of how to exactly describe my perspective on my different lifestyles, but after several revisions, here goes.
Born and raised in The Bay Area, I started my life in Walnut Creek, living my first few years in Pittsburgh, growing up in South San Francisco, attending college in Santa Cruz (about half an hour away from the South Bay) and subsequently living in Fremont, San Jose and Milpitas through 2005.
On any given morning, I’d get up and pick an outfit from my closet that mostly consisted of skirts, dresses, pants, t shirts, sweaters and light or medium weight jackets. It was only after moving out of state that I realized I took the fairly consistent weather for granted because I didn’t need to check it to determine what to wear, except for the occasional chance of rain . I didn’t care for the typical mid-60s sometimes overcast, foggy, or windy weather of the peninsula (South San Francisco) and preferred the South Bay (Milpitas and San Jose) and East Bay (Fremont) where the summers would be 80-90 degrees, so I could wear more skirts and short sleeved tops.
Depending where I lived, my commute to work ranged from 15 minutes to 1 hour each way. When I was in Fremont it was not uncommon to spend 45 minutes in the car driving the ~11 miles to the Cisco campus consisting of 40+ buildings along Tasman Drive between San Jose and Milpitas. I remember one evening after work, a couple street lights were out on Tasman towards 880. Because there are thousands of Cisco employees trying to leave work, it took me 30 mins to leave my parking spot and get to the last aisle of the parking lot before hitting Tasman when I decided to park the car and go back inside the office to wait a couple more hours for the traffic jam to finally clear out enough to get home. With all the driving, even with a fuel efficient car, I would have to stop at the gas station about once a week, begrudgingly paying a high premium for gas compared to the rest of the country.
Working at one of the largest tech companies where seemingly a majority of employees are Type A workaholics, I rarely worked only 40 hours. As a lead, I started my workday usually at 7am and continued a long day of work and meetings, not really giving my work style a second thought. It was only when a counterpart from Europe came to work with me on a global project and stopped by my desk at around 6pm (she started her day at 9am, so was finishing her 8 hour shift) asking me why I was still working, telling me about how her office worked no more than 8 hours a day, often taking leisurely lunches and having something like 2 months worth of vacation, claiming Americans work way too much, that I realized that this wasn’t everyone’s normal lifestyle.
After work, I’d sometimes spend time with coworkers at happy hour or dinner, which commonly involved talking about work. Otherwise, when I was good about staying physically healthy, I’d work out 3-4 times a week after work between 1-2+ hours a session and cook and eat my dinner at home. With work, after work gatherings, and staying healthy I didn’t spend much time on anything else except sleeping and that was one thing I was good about, getting ~7-9 hours a night.
It seemed many had a similar lifestyle in that regard as this was not uncommon to converse about similar when meeting with friends or family. My life mostly revolved around work, talking about it when outside of it and prioritizing time with loved ones was not as high as it should have been, which I didn’t even realize at the time. Growing up in Cali, it’s no wonder my social network, inclusive of colleagues, friends and family, were only a drive away, but I allowed my hectic and stressful work lifestyle to prevent me from making the effort or time to spend with them. Looking back at how I oblivious I was of this makes me regret missing out on lost opportunities of creating fun, happy, loving memories.
Overall, in terms of socializing, scheduling time to meet people was a less than an ideal regular occurrence, and often required effort trying to coordinate schedules. It was common for one person to ask to reschedule or cancel to the point where I wouldn’t be surprised if my planned meet up wouldn’t go through last minute. I didn’t even recognize how often I, myself, did that to others until one day a friend called me out on it and I felt so ashamed for cancelling on her 3 times in a row because I simply didn’t feel up to going out with her. Since then, I more often said no to meeting up with people, not wanting to end up rescheduling or cancelling last minute, not wanting to be one of those people anymore – a flake.
With long hours working, commuting and being a natural introvert, that resulted in my preference to simply stay home and relax when I actually had time to do so. During those moments alone at home, I spent the time scrapbooking, creating something with my hands such as simple furniture or small crafts or cleaning/organizing my space, which are my stress-relieving activities. More and more, I found myself preferring to be home than going out with people.
However, one thing that would bring me together with friends and family was food, where we’d connect over a delicious meal. Despite having traveled and eaten my way across the county, there are certain foods that I think are unrivaled in The Bay. There is a level of comfort growing up in an area knowing your way around, including good places to go for certain things, such as getting a Silog at one of many good Filipino restaurants in the Peninsula or grabbing a bowl of pho in the South Bay. Unfortunately, that level of comfort is something I haven’t been able to recreate in the other places I’ve lived since.
It was after I started traveling a lot for work, I quickly realized the extremely high cost of living in California, not only in regards to money, but time and stress as well. I used to think the benefits were worth the cost, but with my subsequent experiences and changed mindset I decided it was not for me. Stay tuned for my next edition of Across the Miles, My Different Lifestyles where I proceed to discuss my thoughts around that and my different living experiences across the country, including moving out of California and actually coming back!