I have my reasons…I feel very isolated working from home and living in Roslindale. I thought I would keep up with my friends from my post doc program but I realize that was an ambitious idea because no one really keeps up the same way when they no longer work together and traffic gets so congested here it becomes a 45 min drive one way to go into parts of Boston for after work activities. Without traffic I live like 20 min from Boston, but that would only be at undesirable times like at 1 am lol. But if I lived closer to Boston I could join some social clubs or use Bumble BFF with ease, and it would be cool to meet new people and potentially make some new friends. So going back to my story, I lost my Cambridge apartment after 1 year because my roommate couldn’t justify the cost anymore since we were both post docs. I loved living there but I didn’t actually even get to enjoy the apartment much because I had a major knee injury during the time of the lease and was in/out of recovering from surgeries. From there (I left this part out from the original post because of how traumatic it is) I actually moved to a gorgeous new condo as a third roommate in Mission Hill for a summer (was supposed to be for a year or more) but got essentially evicted from that apartment in only 3 months because my landlord/roommate was upset that I wouldn’t listen to her every neurotic demand (I was asked not to brush my hair in my own bathroom because the guests also used it and she didn’t want long hairs on the ground) and I didn’t want to be best friends with her outside of being roommates (I made a big mistake moving into that place, I should have known that woman was stunted when I walked in on her watching Camp Cretaceous the cartoon when I was interviewing). I learned to be careful of who you find on FB roommates groups after that experience! I know there are laws to protect the tenant but the situation was so uncomfortable and she started threatening to change the locks and harassing me through text message on a daily basis (about how this is her condo and she can’t live unless she felt like she had full control of the situation in it), so I moved out but not without forcing her to agree to pay for my moving fees with the help of my lawyer friend reminding her that tenant laws are a thing and she was in violation of them. Then I begrudgingly moved into the current place at Roslindale with a guy friend because I was essentially homeless. Things have been fine in Rozzy but it never felt like my space, it’s more so his. It’s truly not at all what I envisioned for my Boston life when I moved here from suburban NJ 3 years ago. Boston has simultaneously been the worst and best times of my adult life. I tried to move out of my current space in July when I first started my new job but my younger brother committed suicide 2 days into my job, so I just didn’t have the energy to do it immediately after. I was just so run down by what life had been throwing at me for the past 3 years. Now that I finally had time to process things and have this higher income job after a decade of schooling and training, I can finally afford stuff and I really want to regain control of my life and write a better middle and ending to my Boston narrative. I’m really not “humble bragging” about anything, I just want genuine advice because I’m not from around here and I don’t come from a lot of money so I have to consider saving for a house and retirement like any normal person. Thank you to everyone who provided helpful advice and didn’t troll me ❤️