Leaving Your Life Up To The Facebook Quiz

When Kent and I were in Bali brainstorming where we should live, and talking with other people who were in a similar place as we were – all of us trying to figure out the criteria for our potential homes, (did we want to be close to family? What size of city? Out in the country? Kinds of weather?). Some of our friends had decided for the moment that Bali was it. 

            For us, Bali wasn’t it. Bali was nice, but it failed in some of our criteria. We had it narrowed down to San Francisco and Brooklyn in the states; Amsterdam is also high on the list. So is Sweden. Or Finland. Actually anywhere in Europe. Occasionally Brazil makes it on the list. 

            Kent and I have spent what seems like months, even years, in this place of weighing our options. Finally, I asked, “Don’t you just wish there was some kind of iPhone app or program that you could enter in some criteria and it would spit out the ideal location for your home?”

            Then I saw the quiz I have been looking for in my facebook news feed. Of course, some body would come up with a facebook quiz for exactly such a thing.

          

  Kent and I generally make fun of facebook quizzes. There was a bit where it seemed like everyday, there were fifty new quizzes that people were taking and we began to wonder if our friends actually worked or did they just take facebook quizzes? We made jokes about it, that maybe we would feel complete as human beings if we could just know what Muppet we were in the world of the facebook quiz (we didn’t have to take a quiz. My friends told me that with such a curmudgeon attitude, clearly I was Sam the Eagle.) Kent came close to writing the facebook quiz of all facebook quizzes: What facebook quiz are you? 

           

I have a love/hate thing with such quizzes; I often feel the same ill feeling when I was taking standardized multiple-choice tests in school. In my world two of the answers could work, or I wanted two, and I could make the case for two or whatever it is that prevents me from picking just one (such a fear of commitment and being stuck with the wrong thing). In trying to answer the question about weather, did I prefer cool and rainy? (Which would throw me closer to the West Coast favorite cities of Portland, Seattle, San Francisco) or snow, rain with a bit of sun? (I do love cool and rainy, but I also really loved the snow of Denver, I love snow days, I find winters with snow kind of magical, maybe because I rarely had them as a kid). Or the question about environment where I wanted to choose the city, because I want to live in the city, but I also love forested coastlines. Why can’t I have both?

And schools – the options were good schools or just a good library down the block? A library down the block is a necessity, but so are good schools. Except having spent some time researching public and private schools, what some people would consider good schools, I wouldn’t call good schools at all. So what exactly are they referring to? Is there a footnote somewhere in this quiz that addresses this concern?

            There was no footnote. I got New York, New York. I wanted to take the quiz again to see if I got something different. I wanted the quiz to not just be US cities, but worldwide. But then I realized I have been desperate for our own space, to create a home, and I really, really, really miss my Brooklyn based sister. And honestly, we had gone around and around so many times on the matter, I was getting dizzy and was beginning to want someone else or some outside force to make the decision for us. We at one point considered creating a facebook contest, letting all of our facebook friends decide and vote on our next location or travel itinerary.

For the moment, San Francisco is off the table. Now I just need the facebook quiz (or Susan Miller horoscope) to tell me when to move.