Two weeks ago I relocated from Cleveland, Ohio to Phoenix, Arizona. I have always wanted to leave Ohio and I have always loved the state of Arizona, but the real decision making process began around January of this year. It was a cold, grey, miserable winter month I was six months out of my divorce, and my most recent relationships weren’t working out. I felt like my job was a dead end job; simply, I was in a rut.
I have two young kids therefore moving across the country is not an easy task. I spoke to my family about it and everyone was surprisingly very supportive. I worked out a babysitter, took vacation time off work, and bought a round-trip ticket to Phoenix to stay with my sister for a week. In this time, I did some interviews and looked at apartments in the area I was interested it. I ended up landing a job at a marketing and sales firm as an account manager.
With moving, there was a lot of uncertainty and risk. I had to leave a lot of my friends behind, even a special guy in my life, and my grandmother who is ill in health whom I lived next to for over 18 years of my life, unfortunately I am nervous I will never see her again. It was definitely a major and expensive decision. I was not quite sure my job was going to pan out; renting an apartment is quite a bit more expensive than I am used to, and I recently found that childcare assistance has a waiting list. I thought I saved up a nice security net before I moved, but my checking account is shrinking fast.
According to the text, there are several steps in decision making: identifying and diagnosing the problem, generating alternative solutions, evaluating alternatives, making the choice, implementing the decision, and evaluating the decision (Bateman, 2011). I think I followed this system fairly well; I definitely did a lot of planning for my move. My problem was Ohio, the weather was awful and job