Thank you for writing this up. I resonate with this a lot. I live in Serbia, work in AIS, and the pull to the Bay is incredibly high. No good solution, coming there 2-3x per year helps somewhat, but also just increases the feel of missing out—it seems as if I get months worth of “unstuck” every time I visit. At the same time, one thing you did not mention, but that I think is underappreciated, is that family and not living in a hub are great for not burning out. I think being in a hub, being around EAs all the time, having your livelihood tied to EA—all of it makes it hard to stop working due to fear of losing literally everything in your life right now if you “fail”.
Thank you for writing this up. I resonate with this a lot. I live in Serbia, work in AIS, and the pull to the Bay is incredibly high. No good solution, coming there 2-3x per year helps somewhat, but also just increases the feel of missing out—it seems as if I get months worth of “unstuck” every time I visit.
At the same time, one thing you did not mention, but that I think is underappreciated, is that family and not living in a hub are great for not burning out. I think being in a hub, being around EAs all the time, having your livelihood tied to EA—all of it makes it hard to stop working due to fear of losing literally everything in your life right now if you “fail”.
For sure. I think Chana does a good job of talking about some of the downsides of living in a hub similar to what you mention: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZRZHJ3qSitXQ6NGez/about-going-to-a-hub-1