For the past few months, I’ve been turning the idea over and over in my head, as if the idea was a chicken on a rotisserie in one of those greasy glass enclosures.

I perused Google Maps. I stared blankly at a monthly calendar of June. I made, deleted, and remade “could feasibly move”, “could consider moving”, and “don’t move/sell in Seattle” packing lists.

I pondered the distribution of my friends in the country and if I could see some of them—all of them?—during the migration.

I conferred with friends: “I’m thinking of driving across the country when I relocate to New York City. I’ve never done it before. I don’t know what the month of June will look like—except that it will be busy—and I’m worried that I won’t have enough time.”

And by “enough time”, I meant “the time to leisurely drive across the continent and enjoy the journey”.

There was no consensus:

• It’ll be awesome! It’ll be so nice to see friends that you haven’t seen in a while.
• Doing it in five days is gonna suck. You can do it, but you’ll be spending sixty hours in a car with little time to go sightseeing.
• If you’ve never done it before, it’s an experience. Not necessarily a superb one, but it will definitely be an experience.

I considered my own mental welfare: Would I calmly tolerate a five-day drive across the country, knowing that I would have, at most, two days to settle in New York City before starting a new job?

Yeah, but what about the ego biscuits that come along with knowing that I drove across the United States?

Yeah, but won’t there be other opportunities to drive across the country under more relaxed circumstances?

Yeah, but why not seize the moment?

yeah but yeah but yeah but yeah but

He asked the pointed question and the answer immediately crystallized in my mind. I smiled in recognition.

“Mentally wrestling between flying or driving to New York City provides me with the illusion of choice,” I said. “I can feel like I have some control… because, right now, when I think about New York, I feel like I have no control at all. I don’t know where I’ll be living, I have little idea what work will be like, I don’t know who I’m going to meet. When I think about the year from July forward, all I see right now is a black box. I have no idea what my life will look like.”

My friends—the vast majority of whom will remain in Seattle—smiled back at me. We all knew that, at that moment, my ambivalence had evaporated. My decision was obvious.

Now I just need to actually commit and buy my plane tickets.