Would welcome thoughts/suggestions!

I've been feeling stagnant after living in a small college town for several years and am considering moving to a bigger city, but change is HARD. Current cons:

• I would miss a lot about my current town and Colorado!

• If I wind up not quickly finding a community or the new place doesn't live up to expectations in some way, I will probably feel really isolated and awful for a while. Maybe I should wait to move for a more concrete reason, like a job.

• I'm a little worried about a friend.

Counterpoint:

• Yeah, fine, change is hard, but this kind is about exercising agency and is usually good for people. I've been thinking about this for so long and am already dealing with the slow bleed of stagnation, so I should probably just get over it, right???

Places I'm thinking about:

• SF and NY are maybe at the top of my list in terms of cool stuff and interesting, energetic, intellectual communities I'd probably like, but share the same problem of being enormously expensive--I haven't yet done a deep dive to even figure out if I could afford it.

• DC is similar in being expensive but with cool stuff and communities; advantages are being close to family and I could probably live with a friend. The disadvantage is that it's effectively just moving back home, which isn't exactly what I'm looking for right at this moment.

• Chicago, Philly, and Boston are lower down on my list but the cost of living in any is probably more affordable than SF/NY/DC? When it comes to visiting friends/family elsewhere, Chicago is roughly equidistant between the coasts and Philly is roughly equidistant between NY and DC.