My daughter’s at sleepaway camp in the Catskills. First time. Eight-hour drive from Toronto.

She called home. Told my wife it was POOOOOOOOURING.☔

I knew. I’d been checking the weather there every day since she left. Not because I could do anything about it. Just… checking. Imagining how much fun she was having. Or not having.

Here’s a weird thing I just discovered about myself: I assume sunny days mean everything is okay. If the weather is good, she’s fine.

I checked the weather: flash flood warnings. 89% chance of rain. She must not be having fun.

And here’s the weird thing: every time the weather’s bad, the same thought shows up uninvited. I wonder what the weather is in San Diego. Like clockwork. For years.

Because San Diego is considered the best place to live in the U.S. for weather. 266 sunny days a year. I Googled it.

So I checked the weather in San Diego, and my wife caught me checking. Again.

“Why do you do that to yourself?”

It’s an obsession.

She used to get nervous about it — not that I was secretly planning to move us to California. More like how she gets nervous when I curl my toes back and forth when I’m in deep thought. It’s just a thing I do. A quirk. She’s accepted it. I check San Diego. She rolls her eyes. We move on.

—

WHERE THIS STARTED

My mother was a flight attendant. She used to fly to San Diego all the time. Came home raving about the weather. “Best in the U.S.,” she’d say. This was the 80s. Pre-Google. I think Google got their data from her.

And whenever things got hard — when it was pouring cats and dogs in Toronto, or when I was going through a pre-teen crisis (like the time I came home crying because Michael Guswadi got new Nike Airs and could do the running man better than me) — she’d say the same thing:

“It’s always sunny above the clouds.”

That never made me feel better.

You can’t live above the clouds. Nobody does. That saying is like a bumper sticker we would have had on our 1988 Oldsmobile.

But San Diego? San Diego was real. San Diego was a place on a map. A place with zip codes and grocery stores and people who actually lived there.

San Diego was a door I could always walk through.

—

THE FALSE DOOR

And that’s the thing.

It’s a false door. An escape hatch I’ll never use. But just knowing it’s there makes the ceiling feel less low.

Whenever my wife and I talk about vacation, I half-joke: “Let’s go to San Diego.”

She’s a realist. “You won’t go there. You like to stay local.”

Yup. She knows me better than I know myself. I’m not a big traveler. (I’m the guy who can eat the same breakfast, lunch, and supper for a year straight — my wife can attest.)

I’m not actually going to San Diego. But telling myself I could helps me deal with the rain.

Weird, I know.

But here’s what’s weirder:

The escape hatch isn’t even real.

Check out the weather there today 👇

Wait — cloudy?

266 sunny days a year. And I caught it on a cloudy one.

Even San Diego didn’t deliver.

San Diego has clouds too. The neighbor with the nice car has payments. The friend who just bought a house has a mortgage that keeps them up at 2am. The coworker who seems to have it all figured out is asking Claude “how to ask for a raise” in the bathroom.

There is no San Diego. Well — there is. Just not the San Diego I’ve been picturing.

—

THE PIN 📌

Just this year, my mother told me the weather in San Diego is boring.

Boring?!

Yup. Same thing every day. 266 sunny days a year is almost every day. Predictable. No drama. No first snow day. No summer thunderstorm that clears the air and makes everything smell new.

The woman who gave me the San Diego fantasy just handed me the pin to pop it.

And the rain? The thing I keep trying to mentally escape?

Rain is a blessing. Without it, this whole place would be a dustball. I’m checking the weather to escape the rain. But the rain is what keeps everything alive.

—

THE MONEY VERSION

We do this all the time.

“I could just get a new job.” (You’ve been saying that for three years. You browse LinkedIn. You never apply.)

“I could sell the house and downsize.” (You’re checking Zillow again. Saved twelve listings. You know you’re never leaving that house.)

“I could move somewhere cheaper.” (You Googled “cost of living Austin” last month. Your kids are in school here. Your parents are ten minutes away. Your whole life is here.)

False doors. Escape hatches we’ll never use. But they help us cope with the constraint. They let us breathe.

And that’s okay — until it’s not.

Until the fantasy becomes the strategy. Until “I could always…” becomes an excuse to never deal with what’s actually in front of you.

—

THE REAL QUESTION

So here’s the question: What’s your San Diego?

The false door you keep checking. The fantasy that helps you cope. The escape hatch you’ll never actually use.

What would happen if you stopped looking at it?

Avraham
Your Financial Coach

P.S. My daughter’s still at camp. It’s still raining. And she’s loving it.

P.P.S. I just Googled “the dangers of living in San Diego.” Black widows. Brown widows. Desert scorpions. Hiding in garages and dark crevices. I’d rather have the rain. 🌧️ (And yes, I realize I’m now doing the same thing in reverse. There’s always something to work on.) 🦂