Let me do my one, two step

Step 1 - Location, Location, Location.

I have spent the week narrowing down where I want to live in Britain.

First, I researched the safest and most dangerous places to live in England, which is how this map came about:

Key: Green=safe and red=dangerous

Then I looked up the location of publishing houses and advertising agencies (where I hope to work one day). Of course that lead to the creation of another map:

Key: I think red symbolizes the publishing houses and yellow symbolizes the advertising agencies but I don't remember exactly . . .

It doesn't really matter because after I put the two maps together - like so:

I discovered that

a. I know oh so little about British geography,

b. I am not a cartographer,

and c. the counties of Kent, Suffolk, Essex and Norfolk (roughly the big green circle) are safe places to live and house publishing houses and advertising agencies.

Once I had these four counties selected, I searched for places to live in these areas. In each county, I found loads of flats and houses that offer a room to rent with prices comparable to what I pay now (many of them included utilities)! Yes, this does mean that I will be sharing a living space with complete strangers. While this idea would bother me if I was looking in the U.S., I find it oddly comforting in the context of Britain. I believe I will have a better chance of making it with other people (especially locals) than on my own. I know absolutely no one across the pond and I am certain to need guidance along the way.

All and all I think it was a very productive week. Granted, I still only have a vague idea of where I plan to settle but that will become clearer other the next 15 months as I search for employment. The important thing is that this whole adventure just became a little more possible.

Now what was step 2 again?