San Francisco had moved on during my years away: my friends, my family, and my city—all transformed into something new and only vaguely familiar. Who would I have been if I’d stayed in the city? Would I have helped gentrify Oakland with a tiny apartment or a run-down house that I laboriously repainted on my evenings and weekends, when I wasn’t grinding out code to increase ad-clicks? A decade ago, I’d been drunk on the power of technology to make a dent in the universe; I had sobered up in the intervening years, had turned my love into just a job, which is to say, I’d become an adult. Maybe if I’d stayed here, I could have remained a child in a city that just wanted everyone to play and have a good time (while increasing clicks on ads).