Moving to a new city is one of the more reliably destabilising things a person can do, and it’s systematically underestimated because it’s usually chosen. Nobody offers sympathy for a move you wanted.
The predictable shape
Months one to three. Novelty carries it. Everything is interesting, the logistics fill the days, and the job or the reason for coming is absorbing.
Months four to eight. The drop. The novelty has gone, the logistics are done, and what is left is a life with a job in it and not much else. This is when most people conclude they have made a mistake, and it’s the most predictable part of the whole thing.
Months nine to eighteen. If you’ve joined things, this is where it starts to turn. Recurring contact has produced a few real relationships and the city stops being a place you’re visiting.
The drop at month five isn’t evidence that this was wrong. It’s what month five is.
What makes San Francisco specifically hard
Everyone appears to have a group already — which is partly true and partly an artefact of seeing people out with the friends they do have rather than at home alone, which is where a great many of them also are.
Work-mediated socialising. If your job is remote, or small, or you were hired into an established team, the default social route is largely closed. More on why this is structural.
The weather isn’t what you were told. July in San Francisco is genuinely cold and grey in much of the city, and people arriving from elsewhere in California or from a warm country are frequently blindsided by it. It affects mood and it isn’t a joke.
The street environment. Nobody prepares you for the visible suffering, and the first months of it are affecting in a way people feel unentitled to mention. That reaction is normal.
What actually works in the first year
Join something recurring, in month one. Before you feel lonely, because that’s when it’s easiest and because the payoff is six months out. A class, a team, a run club, a choir, a regular volunteer shift.
Say yes for six months. To almost everything. You can be selective later.
Keep the old relationships deliberately. Scheduled calls, not vibes. They decay by default, and they’re what carries you through the month-five drop.
Explore beyond your neighbourhood. The city is small and people’s worlds within it are smaller than they need to be.
When it’s more than adjustment
If the flatness persists past a year, if you’ve stopped trying, if sleep and appetite have gone, or if you’re drinking more — that’s worth taking to someone. Relocation depression is a real thing and it responds to treatment, and it’s very hard to tell from the inside whether you’re in month five or in something else.