Let’s follow up “Where are you located”? with why did you choose to live where you are?

Interesting company and smart conversations.

I was born here, went to school here, love the city. Never felt any need to leave.

I love to travel, but Boston makes a great home base for me.

Before the blizzard, Boston was on my list as was New Orleans. But your Winters and Louisiana Summers were prospects that Midwestern previews foretold of miseries to come. @janbb Hey penguin, those steamer trunks above were probably the last chance I will see to use portmanteau in a sentence

Well, I grew up on a small chicken farm in central New Jersey. Went to college in Westchester County, NY and packed my portmanteau for a year at university in Exeter, England. While thumbing around the countryside (didn’t know penguins could hitch, did you?) I met my English husband. We lived there, we came back here, and my husband took a job in my family’s business. So I ended a mile from where I went to high school – on the Jersey shore.

Now – with one kid in SF and one in Paris – I’m stuck in the middle with me.

I was born and raised here. Don’t know of any other place I’d want to live.
“Country roads take me home, to the place where I belong, West Virginia, mountain momma take me home country roads.”
John Denver

I absolutely adore the nature here- the woods, the lakes, rivers, streams, animals, even most of the people will literally stop what they’re doing to help each other, just really kind people. If you visit a lake for vacation, that’s what our lives are all the time!

Even while travelling, I miss my nice cool green woods no matter where I was, so when it was time to buy a home, I went back to my hometown, married a hometown boy and try to make a difference in the community I love. We’ll reconsider our choices once the parents are gone, but chances are, this is the best place for us.

I grew up in New York state but moved out to central MA for college – and that decision was based on college-specific stuff, not location. From there it was a natural choice to move to the Boston area when I graduated. That’s where all the jobs are.

I’m not actually a big fan of cities, and I despise our fucking winters, so who knows what will happen. All our family and friends are here, though, and the job situation is really awesome, so this may be where we settle down. I just worry we’ll never be able to afford to buy property, and that I’ll never get to have a yard.

@Mariah – re: “central MA” – I went to college in Amherst and loved that area (Northampton, Amherst, etc). I assume that’s where you were? My wife and I would have stayed there if there were any jobs.

Came here to go to school back in the day. Left for about 5 years and took up residence in my wifes hometown (a town a friend always referred to as “Boogertown” because of the attitude and lifestyles of the majority people who lived there) where she had returned after college because of a good job offer but the two towns are only 70 miles apart.

Returned here when a friend offered me a job opportunity that got me back into the field I had studied in college. We stayed and raised our kids, relocating five times over the intervening 36 years bouncing from one town to the other (we live in adjoining cities).

Not my preferred locale, I like big trees and mountains not flatland prairie (although to be fair such a landscape has its charms). I also prefer desert environs (I know, one extreme to the other). I would like to live somewhere that has seasons, predictable seasons not what we are having over the last decade.

Used to take advantage of the culture and diversity provided by living in a University town but have become more of a homebody (when I am not traveling somewhere, anywhere else) so that is not as much of a positive. Also the population growth is certainly a downer for me, not a big fan of crowds or people in general. Also, we are very politically repressed, being a liberal living in a solidly conservative state in and even more solidly conservative town.

You know, the more I write, the more I wonder why I am still here. But honestly, I know why; we stay because both our kids and all our grandkids are still here and being an introvert family is all I have.

We moved where the jobs were during the economic downturn of 2008–2009. I like the environs here, the nature, the climate (a bit hot in the summers). We will stay until my husband retires.

After school in Santa Barbara, the general decision is “San Francisco or Los Angeles?”

I chose the Bay Area because I love SF, it was where all my long term friends were, and there were job opportunities.

I ended up in the suburb I am in because it is generally warmer, and it is much more affordable than the town where I went to high school.

I totally get why a lot of people dislike cities and hate snowy, wet, freezing winters — but I love both.

I actually get nervous when I’m away from the city for too long. I like the craziness, the sounds, the diverse population. And, despite heading toward 50, I still enjoy the cold weather.

Grew up in a small backwards town full of ignorant shitbillies with no idea that there’s a world beyond the county line. Got the fuck out at the first chance I could.

It’s complicated. In 1970 we my ex and two girls) were living happily in NE Colorado. When a new university opened in E Texas my then MIL called my then husband and told him he should move back to Texas so we did. I hated the winters up there anyway. We moved around this area until our 1985 divorce. In 1987 I met and married my now sweetie and , after living here for a few years we moved to central Arkansas, which I miss terribly but he got cancer. So he wanted me to live near my daughter back in Texas in case he died. We’ve lived here for eight years and he’s very easy going ,upbeat and a nice man. He has undergone two major surgeries here in the last eight years and is slightly disabled, thanks to a local hospital’s neglect. If not for that fall he’d be fine . I wrestle with resentment and anger against that place. He’ll never recover his previous energy or easy walk but he remains cheerful year after year.

A fair wind & the faint aroma of cheap I mean…loyal housestaff

I was born and raised in Central Massachusetts, and loved it as a youth. After hitting my mid 20s I left for “away” in various forms (with occasional returns for visits and medium-term work assignments, but always leaving again). Finally, at the end of 2000 I was hired at a company in Southern California, moved there with the family… and generally did not like it as much as I had hoped.

The year that I spent in SoCal was one of the unhappiest of my life, frankly. True, not all of that was due to the boring climate, the monotonous architecture, the stunning conformity of the people that I met and worked with or the ridiculous regulations that everyone accepts, but those didn’t make things any better.

I hate to say “fortunately”, but… by the end of 2001 I was unemployed, separated (and family even more broken than that, with one child with mom and the other with me), and facing a mortgage I could not pay at all, and a house that was declining in value in SoCal because of the 2001 recession. I was also driven even deeper into debt by absorbing my wife’s expenses of moving away and setting up her household.

I got an offer to return to Connecticut, to the employer I had chosen to leave ten years prior, and life turned around. I realized I was “home” – all-day rainstorms, ice and snow, blizzards, occasional hurricanes, threatened tornadoes, and all – we have thunderstorms! some places are not so blessed (such as SoCal). I’m home, and planning to stay. Unless I move north. I also like Maine, and I hear Nova Scotia is pretty nice, too.

This week I’ve been visiting Hawaii, and it is stunningly beautiful and wonderful – and I could afford to retire here if I want. I doubt that I will. I will probably continue to visit now that I’ve found the place (and it appears that airlines can reliably find the islands out here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean), but I know where “home” is, and I’m a homeboy.

I live about 90 miles from where I was born and grew up. I came here many years ago with my job, raised a couple of kids and now it is home.

My dad came from Texas, my mom came from the Pacific Northwest. They met in Longbeach, Ca, got married had us three kids. I was born in Texas where Dad had just finished in EE degree. Then he got a position with Boeing, Seattle. I can only imagine how happy my Mom was about that. She had tons of family and the scenery is so stunning.
But, Dad was a sailor at heart, so when he was offered a position with Honeywell in Florida, he took it. I know he was very happy there! Mom, not so much.
But THEN he was offered a better position with Boeing, Wichita when I was 8, so we moved to Kansas.
They both hated it here.
After their divorce, when I was 19, Dad moved to Florida and Mom moved to the Northwest to be with family. She expected me and my other sister to follow her. My sister was 16, I was 19. We didn’t move. She was really upset about that.
In the 70’s my boyfriend in college borught me to this town for a Bluegrass festival. I was totally enamored with this little town, and told myself I wanted to live there.
And time moved on. I got married to a guy I met at Boeing when I worked there, we had 3 kids, after 10 years we got divorced. Although the kids were only 5, 7 and 13, he moved to the Pacific Northwest himself.
I moved to this town, and it was a really good move. I still love it.

We moved to our current location almost 7 years ago after we lost our home to foreclosure. Rental affordability was a must for us. Unfortunately that put us right in the middle of a very conservative and bigoted area of Illinois.

We are moving out of state this summer. We are looking at a place along the shores of Lake Michigan in Michigan that will put us close to a large city with better resources and a great high school for our youngest child. It is also a very beautiful location with lots of outdoor activities and a good art scene. We can’t wait to move!

@cookieman Remember when I used to talk about how great living in the country is? How times have changed. I do think it is good for young children but not so much for teens. Also as you get older the need for competent healthcare is a must. We don’t have that where we live now.

I’ll bet @Aethelwine!

@Aethelwine: I get that. Access to healthcare is a must.

I have been living in the same house for 22 years. Well mom told me when I was born we stayed at grandma’s house for a while then moved to where we are, but I don’t know when. My earliest memory contains this house anyway.

About why we are here, that question is better left for my parents. They chose this place after all.

Moved around a lot as a kid, city, suburbs, country I experienced it all. Family moved to this Tennessee city when I was 15, I went to the university here and I found good employment locally after so I stayed. There is affordable housing, good city culture with plenty of outdoor activities and a good climate. I still have yet to find somewhere else I’d rather live.

@stanleybmanly I tried to cross the iced over street one midnight at the corner of 24th & California

Escaping from the jail?

I was hiding from the weather in the student union at Creighton along with several dozen others hoping for a lull. Back then the town more or less rolled up the sidewalks around 8 and the student union locked up at 9. They stretched it til midnight, then tossed us out. There was a girl who had talked me into visiting her earlier when it was snowing heavily but without the wind. 5 hours of sub par food and catching up. I got a perfunctory kiss on the forehead like I was on my way to kindergarten. My parting words “You got any whiskey in that ugly purse?”

@stanleybmanly I see. 26th & California is a prominent intersection here, it’s the county jail in Chicago. I did not know Omaha had a 24th street.

I grew up in the suburbs of a medium-sized Midwestern US city. We drove through Chicago and visited the museums a lot when I was a kid. We had the Chicago Tribune every Sunday.

So I knew exactly where I wanted to go when I left college. I’ve been here in Chicago most of my adult life, with a few years in Los Angeles and the Detroit suburbs mingled in.

Ah yes! The magical criminal court building! The contrast between Winters in Chicago & Omaha was that for some strange reason I can’t recall an incident of a single frozen wino in Nebraska.

I moved back to my home town after university. I moved back because I was dating a woman who lived here and I also got hired on at one of the local schools doing supply work (substitute teaching). That was years ago. I’ve since switched jobs and met another woman from Michigan. I live in a border town. I’m Canadian and she’s a Yank. We live 20 minutes away from one another. The plan is to get married and for me to move to Michigan. She lives in a cute house on Lake Huron.

I still get to live by one of the Great Lakes and I love it!

I still get to live by one of the Great Lakes and I love it!

I think I could adjust to almost anywhere, but to be really enthused I need a shore or mountains nearby.

I’ve been around the south end of Lake Michigan most of my life and I still gape at it in awe.

@Mama_Cakes Hi ya! Long time no see!

Hey, @Dutchess_III! Good to see you.