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I've spent my life going back and forth between the country, the city, and small towns/suburban neighborhoods. My experience is the transition is always uncomfortable and unsettling (city to country: too quiet, country to city: too loud, etc.) and then I'd settle in and get used to the environment. Except the suburbs, I did not want to move to the suburbs, hated it, it was a pain the butt, and I'd never intentionally live in a place like that again lol. If you find the uncomfortable feeling persists long-term, it's a good sign to not live in an environment like that.

IMO the suburbs of a big city are the worst of both worlds: more crowded than smaller cities/towns and often hours away from the things you want from a city. i completely understand why some folks would choose that, but i wouldn’t. as Mark Almond once said, “if you’re going to wallow, wallow deep.” not to mention that if you’re looking for musicians the other side of a metropolitan area may as well be Mars. nobody wants to drive 2.5 hours each way to practice.

It’s funny.. I’ve never really liven in suburbia… most of my life I’ve lived the the outlying cities of a larger center.. like.. I’m from El Sobrante (Bay Area).. then we moved to the Sedona area in AZ.. which back in 87 was a pretty empty area.. where we were at first had a circle k, iga and a burger place in a strip mall across from a fucking golf course.. with two communities on either side of the highway.. later we moved to Sedona.. but we moved back to the Bay Area (Richmond) once the second traffic light was installed… then after 2 years in Richmond we moved to the Seattle area in older neighborhood between Columbia city and Renton.. this was literally my route to seattle https://youtu.be/QElKVs56z48?si=vQ3dJVUmWz3bk1Ya hell this was my buss route for collage now… for the past… 18 years.. I’ve been around Olympia.. I currently live 7 miles from the capital building.. but I live in county by a lake.. and have all types of wildlife in my yard.. (deer, coyotes, opossums, raccoons, owls, the occasional bear.. and rabbits which are in charge of mowing the lawn…) I’m at the point where if and when I move again I’d want to go more off the beaten path…

there are a lot of things that i might look for in a living environment, but at this point it would have to be overwhelmingly great and have a dependable job waiting and i’d still rather be shot than ever have to pack all this shit up again.

Crazy—the small city I like in now is barely bigger than the current population of the bland little NYC suburb bedroom community I grew up in, about 25k. Feels different to me, though I’m not sure it is that different. I’m at kind of a central moderately dense hub among exurbs with some regional draw, as opposed to a boring little town among many. But I don’t know how old man me would have found my hometown when I lived there.

I don’t know if this is where I’d be if it were just me, though people are more friendly and chill than in close DC suburbs.