Grew up in the suburbs in MA, went to school in western MA, lived in Boston and worked in Cambridge until I moved to socal on a whim in my mid-twenties. I expected to give it maybe a year at the outset, and now it's been decades. I still return home for a few days each spring to see the family & old homies, but overall, I wouldn't really mind if I never visited there again otherwise, at this point.
Being a kid and growing up there was cool, of course (like anywhere) when it is all that you ever know, one doesn't really have an opinion of it. Even so, the weather just really started to irritate me after college. Walking up from the subway stairwell in the bone-chilling cold as freezing gusts of air slam against your face. Getting up early in the darkness of a winter morning to warm up your engine for several minutes and digging your car out of the snow. Driving to work or home in zero visibility on the highway while being pelted by elements either from the sky or some huge truck in front of you.
As a young man it was a pain in the ass. As an older man I don't really want to even think about that being my daily grind, haha.
Things I miss? Yeah the culture was nice. Compared to socal, there were lots of things that were old and "from a different history/world" which made the world feel somehow more real, I guess. The change of seasons was nice, as opposed to just being.. summer all the time. But you know what, summer all the damn time IS NOT BAD. There has been so much in socal to occupy me, between a burgeoning industry to work in, tons of great food, tons of cool people, lots of wonderful nightlife, accessibility to so many things. Yes it is true I get tired of it here sometimes (especially in the last few years w covid, and personally moving from Hollywood to the suburbs myself) but overall I am super happy to be done with New England. Proud to be from there, happy to no longer be living there.
Now that's me and my life though. I don't mean to darken anyone's doorstep "don't do something I don't like" because of course we all have different wants and needs. Also I am pushing 50 and I have no idea the age of OP (or other people who might be thinking along these lines). My best piece of advice is, if you have only lived in one place for your entire life - if you have the opportunity, absolutely go and experience something different. Travel if you must, but actually living somewhere for an amount of time will change everything in your life, and how you perceive and experience the world, as well as yourself. It can be really hard, and honestly only a certain percentage of people can actually do such a thing without breaking down or exhausting themselves, but if you have the wanderlust a bit? Fuck it, go for it, you might find whatever's missing out there somewhere. Or at least get a clearer idea of what that even is.
