Trying To Find The Best Place To Live

I envy the people who can be happy wherever they are. My best friend is like this. We were born in a coal town in the middle of Pennsylvania – a place with nothing to do – but he made it work for him. He had a blast there until we graduated high school. Then he went to a little college town, and had a wonderful time there. When he switched gears for graduate school and went to the University of Chicago, he still had a great time. Big town, small town, Midwest, East coast – it doesn't matter for him. For me, however, things have always been different.

I've been on a quest to find the best place to live for years now. I have lived and worked in many places, and I've liked quite a few of them, but nothing has seemed quite right. I suppose it is because I haven't really had a clear view of what I wanted to do until recently. When I was in my 20s, I thought the best place to work was in San Francisco. Although I was educated, I was happy earning my living working as a bartender in the city. I made pretty good money, met interesting people, and got to sleep all day. Who could ask more in their early 20s?

Once I came to have more ambitious career goals, however, I knew that San Francisco was not the best place to live as far as I was concerned. I consulted a few best place to live lists in magazines, but I couldn't exactly find what I was looking for. A lot of them rank categories like “the best places to raise a family”, or “the best places to live cheaply.” I wasn't really that interested in any of that, and so I was pretty much on my own.

One of my friends told me that Portland was one of the best places to live, and I figured I would check it out. I already knew that I liked the West Coast, so there didn't seem to be any harm in going out to Oregon. Portland wasn't the best place to live I had ever been, but it was pretty good. For some people, it would be perfect. It has a great night scene, a pretty solid community, and a really well functioning public transportation system. Public transportation means a lots to most people nowadays with the rising price of gas, so this city surely should make any well-thought-out best place to live list.

If you are happy - then you have found the best place to live!