Seattle area is truly spectacular, especially summer and fall. The Olympic Peninsula, the San Juan Islands, the Cascades, Mt. Rainier, Vancouver Island, Puget Sound, Victoria, and Vancouver BC. It’s hard to beat.
It has terrible traffic like many eastern cities, so that can’t be the sole reason easterners hate their jobs. I think it’s one’s overall outlook on life which I believe is rosier in the west. That has roots all the way back in the early 1800s. Look at the type of people who were willing to pack up and leave for the west back then — confident people who believed in the future and wanted new challenges. That carried over the decades and is still why the west attracts people.
I grew up in the east and moved to the west at age 21. Didn’t look back.
The sad thing is that liberalism is destroying the western ethic slowly but surely. It’s a different place than 40 years ago (though I do have to admit the brown air is gone and we see blue skies a lot more — kudos to emission controls!)
You’re right about Seattle traffic! Luckily, we had apartments down by Elliot Bay and worked in the “Beaver Building”, so we were able to walk to work. I got to stroll through Pike Place daily. :-)
We shared a car for shopping.