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To answer your first question, no, I don't have an inferiority complex about living in Michigan at all. Michigan has everything that I need; friendly people, beautiful weather April-November (and sometimes well into December or starting in March if we have a mild winter so really only 2-4 months out of twelve), wide open spaces, world class healthcare and institutions of higher learning, and, of course, the beautiful Great Lakes! I also don't mind at all that a lot of people don't want to move here because they are terrified of Michigan winters which ironically are often not all that bad. I could never feel inferior living in a place with so much going for it.
To answer your second question, yes, there are times when I think that the grass is greener, but that is only for a short period of time from December through March and then only if we are having a cold, snowy winter like we are this year. At times like this, I dream of living somewhere like the coastal southern city where we own a vacation condo and wonder what it would be like to have a winter with no snow at all. What generally cures me of this is reading the local news/crime reports for much of the areas where people are flocking to avoid cold winters. I would rather be safe than free of snow if given the choice, and where I live in Michigan, crime is almost non-existent.
OP, I also grew up in Ohio and lived there until I was 32 years old. I have no inferiority complex about telling people that I am a native Ohioan, because Ohio is a beautiful state with some amazing cities and even more amazing smaller towns. The landscape is pastoral, the people are nice and down to earth, the cost of living is relatively low, natural disasters are limited to a rare tornado here and there, and it is centrally located. If circumstances dictated that we move back to Ohio, I could be very happy there, more so than somewhere over hyped like southern California where $500,000 would buy us a shack or Phoenix (tried that once, NO thanks!) where everything but your eyeballs sweats 9 months out of the year.
Man, Cleveland is in a great place right now. You have all the assets of a major city (world class art institutions, ethnic neighborhoods, great craft breweries and restaurants, etc) with a Middle American cost of living. If I ever had to move, it would be Cleveland or Philadelphia due to their very positive assets-to-COL ratio.
Thank you! I believe that most people would agree with you. I do travel quite a bit and I mostly get positive responses when I say I’m from Cleveland. I think that Clevelanders and maybe Ohioans in general who believe all the world has a negative opinion of them are still living in the past.
Every city or state gets its share of bashing. I would suggest those who say they have never heard of the more popular cities ever being bashed go to their forums on CD. They might be in for a big surprise.
I grew up in a rural area of Kentucky, and when I was younger I always wanted to be able to say I was from somewhere that our society considered "cool". I would try and make stuff up about where I was from, but my accent would always give it away. As I got older I moved around the country a lot and traveled around the world. Now I've lived in seventeen different states and I currently reside in a state in the Southwest USA. One of the things I learned as I traveled more and more is that regardless of geographical location large groups of people are essentially the same in that every group of people you will usually have a few good, a few bad, and a bunch of average. In the end I learned that it's more how a person acts in their day to day life that determines what their life will mean, than what geographical location they grew up in. An analogy could be used with cars in that it doesn't matter where you manufacture a single car, it's how that car runs and works on a daily basis that will make all the difference. I work in a huge casino and my co-workers are from all over the world. In every sub-group that works in the casino its the same thing in that there are a few good, a few bad, and a bunch of average. It's the same thing everywhere else in the world within any large group of people. I assume it's probably always been this way and long after we are gone it still will be.
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