I have had very similar thoughts. I've only visited Hawaii for a short while, but I imagined the same thing - it's beautiful but actually living there would be

I have had very similar thoughts. I've only visited Hawaii for a short while, but I imagined the same thing - it's beautiful but actually living there would be hard. I also arrived at the same conclusions about big-city life, though I had been living in DC, not SF. Now I live in the Northwest which has become my favorite part of the country by far. At first I was fiercely unwilling to ever consider moving away, because I loved it here so much, but the longer I am here, the more I see that falling away. I don't want to always have one foot out the door. We moved around several times when I was a kid and I've always envied people who have roots in one place. But I suspect it will always be this way for me. At the same time, I don't have the desire to get out of the US that some of my friends have. I suspect that though the US has its problems, other places do too, and the grass is always greener as you say.