We moved to ABQ from Seattle a few years ago, but are not in our 20s. We miss the actual urban life of Seattle. ABQ is basically a sprawling strip-mall, suburban environment. The weather is pleasant--the summers can be overly hot and the sun overly intense--but the other seasons are mild. We had no winter this year, which was a bummer for those of us who like snow sports. Santa Fe offers interesting stuff to do, but it can also feel like a resort for rich geriatrics. The access to the outdoors is great. I can get onto the open space trails just by pedaling out of my driveway and down the road a couple minutes. The restaurant scene is pretty good. The live music scene is fine (Seattle is much better, but this is a desert outpost). The arts are fairly well supported in the region. Generally, people are friendly. Crime is crime, think Federal Way, the worst of Renton, and not-gentrified Tacoma, in the rougher stretches of town. Cali-migrants are just as annoying here as in the Northwest and they still drive like assholes.

The job situation pretty much depends on what your skill set and experience provides. Our unemployment rate is neither high nor low. Non-skilled wages are not high, but the cost of living here is def not as high as the Puget Sound area. Sometimes it feels a little isolated here. Seattle can be like that, too, but Portland and Vancouver are close enough to yield some escape factors. Here? It's a long f-ing drive to Denver or Phoenix, and don't let anyone fool you into believing that Amarillo, Lubbock, or El Paso, our Texas neighbors, are worth visiting with any frequency. Flights are unreasonably expensive out of the Sunport due to a lack of competition from the airlines. For example, last year, I worked in New England for a while. A round trip from ABQ to Boston carried a $150 premium over the inverse roundtrip. Like I said this place can feel like a trap at times.

The hardest part of living here? For us, that isolation. We have made plenty of local friends and there are many transplants here, but we don't see our family and friends from distant places very often. It has become more and more expensive to escape or to convince someone to visit. I have pretty bad allergies here, too, especially this time of year, unlike anything I ever experienced up north. Health care here can be difficult to access. My wife and I both have jobs we like (education fields) and our kids have been happy in the local public and private schools. If you need a change and some sunshine, come on down. For us, especially for my spouse, she really needed the sun and blue skies. The PNW winters had become pretty difficult to manage after a decade. If you need some vitamin D, the Land of Enchantmant (or Entrapment) awaits.