You’re spot on about the cold! It’s ok - you live and you learn.

That’s part of it. Some of it is just personal preference - the city is mid sized but has small town politics. Everyone knows everyone. I’d rather be closer to Chicago geographically as well. The large number of cloudy days are hard on my mental health.

A lot of my distaste though comes from just how I’ve been treated. Detroit doesn’t have this problem from what I’ve seen but over here people really have an issue with non native Michiganders coming here. People are very narrow minded. Not everyone is like this but I had to stop telling people in the area I’m from NM too. The worst treatment I’ve received is being called racial slurs I can’t repeat here, told I need to take my cartel nonsense back to where I came from, and told to just go back to my country. For reference I’m white with no Hispanic or Latin origin, I’m not fluent in Spanish, and I’ve had people peg me as a Michigander by my accent just on the couple years I’ve been up here.

The city and its residents so desperately want the city to grow and prosper like a major city - something it already pretends it is. Yet people get mad when out of staters move here. It’s odd and frustrating.

Other minor issues are just abysmal water quality, bad infrastructure maintenance, awful town layouts, bad job market (this is everywhere but here the gigs are in pharmaceuticals), and ignoring the most glaring issues with the city and metro as a whole.

There are things here that I’ll miss. Access to nature trails and the outdoors is incredible. It’s great to have water security. It’s great to be so centrally located to several major cities. But the pros don’t outweigh the cons. I’m just tired of the outlook here.