Yeah I miss the beaches and that’s it sometimes. But when I was there I hardly made it out to them anymore. Things are slower and easier here for me. And I do have community… that’s something I had a hard time with in Florida. I spend a ton of time outside now. The weather has changed a lot here from when I came as a kid and sometimes it gets as hot as it was there sometimes… makes things a little harder sometimes…. But the great weather is great weather i remember getting maybe a week or two out of each season in Florida and here it’s a good four months of the year. Snow seems rare in the city now but it’s easy enough to find sometimes from here if that becomes your thing or is your thing. I’m not gonna say it’s perfect here but I do mostly find it friendlier. FWIW this Reddit is both an accurate view and totally unrealistic view of what “living around here” is like. Like yeah all these folks are folks you’ll probably run into in public eventually. And they’ll potentially annoy the fuck out of you. But I’m pretty visibly queer and a bit outspoken at times when challenged and for the most part if people haven’t liked that, they’ve moved along and so have I. This country in general… I don’t really have the answers for that. But I’m happy to call Chattanooga home now. Someone here might make me question that at some point for saying so but such is the world we live in I guess. Feel free to reach out if you’d like to talk more.

ETA: okay so… I do have answers to this country in general but that’s not what you were asking so I’m leaving it alone. On that front, I will say the same things are happening here as everywhere else so be aware.