There are a lot of reasons why I am happy that I was born in the state that I was born in. I have been to quite a few other states but I have only ever lived in this one and I think I am very fortunate that this, by happenstance, is the place where I have called home for over 40 years.
For starters we have both mountains and the beach here. Sure there are other states that can claim that they have better mountains or better beaches but there are very few that have the right balance of both in the state. I can be at the beach one day and hiking in the mountains the next as well.
We also have a very manageable population in that there aren't too many of us. Outside of Charlotte and the RDU (Raleigh Durham) area, none of our cities are hyper populated. This means that traffic jams are a rarity and that is especially the case over where I live on the sound of New Bern. When I talk to friends of mine that live in "famous" places to live such as New York or Los Angeles, the stories they tell me about traffic jams and loads of people being all around kind of frighten me and I can't imagine living in that sort of environment. You could offer me a place to live for free in either one of those places and I would rather pay to live where I do.
We've got a lot of great and most importantly FREE places to visit in nature and there are plenty of lakes and rivers here as well.
We also have all 4 seasons but none of them are too extreme. Sure we'll have a couple of really cold weeks in January and February, but for the most part we avoid any sort of extreme weather hot or cold.
This is from Asheville but, which is at a slightly higher elevation than near sea level where I live but you can see that none of the temps are that extreme. It rarely gets below freezing where I live and in all the years that I have lived here I have only experienced a singular time in which there was so much snow that businesses, schools, and other things were forced to close. A lot of snow can be fun I guess, but I don't think anyone is going to argue that it can be a real pain in the ass.
We also have relative freedom here but I suppose the benefit of that kind of depends on how you feel about overall way of life. The fact that we have a nice mix of conservatives and liberals here kind of ensures that none of our policy makers are ever going to do anything too extreme. Hell, I don't even mind the fact that our governor is a Democrat. He knows better than to do any "gun grabbing" or other liberal ideas here because even his supporters generally agree with many conservative ideals. Our near 50/50 mix of political supporters is what makes us one of those famous "swing states" and while most people tend to think about this in a Presidential sense, it also affects the way things are done in the State of North Carolina. Our communities tend to be a nice mix of both and none of them are too extreme. We don't have any right-wing militias and we also don't have BLM riots that take over the streets. This isn't because the authorities are all up in our business either, it is because the good mix of right and left that we have in this state tends to take care of things on its own.
I don't want this post to end up being political but this is just an example. We are damn near 50/50 split in nearly every election. This was true as far back as I remember and I think it is a good thing. Nothing too extreme happens really anywhere except for maybe Charlotte because everywhere outside of college campuses have a true sense of being moderate. I think the rest of the country would really benefit by having a similar political makeup as here.
Although I've talked about it many times before, our lack of any real affiliation with any one major party lead to us being able to decide on our own, basically county by county, whether or not we were going to adhere to Covid regulations. The governor here did what most other governors did and that was to shut things down. Over here in the East we adhered to this for maybe about a month but then as a community we decided that we were not going to do them anymore. The media attempted to vilify us and the governor denounced us stating that we were killing our own people but yet he never sent the national guard out or tried to compel the sheriff to try to force us to bend the knee to the emergency laws. We decided as a community what was best for our community and honestly, that's the way I feel it should be.
There aren't many other states that did this but lo and behold we are still alive and kickin over here and for the most part North Carolina remained and remains a peaceful place to live.
Even though I have lived in basically the same place for over 40 years, I wouldn't change a thing. If someone were to offer to pay for me to have the opportunity to permanently move to anywhere else in the world, I would choose to not leave. That's how great it is.
So if you ever feel like where you live is dragging you down whether it is because of weather, nature (or lack thereof), population, or politics, I think you could do a lot worse than relocating to North Carolina