San Francisco--why it didn't work out

J and I have been talking recently about what went wrong here, and we've narrowed it down to these things:

1) J's job situation colored our perceptions. No doubt about that. However, that probably wouldn't have been a deal-killer except for:

2) San Francisco's charms were basically lost on us. As I may have mentioned, neither of us wants to live smack in the middle of a big city. We prefer to live outside of the city, preferably in somewhat rural suburbs, but with easy access to the city's offerings. In the town where we settled down, San Francisco was a bit too far away, and we found that the positive aspects of the SF Bay area didn't extend all the way out here. We moved to this town because it was affordable, but we might as well be living in Anywhere, USA.

3) Massachusetts had a bigger impact on us than we realized. We loved the weather, the landscape, the general atmosphere. Oddly, Seattle reminds us a lot of Boston, and many of the suburbs remind us of the towns we loved in Massachusetts--Sudbury, Acton, etc. Now that we've seen California, if we ever wanted to live in an warm climate again, we'd prefer to move back to Austin, Texas. We have family and friends there, and like the city (and there are the necessary rural suburbs).

4) The area is just too expensive. We really, really missed owning our own home. Even if this was the only negative, it would have worn us down eventually.

I think that's everything. That said, I'm ready to move forward!