I’m one of those that moved my family from CA to Austin during the pandemic. We wanted cheaper housing and more space, and told ourselves Texas is the future.

We pretty quickly learned that Texas does not feel like the future. The traffic was surprisingly worse than where we moved from (Orange Co), we had an incident with some nut that harassed us at the grocery over wearing a mask, and the weather was absolutely unbearable. We don’t drink or watch sports so it felt like there was nothing to do besides sit inside our air conditioned home in a quiet neighborhood and occasionally get really good barbecue.

We made it almost 3 years, but but the bullet and moved back. California has its shortcomings too, but we have a newfound appreciation for it and will probably never leave.