I hear you, Steve! I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and love it, but I hate LA. I've optioned a few screenplays that required meetings in LA and negotiations with LA show peeps. All promises and big talk and lies. blech!
I always wanted to be writer, but I was always told that you can't make a living that way, and you have to have a real career. My parents also SAID I could be anything I wanted, but always followed it up with "But you should be a nurse." (My mother was a nurse, and a very good one, and loved it.) I did NOT want to become a nurse, so... I went to school to become a counselor, dropped out, got my massage therapy license, hated doing that, got married, got divorced, went back to school, got a degree in what was interesting (anthropology), discovered there are no jobs for undergrads in Anthro, started working for a bookstore, and ended up managing bookstores until Amazon ate the bookstore business. Now, I'm a writer, but Mom was right- you can't make a living that way, which is why I'm a stay-at-home house-wife to a computer engineer who makes a good salary!
*eyeroll* In other words, I'm a writer... Which is what I always wanted to be!