Deciding to move...how to tell whether it's me, or the circumstances?

[Zapbasket]

I'm considering moving from the area where I live. The one certain thing so far is that I cannot spend another winter in my current job. This gives me from now to the end of November to find something else. I could look for another job here, where I currently live, and that is something I intend to explore, but...I feel like as things stand, I can't see a future for myself here, for the following reasons:

 

--I feel like there's something specific to the culture here where it's unusually hard to make friends. I know a lot of people, and I know I am well liked generally, and there are people I care about and enjoy, but I feel like a lot of it is very superficial and I haven't been able to find a way to draw closer to people. Also, I feel like the way things are here (a mountain town), I haven't been able to find many opportunities to be among new people, where there's a continual exchange of ideas and experiences.

 

--I don't see a path to being able to develop a career that I want. The job I'm currently working is far beneath my qualifications, and as I look at other organizations here to work for, nothing feels like a right fit, but it seems like that's more because of the overall culture here that I'm just not drawn to or don't fit in well with, where the possibility of upward mobility just doesn't seem to exist.

 

--I'm single and again, seemingly because of the culture here, I don't see any guys that really interest me. They're all really into outdoor stuff, as am I, but I have lots of other interests (intellectual, artistic), that I feel the guys I'm around just can't relate to or don't really care about.

 

I'm aware of the danger of generalizing, but overall I feel there's just something wrong with the social culture here that I can't quite put my finger on, but I feel it, and have felt it since I moved here, and the feeling hasn't abetted. The thing is, how do I tell whether it's just me, and my perceptions, or my limitations that will exist anywhere else I live, or whether leaving here really will bring me closer to the kind of overall social engagement I'm looking for?

 

I feel like I've really hit a wall and I'm not sure whether I'm going about things with the wrong attitude, or am somehow limiting myself in a way or ways I can't yet discern, or whether this niggling feeling I have is a sign that I'm not where I need to be and I need to listen to it and take action.

 

I moved here from a huge cosmopolitan city, and so I wonder whether I'm just still trying to adjust to the small-town mountain culture. I don't have family here. I've had this continual feeling that I don't fit in here, but at the same time I have come to love and embrace the mountain lifestyle; I just feel lonely and unstimulated socially and career-wise. The career I'm trying to advance is one as a literary writer, which I realize is something I can do from anywhere, and isn't the thing that will pay my bills, or only by good luck. But sometimes I feel to advance as a writer, I need to be around others who are striving for the same thing, and there's not much of that here.

 

How do you strip down to what is about the PLACE you're in, and what is about YOU, and make as good a decision as possible regarding whether to move? Have others of you had experience with this and how did you decide?