Houses in Cincinnati are cheap. In a decent area of town you can get this house for about $500/month. You are still in a city with a good solid economy, 20 minutes from fuck all of nowhere, less than 10 hour drive to Phily, Chicago and Washington DC and can actually LIVE on two 24,000 a year incomes. Same for a lot of the Ohio River Valley. Tennessee is a bit pricier, but the economy is a bit more varied and if it exists and you can get good at it, you can find someone willing to hire you. The big cities out here like Louisville, Lexington, Indianapolis, Cincinnati have everything you can get in the big cities on the coasts to a pint but you can afford to live out here and follow some of your passions. You are not going to make 500K when you sell your house, but then again you are not spending 70K a year in rent, either.

Probably not Appalachia,

Good call. Awesome country, simply beautiful, but the people who live there are getting screwed by factors out of their control and the reality has not sunk in just yet. Appalachia is basically the same implosion of families, communities and politics we saw in the inner cities in the 70's and 80's only rural and in slower motion.

Back in the '02-'03 dot bomb I got the chance to move out here and took it. I figured I'd wait for the job market in California to recover and move back. Turns out, my mortgage including escrow is $450 a month for an acre, I get paid enough to fully vest my 401K and I get to do the fun stuff that keeps me sane and happy.

I'm serious about the whole "take a drive" thing. If nothing else it gets you away from home for a few days and allows you to reset yourself. And don't worry about venting, it helps to get this stuff in writing so you know where your head is at.