Some don’t want to have this convo, but the quality of life in the average central New Jersey town is superior to 90% of the country. You’re an hour from the greatest city in the world (and Philadelphia also), less than an hour to lovely beach towns and excellent restaurants.
Highway 1 between San Francisco and Big Sur is the kind of breathtaking beauty that was life changing for me as a New Yorker when I first encountered it. Totally bonked on the head with awareness of the divine, as if with a cartoon mallet.