It may be a common thing with young people. As a teenager and twentysomething I rued how "nowhere" my town was. There was no "scene" here. There were people who played music, but no music scene. There were people making independent films, but no independent film scene. I'm sure people were writing books and taking them to writer's groups and then sticking them in sock drawers, but there was no Algonquin roundtable. The Civil War reenactment scene was pretty strong, but that wasn't my, eh, scene.

Along the way there were signs maybe I was missing something. Julia Roberts is from a nearby suburb, and she's rather famous. The Black Crowes are also from my same county. Wayne Knight did all right for himself as Newman on Seinfeld and Mastodon's Grammy nomination probably didn't hurt their career any. John Mayer's many Grammy wins probably haven't set him back, either. And of course there's those Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame inductees, R.E.M.

However, in pretty much every instance their success was made somewhere else by people from somewhere else.

USA Today has me thinking maybe there's still something I'm missing, though.

According to their latest reports, my state of Georgia is the 19th happiest state in the union. That's not too bad out of 50. And surely New York and California, two states that definitely have scenes, are the happiest, right? Astonishingly, no! They're 50th and 46th, respectively! Maybe they foolishly don't realize that they have scenes the rest of us envy.

Well, so we've got a bunch of overweight married people sitting around being happy as they watch Dancing with the Stars. How about a good life for singles? How about being well-read? Turns out my state is number five in the nation on both counts! So I guess if I want to find a bookish-but-hot Lisa Loeb type I couldn't be in a better place to find her. Gee.

Now I just need a third report to tell me if finding this amazing life will require budging from behind this computer reading USA Today.