Hey OP, I totally feel ya. I fell in love with Scuba Diving out of all places, in Arizona. We have pretty much one lake here that we dive in. There is definitely some interesting stuff to see in it and a good few dive sites around it (enormous lake) but it does get kind of redundant and boring after awhile. The problem is, in the summer the viz goes to crap, but the water is nice and warm (75F / 24C +). In the winter, the viz is pretty good but the water is pretty cold (54F / 12C on our last dive). I am pretty tolerant of the cold but my girlfriend who fell equally in love with diving as I did is small and gets cold very easily.
We are within a 7 hour or so drive to coastal California but it's just far enough that making a "Weekend" trip out of it means you really need 3 days and I work M-F at a job that doesn't like giving off days. So my plan at the moment- what I'm looking into, is moving to Florida. I mean, why not? If you love and have a passion for something why not live close to where you can do it often? I don't make a ton of money so traveling a whole lot, at least for the time being is out of the question, but I love diving so much! I'm thinking of moving to the Miami area (the folks here were super nice and helped me with some suggestions of diving shops to check in the area). I can work there, dive there and I love the beach life anyways.
That's my plan at least. I know different people have different circumstances, maybe friends, family, good jobs tying them down to a particular area but if you don't, I'd say look into areas that you can enjoy your passions/hobbies/etc.
