What makes you happiest?

Recently no longer employed (due to Covid). Have a career with very few roles nationally and most roles are in top 4-5 major cities. Going to smaller cities means a 40-60% paycut. Priority is to be happy. As a single person I’m gravitating towards younger cities such as Austin however the lack of roles and lower pay for the couple roles available will make saving enough for retirement extremely difficult. Larger cities have more roles that pay much better but the city and roles are more of a grind. While job offers are ultimately not in my control, I want to put my self in a position to succeed, understand where I’d like to be, and become comfortable with what that mean financially. So the question is, how do I do that? What have others experienced moving from smaller to large cities for more money? Larger to smaller cities for less money?