A recent study (pdf) measured happiness by tracking geolocated tweets:
Overall, the happiest tweets were those composed far from home. Messages sent from 1,500 miles or more away included more positive and food-related words (beach, new, great, park, restaurant) and fewer negative or profane ones (no, don’t, hate, can’t, damn). The next happiest group of tweeters were those close to their homes, who used more words like lol, love, like and good. The least happy tweeters were those who weren’t quite at home but weren’t far from it, either. The researchers associated this distance (about half a mile) with a bummer of a daily commute.
So, even if you can’t take a vacation in the near future, remember the moral of the story, as the study frames it: “Individuals with a large radius use happier words than those with a smaller pattern of life.”
The Dish 