Live where you want to live. The ability to live anywhere, yet work as an airline pilot in a different base is absolutely amazing. I have commuted all 5 years now and I have very few complaints. It is a one leg commute 5+ options a day and it’s not a horribly long flight.
Now the key here is you have to be smart about where your going to work. If your living out West (and are not going to move) you can’t realistically consider an airline with only 1-2 bases and all east coast. At least for a regional, HELL no. If it’s a legacy, well they all have bases in the same geographic areas so you will eventually get somewhere close to home. You might have to do DEN-EWR for
A bit, but eventually your going to get DEN or IHD, LAX etc.
Skywest is definitely the way to go. I would also look at Envoy. DFW commute wouldn’t be bad and you have a flow in your back pocket.