Here’s a startling truth: No matter how much you adore your city, there are people who hate it. Like, really can’t stand it. It’s strange, isn’t it, how two people who live in the same place can experience it in such vastly different ways? And yet 99% of the time, the city into whose soil you’ve dropped deep and happy … Read More
Doing These 3 Things After a Vacation Will Make You Happier
Why does everyone hate tourists? Because we gawk. We rhapsodize about boring stuff like buildings (“Oh my gosh, the architecture!”). We snap pictures of subway entrances and sandwiches. In short, we pay attention in a way we usually don’t in our owns hometowns, and that focus and excitement reawakens us to the thrilling power of place. In fact, a really … Read More
What Your Dream Vacation Says About You
Where you go on vacation is usually curtailed by annoying practicalities like bank accounts and work obligations—two reasons why my spring break trip took me on a three-hour road trip to Richmond instead of, say, the UK or a Hawaiian island (check out here the list of the best tours on Maui). But if money and time were no object, … Read More
Can friends make you love where you live?
In 2005, my sister Heather was basically living inside her own real-life version of Friends. She and my brother-in-law were renting a two-bedroom apartment in a complex in Tustin, California, where no fewer than eight of their best friends and relatives had also taken up residence. A band of super-social newlyweds, they were hanging out all the time. Squeezing into … Read More
How much do you love your city?
Tell your friends in Iowa that you’re moving to Austin, Texas, and they squee with a weird combo of joy and jealousy. They maybe get misty-eyed, or tell you how lucky you are. “Austin is a great city,” they say solemnly. “You’ll love it.” Hear this enough times and eventually you become a believer. Moving to Austin makes us the … Read More