Melody Warnick

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Melody Warnic, a freelance journalist who has written for Reader's Digest, oh, The Oprah Magazine, Read Book,

The Atlantic City Lab, and dozens of other publications. She is the author of This Is Where You Belong, The Art and Science of Loving the place you Live. The book explores how we come to feel at home in our towns and cities. She dives into the body of research around place attachment, the deep sense of connection that binds some of us to our cities and increases our physical and emotional well being. She then travels towns across America to see it in action. Here's the interview. Hi, Melody,

welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me here. I'm happy to talk to you because your book, and we'll get into more detail after we do the Parable. But the book is really about becoming happier in the place that you live, how you can connect your community in the place that you live, and how that can increase happiness. So I'm looking forward to digging into that a little bit more. But before we do that, let's

start like we always do with the Parable. And in the Parable, there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather, and he says, well, grandfather,

which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well. I realized after thinking about this that this is basically what the entire book is about, is about making choices and learning to choose

the better angels of your nature. My story, or the thing that led to me writing This Is Where You Belong was that UM I was living in Austin, Texas and this was um the fourth state I've lived in with my family, and we weren't totally loving it, which is completely weird because everyone loves Austin, Texas. And when a new job opportunity opened up for my husband in Blacksburg, Virginia, Virginia Tech, we jumped at it. And it really was

very much about having a fresh start. Um. You know, things get difficult in your life, or you don't love your neighbors, or you don't love your house, there's something incredibly appealing about just leaving it all behind and starting over. And I that was kind of the goal was moving again. Except we moved and we got to Blacksburg, Virginia, which is this small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwest Virginia. And I didn't like it very much either.

You know. It was this tiny, little southern town and it was foreign from anything I'd ever known. And immediately that same desire kicks and well, we're just gonna have to move again, Like this isn't it. We have to find another place. And I realized that I was at this point of decision. I could either just keep moving and keep feeding this desire for novelty and change and restlessness, or I could commit where I was, and I could make a choice to learn to be happy in my

town where I was right now. So it's kind of like, you know, I think most of us have those competing desires between wanting to stay and wanting to move on, and when is it right to do either? And this book was my way of investigating the benefits of of staying and learning to be happy where you are. Yeah, you talk about in the book three types of people, people who are mobile like you, the people who are stuck,

and the people who are rooted. We tend to think of people who stay in one place for a long time as maybe having something slightly wrong with them, especially when we meet people who maybe still live in their hometown or live close to their family. That is not in our culture what upwardly mobile people do. Upwardly mobile people move a lot, you know, they go where the job is and they take the next opportunity, and they're kind of like always on the prow. So we think

of people who aren't like that as being stuck. But I realized, um, and this is something that the sociologist Richard Florida points out that there's this whole other category of people who are rooted. So they're not mobile, they're not moving around a lot, and they're not stuck because they actually want to be there. They're making a choice to stay in one place and make their life there and be part of the community and and be satisfied

with it. Yeah. And then there's the people who were somewhere between stuck and rooted, right, which seems to describe a lot of people I know who are They like it where they are, but there's a lingering feeling like, well, maybe I'll go somewhere else at some point. And I know it's it's a but it's an interesting way to

to think about your situation. My first question you would be around, so you moved to this town and you embarked on this process to try and learn to love the town that you're in, and and the book is really all about how you did that, the different experiments that you did, and a lot of the science and other writing out there that talks about how you do that and the impact that place has upon us. So I guess my first question would be have you learned

to love your town? That's like the spoiler, just like going straight, um, But yeah, I have. And it's weird because you know, I started working on this project and I wanted to become more attached to my community, and so I started, you know, doing all this research and figuring out, you know, okay, what makes other people attached and how can I apply that here in my town.

And there was like the cynical little part of me that's like, this is not going to work, and I might have to fake it because I'm writing a book about it and it's supposed to work. Um, And so like, as I got closer toward the end of the project, it was almost surprising to me that I'm like, holy cow, this actually has worked. Like, you know, there's definitely days when you know, I can acknowledge that there are things about my town that are annoying or you know whatever.

My community is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm totally satisfied living here, and I can't really imagine a better place for me or my family right now, like to have like this illness where I have a really hard time resisting thinking about that, you know, like thinking about, um, moving other places. Like I always pick up those real estate magazines whenever I'm on vacation, you know,

like what would it be like living here? Um? I think a lot of us do that because we kind of just like to imagine, you know, the road not taken. What would life be like if I moved to Vancouver, Canada, or New York City or whatever. But that's okay. But place attachment is choosing to stay, choosing to be happy where you are in spite of those temptations, you know, the other wolf telling you that life would be better

if you picked up and moved again and again and again. Um. And you know, in some ways that can be true. Certainly life is different when you move to a different place, But um, you lose something by refusing to commit to a town, refusing to invest in a community, You lose a lot of relationships, You lose the potential for a lot of growth and a lot of happiness, um, and a lot of commitment where you are. So I think what you're saying about place really applies to life as

a whole very much. So, right, We talked on the show a lot about how we can be in this sort of if then thinking like if I had X, if I had Y, then I would be happy. And I think we can do the same thing with place. We can think if we're somewhere else, then will be happy. And I think, like you said, I think there's a there's one level of that which is sort of curiosity about like, well, let me think about the road not traveled.

And then there's the other side of that, the darker side of that, which is we kind of feel like our life is always on hold until something happens that's different. So I think that it's it applies in in a lot of areas of life. Yeah, absolutely, I think, UM, a lot of us struggle with always looking toward the next big thing, the thing that is finally going to happen that is going to make our life complete, um, whether that's a place or a job or a relationship.

And I think the trouble part is that lots of times, once we achieve that we we can't set aside our restlessness. We have become so used to, you know, that anticipation of something better, that it becomes incredibly difficult to simply

be satisfied. So, you know, I wrote about place in this book, but I think you're absolutely right that it's kind of a a problem that's endemic to most areas of our lives, and I think especially for younger people that you know, we just get used to kind of hopping around from the thing and if something's not working out for you right now, instead of actually take the time and the energy to solve it, you just dump it and move on. So let's go deeper into some

of the things in the book that you do. The book is called This Is Where You Belong The Art and Science of Loving the Place you Live, and you end up coming up with about ten different strategies for loving the place that you live. And we're not going to go through all of them, but we'll touch on some of them. Let's start with the very first one, which is walking more. Where does that and why does

that help? So it's funny walking has become this really big thing in the circles of people who talk about place, you know, urban planners and architects and city managers, um. And partly it's because it's important to you know, the environment. We need to change the way we have become such a car centric nation. But when you walk, it gives you this ability to see your town in a completely different way. Um. I've had that experience here in Blacksburg. I'm I'm not a runner um for exercise, but I'm

a walker. Um. And when you're walking, you're going at just the right pace to actually notice the things around you. You see things that you can't see in a car, and it gives you a sense of connection to what you're surrounded by. Sometimes that happens in social ways, like you actually run into people. There's a dog a couple streets over, and you know, I've met the dog's owner, and now I know that the dog is named Mango. And I always right, exactly, I always say hi to

Mango when I go past. Um. But simply being out in the neighborhood you know, I noticed that there's you know, plastic flamingos in this neighbor's yard, or that this neighbor painted their door turquoise or something, And it sort of gives you a sense of ownership over your place, which you know, aside from the obvious benefit of you learn your way around, and that can make you feel more comfortable in a in a new place, but you start to think of it as yours. You know, this is

my neighborhood. I know this neighborhood. I know how to get around, I know where everything is, and that makes me feel more comfortable here. Walking seems to be, in addition to the people in the urban planning movement, et cetera, also seems to be having a bit of a moment, just as an overall approach to life. Apparently, I read recently that it is the least quit exercise, as in, people who walk do that more consistently and keep doing it for a long time than people who do any

other type of exercise, Like it's one that's very sustainable. Yeah, personally, that's why I've chosen walking as my exercise. I have a lot of friends who run and who keep trying to entice me to run with them. You know, my daughter does cross country, and so clearly there's something wrong with me, and I just it does not appeal to me. Walking, on the other hand, it feels like normal life, and so I can trick myself into doing it, you know, like I'm just walking to the library. You know, I'm

not exercising, I'm just running an errand. Um. And so when I moved to new place, I always you know, I look up the walk score and I try and get in a neighborhood that is walkable to you know, shops and and stuff. Unfortunately for me, I'm in walk distance to a really great French bakery. Um. That has not been good. But you know, I think walking, um, it creates a sense of vibrancy in a neighborhood. UM.

And that's really changing nationally. You know, the National Association of Realtors did a study a few years ago, and um, now more people want to live in walkable, bikable neighborhoods than want to live in car centric neighborhoods, which is one of the reasons why people are moving back to the city's. They don't want to have to drive everywhere. They want to be in a place where they can, you know, walk or bike and feel part of the community,

and that really helps. What's a walk score? I mean, I know because I read the book, but for the listeners they might not know, because I didn't know until I read it. So walk Score is a website. Um, a guy in Seattle made this, and you can punch in your address and it pops out a score on a scale zero to one hundred based on how many places you can walk or bike um from your house. So if you have restaurants that are within a half mile, or you know, schools or churches or things like that,

your walk score goes up. So I think there are neighborhoods in New York City in San Francisco that have walk scores in the nineties and one hundred, you know, like a perfect score of one hundred. My walk score where I live in Blacksburg, I think is like in the fifties or something. But I do live within walking distance of some restaurants and grocery stores, and that, you know, that makes it a fun place to to get out. Yeah. Well, in a quick check here, apparently my walk score is

not so great. Where do you live? I live in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. Columbus is a great city. Columbus is a wonderful city. Um. Apparently that well, it's a forty one, so certainly some places in Columbus would have a very high walk score. In other places in Columbus would have a walk score even lower than mine. Um. I think that there's there's a little bit of everything close to me, but not much variety in it, like you know you're gonna get like one or two restaurants

and that sort of thing. Oh, Chris just did his uh house which is where we are recording, and he's got an eight seven. That's amazing. He d seven is fantastic. Unfortunately, Chris doesn't walk more than four steps if he doesn't have to. But I'm kidding, he actually is a walker. Now that he knows about the walk score, he's going to feel motivated exactly. So, you did list ten things that help you to love the place you are. Did you find any one of them to be more transformative

than the others? For me, it was probably doing something fun um and that relates a lot to one of the main things I learned from this project, which is that there is no such thing as a singular city, that cities are always just what we perceive them to be. And let me explain what I mean by that. As part of my research, I went on a trip to Sierra Vista, Arizona, and it's this town in the south

of Arizona, and they were doing a branding project. And as part of the branding project, I walked around town and talked to people who lived there and just kind of asked them what they thought of it. And so I had just had a long conversation with a woman who owned a bakery there and just said what a great city this was, and she was so lucky to

raise her family there, and the weather was great. And I went to the mall and I talked to a young woman who was working at you know, one of those cell phone chios, and she said, Sierra Vista is the worst city in the world. It is such a whole I keep trying to live leave and I keep getting sucked back in. I wish I could escape this place.

And you know, the cognitive dissonance of that of realizing that you have two people who live in the same town that have completely vastly different views of where they live struck me. And you know, maybe that's an obvious point because we all know people who you know, love where they live and people who live in the same place and just hate it. But it made me realize that how we choose to view our town is a huge part of our experience there, that our town is

really just a bundle of perceptions. It is how we decide to see it. And so one of my big problems in Blacksburg was, you know, I came from Austin, which is a much bigger city. There's a lot going on, and here in Blacksburg it's a lot smaller, and people tend to complain that there isn't enough to do. So learning to love Blacksburg for me, in part, was just learning to see the things that Blacksburgh was good at

and do them. For me, that was dumb stuff like going to Virginia Tech football games even though I'm not a football fan and learning to like that, or you know, attending festivals in town. Just finding the assets around where I live and engaging with them instead of focusing on, uh, you know, my town doesn't have an amusement park and we don't have a big art museum, and this place is terrible. So you know, it's all just choosing the

things you're going to see in your town. And one of the things that you recommend is that people try and look at their town through the lens of where would you take visitors and asking other people in your town where they would take visitors to help you kind

of get a perspective on your town that's different. One of the things I've noticed is I have people visit Columbus, is that I see Columbus through their eyes, and I'm seeing it, you know, I sort of see it in a new way because I am, you know, doing the sort of things that there are to do in Columbus but that I don't normally do on my own right.

And you know, you could say, well, of course they like Columbus, because there's just they're just tourists and they're only here for three days and they're not seeing the real Columbus that I know, that you know has all its problems. And that is probably true to a point. But I think there's something really positive and beautiful about choosing to see your town the way you know, an outsider might see it. Beautiful things in your town, things

that it has going for it. There's a group called the UM Project for Public Spaces that's all about this idea of place making people you know, consciously trying to build community gathering places and making their towns better. And they have this idea of the power of ten and um.

You know, basically it's sort of this random number, but the idea is that if you have ten things in your town that you can do for fun, you know, ten spots that you would show a visitor, then you'll feel more satisfied there UM and the town will be more successful. That's definitely a good one to explore. And I think one of the things also that your book brought home to me was the active nature of trying to love the place that you are, because it's very

easy to get in a rut. You know. I talked to people a lot about like New York City versus Columbus. You know, in New York City there's ten times the number of things to do, if not twenty times the number of things to do as there are in Columbus. And what I realized, though, is that I do about one per cent of what there is to do in Columbus.

Because you know, life is life and you're busy, and and so I sometimes wonder, like, how much better is it for me to have of ten times more to do when I'm only doing a very small percent of what there is to do here anyway? And and your book is really about taking advantage of those things, right, And you know that's kind of the the wolves too, because I think, Um, for me, it's always sort of

a battle to force myself to do these things. Um, I'm an introvert, and I am perfectly happy to spend you know, every evening just watching The Good Wife on Netflix with my husband, and so doing these things in the community, you know, showing up for festivals and inviting the neighbors over and things like that, I kind of

have to force myself to do it. It is definitely not my nature necessarily, And I think for a lot of us that is in our nature that the laziness wins, and the self focused twins, and the sense of you know, just wanting to be internal to ourselves tends to win. So to start even thinking about the community or thinking about you know, investing in it, showing up to events, doing the fun things that your town has to offer, takes a little bit of energy. And a little bit

of extra effort that you might not normally apply. But I think what you're saying is exactly right. The more we sort of push ourselves to do those things that we wouldn't always do, um, you know, the tourist see things, or the stuff we did once when we moved there and have never gone back to do again. Um, the more we enjoy being in our place. And it doesn't mean that, you know, this is not like a fear of missing out thing where you have to be out

every night, you know, partying. Yeah. I've heard people say that about New York too, that they look at all the event listings and there's so many things going on and there's and of the sadness and realizing that they'll never do any of them, you know. Um. And I think part of that is the paradox of choice. I think actually you probably have a better chance of actually engaging and doing something when there's only two things going

on in your town and you get to choose. Yeah, I think there's some truth to that, And I think that to your point, I do think there's a active choice and an effort in choosing to get involved because it is I mean, we're all, we all live very busy lives. You know, it's easy to get tired. There's a lot of complexity. Um, there's digital devices to draw us in like never before, and so that activity of getting out and doing things does take effort, and and

I think that's pretty consistent among people. I know it certainly is for me. I was talking to something about this the other day. I was talking about skiing, and I every time I go skiing, I love it. But the thought of getting ready to go skiing, I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to be you know, like it's just there's so much effort to get to it,

and yet I'm always happy. And I also find that every time I forced myself sort of out into doing something that I wouldn't normally do, well, I'm going to just go to the museum today. Um, every time I do that, I always enjoy it, and I always feel good about it, and I almost always am like, I need to do this more. And so I do think you're right. It is a It is a focus on choice.

Another one of your things, which is one that I love to talk about a lot, because as I've gotten older and as I've looked at how you feed your good wolf more. This one keeps coming up again and again and again, and it's been a very powerful one for me, which is exploring nature right, that was a big one for me here um has Blacksburg. I'm from California, grew up in southern California, and um Blacksburg has it's like the inverse of California. As far as scenery, It's

very tread and lush. There are these small mountains everywhere, and for people like me from the West, it can feel kind of claustrophobic. And that's how I felt moving here was that these were the evil forests and you know they were they were going to get me. It felt very enclosing um and in a way that I didn't enjoy. And the way we feel about how something looks,

the aesthetic value of our place is really important. Um. There's a study by Gallop and Night Foundation called Soul of the Community, and they looked into factors that made people feel attached to their town, you know, what made them love where they lived and feel happy there. And the three factors that kept coming up were um social offerings or when people feel like there's things to do, and people to do them with kind of like what we were just talking about. And openness or feeling like

your community is welcoming to all things people. Um. And the third one is aesthetics or feeling like where you live is beautiful. Um. And that always struck me as kind of a difficult one because how you know, your sense of aesthetics of a place's aesthetics seems so personal and internal, like you know, it's like your taste in music or your taste in books, like you like something or you don't. It didn't feel very like something that

you could control. UM. So when I realized the importance of loving the beauty of my town, I decided, Okay, I have to get over this. I have to feel better about it. And the thing that I did was I just started hiking a lot. Um. The Appalachian Trail runs not far from where I live. There's lots of hiking trails. That's a really outdoorsy kind of place. And um, I again with the forcing, forced myself to become an outdoorsy or person and spend a lot of time hiking

the trails around here. UM. And you know, doing some other stuff to camping and kayaking and things like that and simply having positive experiences in you know, these outdoor environments. There's a million health benefits to it. But it really did change the way I felt about it um and probably just because I had made these happy memories in

these different places. So now you know, when I drove past and I looked at these four us, I didn't see, oh my gosh, there's like a witch in there or something. You know, she's gonna get me. I saw, Hey, that's where I went on that big hike with my friends, and you know, the kids have so much fun, and it became this really positive thing. And you know that maybe you asked me at the beginning, do I love

where I live? And I do? And that may be one of the most dramatic changes I experienced that I love how where I live looks, and I didn't at the beginning. You know, I didn't really connect with this kind of nature kind of how everyone has what they gravitate towards, and some people of the ocean and some people love the mountains. And this was not my thing, but it has become my thing just by spending time in it. Yeah, that shows adapting very well to your

to your circumstances. There are ten of these, so we've only hit a couple of them, and so there's a lot of great ones out there that we're not touching on, and i'd encourage people to take a look at those, and we'll have links on the website to where they can get your book into your website and all that. But the one I want to talk about is buy local,

and I'd like to not maybe talk about. There's a lot of reasons why buying local is really good for your community, ways that are well beyond what most of us even know um and it's worth looking into if you don't know that, But I'd rather focus on for this why buying local helped you to love the place

you were. Buying local is a little different from some of the other things I recommend, because I recommend a lot of things that are beneficial for you, and buying local is more like one that's beneficial for your community, or at least that's what it seems like at first glance. But the project I did for learning to buy local was I decided to shop at this local toist or called Imaginations. And the thing you need to know about me is I am really cheap um I or we

should say thrifty because that sounds more positive. I'm I'm a pretty frugal I am frugal. I am conscious of my money. And the way I have been conscious of my money in the past is to buy a lot of things from Amazon and you know, the sale aisle at Target, um. And especially when it came to like buying presents for the birthday parties that my kids would get invited to, I would see a deal on Amazon and I would buy, you know, fifteen of the five dollar coloring book or whatever, and just put it in

a on the shelf and this was it. This was our present for this year. And so Imaginations is this independent, local toy store around the corner from our house, and I would wander in there every so often, and my daughters would always like beg for stuff and I'd just be like, no, like it's really expensive. I happen to

know we can get this cheaper online. And you know, I never wanted to shop there, but I one thing that I learned that someone said to me is if you don't want that store to disappear from your community, you have to support it. And I had never really

done that. In the past, like, you know, there have been so many bookstores and you know, cool clothing store or whatever that I'd go in and i'd like window shop the heck out of it, and I'd never buy anything because it always pained me to pay full price for anything. But I had this rethinking moment where I realized I valued this toy store in my town, like I loved looking at it when I drew past. I loved that it was there, and if I loved it,

I needed to actually buy things there. And so I made a commitment that whenever we bought birthday presents from now on, we would do it at that store. Um. The thing that's been really rewarding about it is I've actually come to realize that there are humans that own businesses in my town, which you know, was something that I never really thought about before because my interactions tended

to be online. You know, that's where I bought things, and I preferred it that way because I didn't want to have to, you know, interact with a human being. It's funny. I've gotten to know the owner of Imaginations, whose name is Paula, really well, and especially because of the book, because I write about her store in the book and I came and gave the book, and I mean, she was so happy. She's been so supportive of me. I just did a reading there. You know, she's she

is my number one fan in Blacksburg. And I you know, I think it's because she just loves her customers. She is she values them, which is not a target or an Amazon interaction. And so you know, I think we we develop relationships with the people who run these small businesses and they rely on us and we in a way rely on them, and it can be socially rewarding. I thought the thing that was interesting about that there

were a couple of things. One was that, you know, those things are referred to as commercial friendships, right, friendship exists because you go to that place to to conduct some sort of commerce. But that the science really shows that those are what we would call weak ties, and that those are very valuable in our ability to feel happy in a place and for our overall social well being, and so that those things do add value, maybe more

than we might give them credit for. Right, And when you think of it, like you know, when you're in a in a city or a community for a while, you accumulate social capital, which is based on all those connections you have with everyone in the community. And some of those relationships are really close your family and your close friends, people you're spending a lot of time with.

But most of the relationships we have are those weak ties where you know, it's saying hi to the checker at the grocery store or having a conversation with the person at the dry cleaner or the Chinese restaurant or whatever. And we tend to not think of those as mattering, but they do. There's something really primal and um powerful about having someone know your name, you know, when you

walk into a business. Yeah. I think the other thing about the book in general, I'll just say as a last thing before we wrap up, is that you have very what I would say, doable steps for each of these things. So it's not suddenly like you have to go buy everything local and walk everywhere you go, and you know, you've got a sort of what I would call sort of a baby step approach to some of that stuff, and you don't have to do a ton of it to make the changes in your life that

that you can feel about the place. This isn't a overhaul your entire life and never use Amazon again type thing. Right, And I will be the first to say I still buy stuff on amis and I still go to Target a lot um so I you know, but I try to be more conscious of it. And I think that's sort of the idea in general, is become conscious of your place, you know, become conscious of the fact that you're a member of a community, that you're contributing to it or can, and that there are a lot of

benefits to doing so. And you know, you don't have to redo everything in your life, but you rethink a few things and it makes a difference. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. I enjoyed the book, and um, thank you, thank you, Take care, bye bye. You can learn more about Melody Warnick and this po podcast at one new feed dot net slash Melody