Have I told you I love my city?
Recently, I had my five year anniversary with the city I moved to in 2021.
Having an anniversary with a city probably sounds pretty dramatic. But I'm a nostalgic person and, honestly, this city changed my life.
I moved here in between COVID lockdowns. I had no idea what I was doing and I knew no one. I just had a good feeling about this place. Five years later and I've built a life that I really love.
I have friends I've made over the last five years that are like family (like my OG housemates/adopted parents who took a stray 20-year-old under their wing). There's restaurants and cafes whose menus I know off by heart, and I can rank a lot of places by the quality of their almond croissants because I've tried a lot of them. There are spots in the city with views that make my heart feel so full, and if you've ever been there with me you've heard me say, "God, I just love this place". I have been incredibly broke and sad here, and now slightly less broke and incredibly happy. I know the best backstreets for parking near the beach in the middle of the summer and the best running routes to minimise the amount of road crossings and traffic lights.
I read this quote in a book years ago, and I've thought about it often over the years.
Learning to navigate a new city and all its secrets can be overwhelming, and there will be days when you feel like you made a mistake.
But slowly, the city will open itself up to you. You'll make new friends, arrange to meet them in bars and restaurants that are becoming fast favourites. You'll laugh and you'll cry, but about things that are happening now and not things that happened back then, in that place you left.
You'll wake up early and sit in the stillness of the morning light, sipping coffee made by people who know your name and how you like it. You'll walk through streets and notice houses with interesting details that touch your heart, and listen to music that reminds you of a park you sat in last week. You'll date people in the city, and some of them will feel more exciting than others, but none of them will feel essential to your happiness, which is richer now and more robust than it was before, when you thought the only way to have it was to give half of it away.
You will do all of these things until the city is no longer big and unfamiliar and lonely and terrifying but has suddenly, inexplicably and unexpectedly become your home.
And one day, you will take a newly arrived resident out and you will show them all the things about the city that are wonderful. You will show them the things that saved you when you were scared and lonely. You'll take them to the top of a hill to show them how the city looks at the exact time the sun hits it in late afternoon, and you'll tell them where to find the best coffee and which real estate agents to avoid. You will show them what life can look like. What it will look like.
This is your city now. This is your home.
Welcome home.
Now, the author was using that as a metaphor for being single (LOL), but who cares about context? I love that quote and feel that it wraps up most of my feelings about this place.
Anyhow! I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how much in my life has changed over the last five years, and how much I have changed. So then I of course got to thinking about what I'd like to see change next. And I realised there's one thing I've been thinking about a lot over the past couple of years but never really acting on: how much I dislike social media.
I decided to start this next year here by taking a bit of a step back from the socials. Once I pull everything I want to be able to use from it, I'll be deactivating my biggest time sink, Instagram. I don't love today's forms of social media but I love what social media originally promised - connection and fun ways to share. This blog is a fun way for me to share a little, whilst staying off the addictive platforms with their algorithms and infinite scroll.
So I guess this is both a love letter to my city and a "hey, I'm off most socials" so the best way to keep up these days is just by a message (text or FB messenger) or a phone call! Or subscribing to the blog via email to get my longer thoughts when I choose to share them.
