Imagine moving to a new city and living your best life. 3 months ago, that’s exactly what my friend Rebeqa did. She took the leap, hightailed across the globe, and set off on a new journey. (She’s kind of awesome like that.) Now that the chaos is settling the fun begins: today we sat down to think through cultivating her new SENSE OF PLACE AND HOME.
She wants to feel inspired in her home and her new city – live her life fully integrated, and engaging in activities she enjoys. It’s so easy to just run around focused on work and forget to fully LIVE in your home city. We could all use a little intention setting around this.
So we sat down today to write a big ole list of things to discover!
🏡 1. Making a new house a home.
• Designing Activities Zones
• Rest and Relaxation Area! (Including setting out her Oculus, coloring books, and art supplies.
• Thinking about color and texture and smell
Because she works remotely, she wanted to define a new workspace that doesn’t make her dislike the vibe of that area of the house during non-work hours. Ultimately, we determined she could do some sort of visual reset – like a “relax plant” or “fur blanket” to nest in off hours.
Next step was to make a list of neighborhood integration. Find or ID her “places”:
• Library Card • Plant Store and/or gardening! • Crafts store (or art supplies) • Health store • Favorite Post Office (and how do you send registered mail?) • Easy access pharmacy
☕️ And for the priorities:
Coffee shops (vibes: “sit for hours”; “place that has food”; “place for working”; “Instagrammable and MOOD”)
And food options: • Late night reliable takeout • Backup quick meals out on the go (good burger! great Himalayan!)
A High Tea place.
💆🏻♀️ 3. We then identified self care options based on her preferred relaxation:
Spa-life: • manicures, massages, Korean spa, Hammam • Place (or people) to cuddle with animals (ie: Cat Cafe)
Green spaces within WALKING DISTANCE • City Parks, Hiking Parks within a 15 minute 🚗
We noodled here a little more:
• Picnic Spots • Places with a VIEW • Best Water Vistas (pond, river, lake, stream, ocean • Fancy Houses of Note “national registry houses”
Also, finding a local Independent bookstore run by a woman with cats (my addition, but seems right.)
👋 4. We wanted to identify places for her to learn and connect with people (other than say, bars and partying.)
• SALON/Intellectual Events • Local Startup Culture (there’s a startup hub) • Drawing Classes (she’s already been going and signed up for more! • Hiking Groups
🚌 5. Lean into being a tourist in your own home city.
• Tourist-ing in place “where to take people to visit” (ID Top 10 attractions; completing a city museum bingo)
• Tourist-ing within 3 hours of travel • When safe: fly fly fly! Visit Friends – according to best weather
🥦 6. Of high important to me personally: determine your Supermarkets of Note.
• Big one • Little markets • African Grocery Store • Middle Eastern market • Pakistani market • Pan-Asian market
Where do you get your special bread? Who is the best butcher? Ice cream shop?
Having moved to Europe she’s also on a quest for food exploration:
• Exploring the European Canon • Exploring the best of Immigrant Cuisine (Turkish Cuisine, Indonesian in the Netherlands, etc.)
Who is writing about this? (I’m on a hunt to find out if anyone has ideas!)
🛫 Given her newfound proximity to the rest of Europe (and beyond)
• 1x/ month travel: – Castle Checklist – Hikes (either short or long adventure) • Explicit Restorative Travel – Health Spas – Hiking • Unique Places to Stay: Caves, ice castles, see-through domes
🤝 Finally, a sense of home is rooted in finding your community. We talked about:
• An Emergency Support Network (your favorite octogenarians who will always look out for you, the person at the grocer who always has your back, friendly neighbors.
How do you find these folks?
🌱 After spending a few hours coming up with a long list, I’m so thrilled for her plans to root into place. Next up? Thinking about how I can do this for myself to better integrate in the place I’ve lived for years.
PS: if you love thinking about this kind of thing, one of my favorite ways to develop a sense of place is through reading, film, and music featuring the city you are in. Also, I highly recommend Strong Sense of Place – for travel and literary inspiration.
After a great 2019, and a middling 2020 for reading, and an even worse 2021 (lots of half read books with my attention as shot), here I am with my renewed sense of enthusiasm in the new year!
Having a reading list helps me make decisions about getting in quality reading without falling into decision making slumps. I aim to have a large percentage of my reading written by women, POC, and international writers; and typically read a handful of Man Booker short list titles. I typically make a list of my favorite categories, and then will supplement or swap as I find reading that calls out to me. I make room for the synchronicity of just picking up any random title, but I always have a backup!
A few notes and observations:
Audio Books: yes, I definitely count audiobooks as reading. I process information better when on my walks and runs, and thus prefer listening to memoirs or non-fiction this way. It’s also easier for me to stay engrossed and follow along while I’m moving physically.
Don’t forget FOOD! For the past several years, I read almost zero food memoirs, literature, or history – some of my favorite topics. So I made this one of my kitchen resolutions this year! (Again.) I’m also re-reading cookbooks
The library is your friend. While I always try to support local book stores – I’m also a huge fan of my local library – grabbing things off the Speed Read Shelf is my jam. Plus you can leave with a large stack and it always feels like I’ve won something.
As always, still working my way through my list of Personal Leadership Development Books, and the BBC Big Read. I also read quite a few business books for work – whatever I need to expand my ideas and sharpen my skills. Our team has quite a few readers, and an up and coming leadership book club has us reading (me re-reading Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly, next.)
January:
Re-read Atomic Habits by James Clear; Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg (done!)
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (done!)
We Should All Be Millionaires by Rachel Rodgers (in-progress!)
Beartown by Fredrik Backman
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Re-Read: Dare to Lead by Brené Brown (work book club)
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
What it’s Like to Be a Bird David Allen Sibley
Categories to choose from: (I often choose outside these, but I find that when I’m in the mood for a particular feeling, it breaks down by this type of category.)
YA fiction or Fantasy
Gallant by VE Schwab (March 1 Release)
Serpent and Dove by Shelby Mahurin
The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy) by S.A. Chakraborty
In the Serpents Wake (Tess of the Road #2) by Rachel Hartman
Skyhunter by Marie Lu
Leadership / Business / Finance:
Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson
The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, Kaley Klemp
Think Again by Adam Grant (in-progress!)
Working Backwards by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
Writing and Creating:
The Practice: Shipping Your Creative Work by Seth Godin
Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon
The Boron Letters by Gary Halbert
Fitness and Health / Mindfulness / Brains
Listen Like You Mean It: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection by Ximena Vengoechea
How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
The Body, A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson
The Power of Kindness: The Unexpected Benefits of Leading a Compassionate Life by Piero Ferrucci
Gripping / Thrilling / Literary:
My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
The Hunger by Alma Katsu
Memoirs / Non-Fiction Reporting
The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish
Taste by Stanley Tucci
Eat a Peach by David Chang
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe
“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman
Books to Finish (technically there are many more half-reads over the past few years):
The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk
Dutch House (Audiobook?)
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
Circe by Madeleine Miller (may switch over to Kindle)
Every year I sit down and make some resolutions for the kitchen. Given that food is one of my favorite sources of joy, novelty, and connection, it’s a favorite practice of mine to spend a little bit of time making this space more useful, and my time spent in the kitchen more meaningful. Having people around my table (even figuratively) is how I show love, and bring people together – and although we can’t do much of that these days, I’m thankful to be able to take the time to feed myself well.
I’ve been writing these resolutions for more than a decade, and some of them pop up year after year – affirm doing good things that work – and a handful are new each year. You can take a peek through previous years here: (2012) (2016) (2017) (2018) (2019) (2020)
Re-Commit to Consistent Kitchen Habits: particularly the habits that keep me consistent in other areas of my life. I find that most things in my life depend on me eating well.
• Weekly Meal Planning: one of my home court habits • Update my regular groceries list (favorites, protein, don’t leave the store without this!) • Update my “New Recipes To Try” list
AND: Dishes cleaned before bed, coffee maker set. Coffee cup next to the coffee maker, ready to take on the day.
Remove Clutter: While some people find a perfectly spotless and minimalist kitchen ideal; I actually need to be able to see appliances or pantry items in order to be inspired to use them.
• Do a systems audit for blockages • Make what I want to use more obvious
Quest for Best: this is one of my personal values – I get a lot of satisfaction out of keeping track of the “best of”, like your own neighborhood consumer reports.
• Do a pantry audit, and re-stock pantry with “best of” items, update my spreadsheet
• Seek novelty: Bean of the Month Club, Spice Club, new item at Trader Joe’s or one new item at Formaggio each trip!
• Get your knives sharpened. Just do it! • Review storage containers for more sustainable options • Re-Read a classic cookbook every month • Read more food writing (and memoirs)
AND: Update my bucket list restaurants for when that’s a thing again.
Make Memories in the Kitchen
• Update Friends + Family Favorite List so I can cook in honor of my people and think about them (or cook for them!) If I haven’t solicited some from you, drop your favorites in the comments for me!
• Update Seasonal Favorite Cooking List
• Update my list of “Big Cooking Projects”
• Zoom Cooking classes with friends! (In 2021, I had a great time taking a truffle making course, and a Lamb Biryani from Pondicheri – looking forward to choosing a few great options to take with friends and family!
Do you have any kitchen resolutions this year? I’d love to hear about them!
The Second Lunch is a (mostly) food blog by Sam Tackeff about recipes, food writing, ingredient hunting, travel, healthy living, fitness, and everything in between.
Please do not steal! Email me at sam [at] thesecondlunch.com – if you’d like to use one of my photos, and I’d be happy to share my terms. Thanks!
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