0:02

Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm

0:05

a mother of five, an author, journalist,

0:07

and speaker. And this is Sarah

0:09

hart Unger. I'm a mother of three, a

0:11

practicing physician and blogger. On the side,

0:14

we are two working parents who love our careers

0:16

and our families. Welcome to best of

0:18

both worlds. Here we talk about how real

0:20

women manage work, family, and time

0:22

for fun, from figuring out childcare

0:25

to mapping out long term career goals. We

0:27

want you to get the most out of life.

0:32

Welcome to best of both worlds. This is

0:34

Laura. This is episode two hundred

0:36

and sixty one, which is first airing

0:39

in early August of twenty twenty two. I

0:41

am going to be interviewing Melody Warnick,

0:44

who is the author of This Is Where You Belong

0:47

and a new book, If You Could Live Anywhere,

0:49

The surprising importance of place in

0:52

a work from anywhere world. So that

0:54

book deals with a common post COVID

0:56

topic. Many people can work

0:59

remotely now, and so if you can live anywhere,

1:01

where should you live? Melody

1:04

offers a framework for thinking this through, and

1:06

it turns out the answer isn't always

1:08

Austin, Nashville or Miami. Even

1:10

if it does seem like that's where everybody is

1:12

moving, you will notice that

1:14

it is just me talking in this introduction.

1:17

Unfortunately, Sarah wound up with COVID

1:20

during a recent trip and has a really sore

1:22

throat and a scratchy voice. So

1:24

she is resting and I am taking over for this

1:26

week, but I promise she will be back soon. So

1:30

back to Melody. I really liked Melody's

1:32

books because it is fascinating to me

1:34

why people wind up where they are.

1:37

You could say that my family moved to the

1:39

suburbs of Philadelphia for my husband's

1:41

job, and I guess that is the most accurate

1:44

way to say it, but that's not really one

1:46

hundred percent true. I mean, people can

1:48

transfer between his organization's offices

1:50

pretty easily, so really we could

1:52

have lived in a lot of different places. This

1:55

particular little town in Pennsylvania was

1:57

certainly not on a list of places I wanted to live

2:00

when I was growing up, But it turns

2:02

out I really like it. I mean, there's a lot to

2:04

like here. It's leafy, it's pretty, the

2:06

schools are good. We are close to Philadelphia,

2:09

so we can get the big city amenities. If we

2:11

want them like museums, sports teams,

2:13

concerts. We're ninety minutes from the

2:15

Jersey Shore, so that's a day trip, but also

2:18

ninety minutes from skiing and hiking in the Poconos.

2:20

The Poconos aren't, you know, exactly veil,

2:23

but they're not terrible, and it's nice that the kids

2:25

can ski or go tubing as a day trip.

2:28

I know Sarah and her family chose to live

2:30

near her husband's extended family in Florida,

2:33

which is certainly a great reason for choosing

2:35

a place to live. Of course, there's also

2:37

a lot to like about Florida as well, which is why

2:39

many people are moving there. They don't

2:41

have to leave the state to get to great vacation

2:43

destinations. I think the cost of living

2:46

is more reasonable, at least in parts of Florida.

2:48

Maybe not downtown Miami, but parts of Florida

2:50

than a lot of places. It's, of course,

2:52

very different from Pennsylvania, which is why

2:54

we all have to think through what aspects

2:56

of a place we most want to prioritize

2:59

when we're thinking about this anyway,

3:01

it is a thought provoking topic. Why

3:03

do you live where you live if

3:05

it's not just for a job, Why did you choose it? Or

3:07

even if it is for a job, there's something that you

3:09

know about looking at the place too when you're choosing

3:11

a job, so you know, ponder it.

3:13

Why do you live where you live? Is it where you want to live?

3:16

Do you see yourself there long term? Have you

3:18

thought about other places? I don't know. But

3:20

here we go with the interview with Melody

3:22

Warnick. Sarah and I are delighted

3:24

to welcome Melody Warnick to the program.

3:27

So Melody, can you introduce yourself to our listeners?

3:29

Yeah? I am Melody. I'm the author

3:32

of two books on thriving

3:34

where you live. The first is this

3:37

is where you Belong and the

3:39

second is if you could Live Anywhere?

3:42

And I have been a writer for many years

3:45

and you currently live in Virginia.

3:48

Correct, Yeah, that's a big part of what

3:50

you've written about. I

3:52

live in a little town in southwest Virginia

3:54

called Blacksburg, which is the home of

3:57

Virginia Tech. And how old

3:59

are your kids? Unbelievably,

4:02

they are super old. Now. I

4:04

have a twenty year old who's

4:07

in college out west at the University

4:09

of Utah, and a

4:11

fifteen year old who will be a sophomore

4:14

in college. So for anyone who has read

4:16

This Is Where You Belong, we moved

4:18

to Blacksburg when they were in

4:20

kindergarten and fifth grade, and that

4:23

is how long we've been here,

4:25

because I am still in Blacksburg, you

4:27

know, it's ten years later. And weirdly

4:29

they grew up along the way. It's

4:32

so funny because when you read other people's

4:34

books, it's like their children are frozen in time

4:36

at a certain point. So I was all prepared

4:38

to ask you questions about like, you know,

4:40

kindergarten, nurse and fifth graders they when

4:43

of course they're not anymore. No, they

4:45

used to be, and then they decided

4:48

to leave that behind and move forward

4:50

with their lives, which is yeah, like I do

4:52

not approve, but they did

4:54

it. They did it. Children

4:57

do grow up. Ye bad thing sometimes

4:59

is a good thing kind of depends what stage

5:01

of life were. And but your first

5:03

book, This Is Where You Belong, was

5:05

about making some place feel

5:08

like home. And I know a lot of people

5:10

have wound up in random places in

5:12

the courses of their lives, and certainly you

5:14

moved around a lot as well, and maybe you could

5:16

talk about that and talk about

5:18

what made you decide that this was

5:20

going to be home. Yeah, so this

5:23

is where you belonged. Was really a

5:25

personal journey for me. My

5:29

husband and I had moved six

5:32

times in five different states over

5:34

the course of thirteen years. And you

5:36

know, moving for the reasons people moved jobs

5:39

and school and my husband

5:41

got a job at Virginia Tech and that's what took

5:43

us to Blacksburg, Virginia, from Austin,

5:46

Texas. And we

5:49

had moved so much that I kind of given

5:51

into this magical thinking that every

5:54

time we moved, you know, this was

5:56

going to be the best place. You

5:58

know, this new place would change lives

6:00

and we'd move and realize

6:03

that, you know, it doesn't work

6:05

like that. Moves are a mess

6:08

and they're chaotic and their effort, and

6:11

so that's what happened in Blacksburg. We

6:14

chose to move knowing very

6:16

little about the community, just that it was kind of

6:18

this smallish college town. But

6:21

I built that up in my mind, you know,

6:23

this is going to be my Mayberry experience

6:26

and I'm going to become a small

6:28

town person. And we

6:30

moved and it wasn't what

6:32

I expected. You know, it

6:35

started raining every day and people are like, oh,

6:37

yeah, we call it Bleaksburg, and you

6:39

start to realize that you

6:41

are now settled in this place that maybe

6:44

is not what you wanted. It's not your dream

6:46

community. And we had

6:49

moved so much that, you know, my instant reaction

6:51

to that was, well, we'll just move again,

6:53

you know, like the way you solve that problem

6:56

is you move again. But at

6:59

the time, my kids were,

7:01

you know, kindergarten in fifth grade, they just

7:03

started school. My older daughter had gone to

7:06

school elementary school in three states

7:08

at that point, and my

7:10

husband had just started this new job, and I just thought,

7:13

we have to figure it out. We have to figure

7:15

out how to be happy where

7:17

we are. And so that kind of started

7:20

this whole journey that led to this is

7:22

where you Belong. I started researching

7:25

what has to happen for people

7:28

and what do people have to do to

7:30

feel like they're putting down roots

7:32

in a place, And turns out there's

7:34

a term for that in the scientific

7:37

literature, which is place attachment. So

7:40

it became this journey of seeing if I

7:42

could create place attachment

7:45

for myself in Blacksburg.

7:48

And the spoiler is we are still

7:50

here ten years later. We love it and

7:53

can't imagine living anywhere else right now.

7:55

And so it worked. The things

7:57

that they along the way worked.

8:00

Now, no one has to read the book save you so much.

8:02

Yeah, you're attached to the place, apparently very

8:04

very tightly attached to the place. But I'm

8:06

sure our readers should read the book. But maybe you could

8:08

share with us a few practical

8:11

things that you did to

8:14

make it feel more like home. Yeah. Absolutely,

8:16

So. There was a surprising amount

8:18

of scientific research tying

8:20

the way you feel about your

8:23

place to your actual behaviors

8:25

in a place. So people who are place attached

8:27

behave a little differently than the average

8:30

person. They do things like vote

8:32

in their you know, municipal elections,

8:34

They volunteer more, they

8:37

tend to get to know their neighbors better, and maybe

8:39

even you know, work with community members

8:41

to make some sort of positive change. And

8:43

so as I started reading through

8:45

this literature and just sort of looking at,

8:47

you know, what do people who really

8:50

love their town do? What

8:52

are they act like? I kind of developed

8:54

this theory that I was just going to start

8:57

doing some of those things in my town. And

8:59

I called them love where you Live experiments,

9:01

and they were just little action

9:03

steps, little behavior changes that I

9:06

did in my community, and that anyone could do

9:08

in their community. So it was kind

9:10

of easy stuff, honestly, things

9:13

like walking more where I live.

9:15

There's a research that shows that's how you

9:17

build a mental map of a place, especially

9:20

when you're new, and it's kind of a way to

9:22

experience your community at a human

9:24

pace that helps you meet people

9:26

and get to know it. And so I started

9:28

walking more. I started volunteering.

9:31

We have a nonprofit historic movie

9:34

theater called the Lyric, and I started volunteering

9:36

there, popping popcorn, still

9:39

do every week. I

9:42

made an effort to become a regular

9:45

at a local restaurant, which totally

9:47

did not work. You know, Like I thought,

9:49

if I just go often enough, it's going to be like cheers

9:52

and they're gonna be like melody when I walk in the door.

9:54

That did not happen. But what

9:57

I found is that these

9:59

kinds of little actions changed

10:01

my perception of Blacksburg.

10:03

I was intentionally actively

10:06

choosing to engage with the town,

10:09

choosing to see the good in it, choosing

10:11

to participate in

10:13

the great things that were going on here rather than regret

10:16

the things that we didn't have. You know, we

10:19

moved from Austin Texas, and so

10:21

our first few months were like, dang, we don't have good

10:24

Mexican restaurants here. But at

10:26

the point where I was finally able to say,

10:28

Okay, we don't have great Mexican restaurants

10:30

here, but we have a good ice cream shop downtown.

10:32

Or we may not have amazing

10:35

museums and there's no amusement parks

10:37

here, but we have Virginia Tech

10:39

football games, which are exciting. So

10:43

place attachment really is about

10:45

becoming intentional, especially when you're

10:48

new in a place, but honestly, even

10:50

when you've been there for a while, it's

10:52

the things we choose to do that help

10:54

us feel like we belong in

10:57

this community. Did you ever

10:59

find like a better restule that you

11:01

wanted to become a new regular at? Oh my gosh,

11:03

yeah we have tons now,

11:05

Like now that we've lived here for ten years, we have

11:08

you know, there's a great Mediterranean

11:11

restaurant called Greens. I still haven't

11:13

found amazing Mexican but

11:17

that's okay. Not every

11:19

town can do everything well. And

11:21

sometimes when we think about moving or we think about place,

11:23

we expect that, you know, like we want to

11:25

find the place that's perfect. No town

11:28

is perfect there's always going to be things

11:30

that annoy you or things that are missing,

11:33

but it's sort of like an exercise

11:35

and contentment, learning to

11:37

be happy with what's here.

11:39

And really a lot of

11:41

it is choosing to engage in your

11:44

town. I think that sense

11:46

of ownership that people feel when they

11:48

get involved, when they volunteer, when

11:50

they maybe take up political causes

11:53

in their community, those

11:55

kinds of things are what make

11:57

us feel like we are

12:00

part of it here and that helps us put

12:02

down the roots that mikas not want to immediately

12:05

move again. Yeah,

12:07

well that sounds good. I'm sorry you haven't

12:09

found a good Mexican restaurant, but we can always hope. So

12:13

maybe somebody will open one. It was one one

12:15

in Blacksburg. But we're going to take a quick ad

12:17

break and we'll be right back. Well,

12:31

I am here with Melody Warnick, who is

12:33

the author of two books, This Is Where You Belong

12:35

and the new book If You Could Live Anywhere.

12:37

So let's givot to talking about If You Could

12:39

Live Anywhere. This book

12:42

deals with the remote work phenomenon

12:44

that has been rising over the past

12:46

few decades that there are certainly people

12:48

who can in fact live anywhere

12:52

so talk us through you

12:55

know, why you wrote this book, and then maybe

12:58

a family that's considering this, like they've realized they

13:00

don't have to live in any particular place, what they

13:02

should start thinking about. Yeah,

13:04

I think this is where

13:06

you belong and if you could live anywhere's kind of companion

13:09

books because this is where you belong. Is Hey,

13:11

you ended up in this town that maybe you don't

13:14

love, and here's some really

13:16

concrete tools for you to

13:18

feel happier here and kind

13:21

of change your attitude toward your place. But

13:23

I realized as I

13:25

wrote it, and as I started talking about it

13:28

more to people and started traveling

13:30

more to different communities, that there

13:33

is this whole other side of this issue

13:35

of places, which is that a lot

13:38

of people can choose where they live.

13:40

We saw a huge explosion

13:42

obviously during COVID of people

13:45

who can work remotely, and that has given

13:47

them the freedom to sort

13:49

of divorce place from

13:52

where they work, which is really

13:54

for many, many years,

13:56

that's how people chose locations.

13:59

It's just I have to be here for my

14:01

job, and all of a sudden that was completely

14:04

upended and I just

14:06

kind of became fascinated by this

14:09

process of people really

14:12

looking hard at where

14:14

they were going to live. You know, I've met people who

14:16

have done things like spend

14:18

a month in twelve different

14:20

communities around the United States,

14:23

or people who make, you know, huge

14:25

spreadsheets of communities

14:27

that they're considering. I've met people

14:30

who just kind of on a whim moved

14:32

to a new community, and sometimes it works and sometimes

14:34

it doesn't. So I started

14:36

thinking really hard about what

14:39

should this look like, you know, how

14:41

should people think about moving

14:43

to a new community, and whether they

14:45

should even do that? You know, is that something

14:48

that everyone who can

14:51

should do. I feel

14:53

like, even if you're not a remote

14:55

worker one of those people who just pick up

14:58

and go anywhere, almost everyone

15:00

has what I call an anywhereest moment

15:03

in their life, you know, like a moment of choice.

15:06

For a lot of us, it's you know, when we graduate

15:08

from college maybe and we're getting that first

15:10

job and we're deciding

15:12

where to live. And there's research that shows that,

15:14

you know, it used to be people got the job and

15:17

they just go wherever the job took them. Now

15:19

two thirds of college graduates want to choose the

15:21

place first. But we

15:24

also have moments, you know, when you get

15:26

married, or when you're having

15:28

kids, or you know, just kind of these crossroads

15:30

moments when we start thinking

15:33

really hard about where we

15:35

want to end up. And that was definitely

15:38

the pandemic for a lot of people. Forty

15:40

six percent of Americans reassessed

15:43

where they were living during the pandemic,

15:45

and I think that was remote workers

15:47

and non remote workers. It was just kind of that moment

15:49

that made all of us go, are we

15:51

in the right spot? And

15:54

do we want to change it for ourselves? And

15:57

so if you are realizing that you

15:59

might have this option to change

16:01

where you are, what's kind of a rubric

16:04

you can think through as you are, you

16:06

know, first like do I want to move?

16:09

And second, how do I

16:11

choose a community? I mean, there's really truly

16:14

it's like online dating. I mean there's there's

16:16

just files of places

16:18

that you could choose from right, so

16:21

many options. There's like ten thousand cities

16:23

in the world, So you know, if

16:25

you are genuinely considering

16:28

all of them, you are going to go crazy

16:30

before you ever move. I

16:33

recommend that people come up with a location

16:35

strategy, you know, in the same way

16:37

that businesses like Starbucks

16:40

are really thoughtful about where they're going

16:42

to put the next store. We need

16:44

to be really thoughtful about where we're

16:47

going to end up moving. So I have a chapter in the book

16:49

that kind of shares some exercises,

16:51

and you're exactly right. The first exercise

16:54

is all around do I actually

16:56

want to leave the community I'm

16:59

in. I think for a lot

17:01

of us, there's kind of an attraction

17:03

in the novelty of moving somewhere new,

17:06

and so if all of a sudden your job has gone

17:08

totally remote and you have this new freedom,

17:10

it's like, oh my gosh, Like

17:13

how can I possibly stay put? I could go

17:15

anywhere, But every time

17:17

we move, we lose something. You

17:19

know, you've built social capital in

17:21

your community, all these relationships,

17:23

and it may be that

17:26

when you really think it through, you don't

17:28

actually want to leave, that there are more things

17:30

that are working for you in your community than

17:32

not, or you know, there are things

17:35

that you would lose by moving. However,

17:39

plenty of people can go through that exercise

17:41

and still decide yep, we are ready

17:43

to try something new. And

17:46

from that point on, it's like,

17:48

you know, thinking about what's your magical

17:51

dream land, you know, like I

17:54

think of the Good Place. One

17:56

of my favorite TV shows where you know the

17:58

good play, Well, the pseudo good

18:00

place was, you know, like full of frozen yogurt

18:03

stands and you know, unicorns and puppies.

18:05

So we're not going to find the

18:08

perfect place, but we can think about

18:10

what are places that we've lived in the past that

18:13

really worked for us. What are

18:16

communities that we can imagine ourselves

18:18

doing well in. Maybe places that you visited

18:20

on vacation. Look at the kinds

18:23

of communities that have attracted

18:26

you in the past and that you've enjoyed.

18:29

But I think a huge portion of this is figuring

18:31

out your place values.

18:34

And that's something I talk about a lot in

18:36

the book that every time we move,

18:38

we're sort of casting a vote for

18:41

the kind of people we want to be, the kind

18:43

of family we want to have, the

18:45

things that are important to us. And

18:47

so I want people to think

18:50

really hard about, you know, what are

18:52

the values you want to enact

18:55

in your new community. It

18:57

might be things like entreprene

19:00

viewership, or wealth. You know, I want to live in

19:02

a community that allows me to grow

19:04

a business or allows me to try

19:06

something new with my work.

19:09

Or it could be something like I want to spend less

19:11

time on work, So I want to live in a community

19:14

that allows me the freedom to do

19:16

that. I want access to nature,

19:18

I want to spend more time with my kids.

19:21

So I think there's all

19:24

sorts of values we can apply to

19:26

where we live. And I really

19:29

tried hard in the book not to

19:32

spell it out for people, because I think we're

19:34

all so different. I've met people who

19:37

are really happy living in communities

19:39

of one hundred people, and I've

19:41

met people that would

19:44

you know, they would hate that. You

19:46

know, they are city people through and through.

19:49

So I think we are all different

19:53

in what we're looking for. And the important

19:55

thing is keying into

19:57

what matters most to you

20:00

kind of life you want and

20:03

what values you want to live out, and

20:06

what kinds of elements

20:08

in a community or amenities will help

20:11

you become the person you want to be.

20:14

And so let's say that you've looked

20:16

through a bunch of places and you

20:19

know, have somehow figured out that these values may

20:21

match with these which is going to take some work, right, You're going

20:23

to have to talk to a lot of people look at because

20:26

you wouldn't necessarily even have heard of let's

20:28

say a small community in Virginia

20:30

if you didn't know about

20:32

it, right, like if you didn't know about Virginia Tech,

20:35

you would never have known about Blacksburg

20:37

necessarily. So hopefully

20:39

you've done your research, come up with the list, how

20:41

do you try them out? Like, how do you then go about

20:44

choosing like what you think is going to

20:46

be right. So one of the people I talked

20:48

to in the book was this

20:50

woman and her husband. They've been living in Texas

20:52

for a really long time, and on a road trip

20:55

they drove

20:57

through Iowa and you know, saw

20:59

that this victorian house for

21:02

sale in this little small

21:04

town in Iowa, and just

21:06

kind of on a whim, we're like, yes, you know, this is

21:08

our next life. And they bought this house

21:10

and they moved in and pretty

21:12

quickly realized this was not the

21:14

right move for them. So she

21:17

became sort of an expert

21:19

in planning the next

21:21

step. And really what it is

21:24

is, you know, maybe identifying

21:26

like ten factors that

21:28

are really important to you. You know, like

21:31

it could be population, it could

21:33

be cost of living, it could be

21:35

you know, I really feel strongly that

21:38

I want community theater here, you

21:40

know, like that's a big part of my life. For you, it might

21:42

be finding a choral society,

21:45

so you know, you have access to this

21:47

thing that you love. But her

21:49

approach then was to

21:51

plan visits to all these places. It's

21:54

really hard to do this

21:56

entirely online. It does take some research,

21:58

you know, figuring out what kinds of communities

22:01

might suit you. But then

22:04

it's you know, just doing some legwork

22:06

and actually visiting, checking out

22:09

what it feels like, talking to people,

22:11

you know, going to the farmer's market, walking

22:14

through neighborhoods that might appeal to

22:16

you. It's hard. Even if

22:18

you spend a week in a place that you're considering,

22:21

you're never going to quite get the same

22:24

experience as when you move there.

22:26

I saw a tweet yesterday

22:28

someone saying, you know, I've been on vacation in

22:31

Montreal and it's so amazing.

22:33

Why aren't we all living in Montreal? And then you

22:35

know the responses, of course it's Twitter. We're

22:37

just like, you know, twenty thousand reasons

22:40

that living in Montreal is

22:42

not the same as visiting. And here's all

22:44

the annoying things that you're not

22:46

aware of. So there's always

22:48

kind of this leap of faith, right,

22:51

Like, you really can't

22:53

one hundred percent decide

22:56

in a way that it's

22:59

totally the right choice, but you

23:02

can definitely do some due diligence. You can

23:04

talk to people who live there about their experience.

23:06

There's a lot of that available online

23:08

that you can research, and

23:11

then you just kind of make

23:13

the leap. I try

23:16

to tell people I've been doing a little place

23:18

coaching, so talking to people who are

23:21

trying to make these decisions and are struggling, and they

23:23

really are wrenching sometimes,

23:26

you know, even when you do have it narrowed down

23:28

to you know, these three cities,

23:30

figuring out where you actually want to be is

23:33

a huge challenge and it's really emotional.

23:37

But I like to remind people that none of these

23:39

decisions are permanent. You know, if you

23:42

move to a city and realize

23:44

that it just was the wrong choice, you

23:46

can do this again. But

23:49

you know, the second half of that is the

23:52

principles of this is where you belong. That

23:54

once you have moved, you will

23:57

for certain discover things that weren't

23:59

what you expected, that maybe

24:02

disappointing. And now comes the work

24:04

of becoming intentional about

24:06

putting down roots and building your community

24:09

here so that you do fall in love with it. So

24:11

it's kind of two parts,

24:13

you know, being strategic and

24:15

thoughtful about what kind

24:17

of place you want to move, and then once

24:19

you move, doing the work to actually

24:22

make it the right place for you. I'm

24:25

glad you mentioned that, because I was going to ask it seemed that

24:27

there was a bit of a tension between these

24:30

two concepts because I

24:32

think of this is where you belong as saying you

24:34

can make anywhere home. Yeah, it is about

24:36

what you do too,

24:38

you know, is presumably you know, if it's not crazy,

24:41

like if you love cities and you've moved to a place with like

24:43

three people, I mean, that's gonna be harder. But

24:46

given that we have myriad

24:49

options of places we can live, you can make anywhere

24:51

into home. But of course the problem

24:53

is if I could live anywhere, is you feel more sort

24:55

of like I made this choice

24:57

and now it's not perfect, and now

25:00

we have this problem. Like I you know,

25:02

I expected it to be great because I chose

25:05

this place to be the great place. So

25:07

yeah, for sure, right it

25:10

is that thing of I'm going

25:12

to do all the work in advance

25:14

I can to try and make the best choice

25:17

for myself and be intentional

25:20

about what I want out of this place,

25:22

and then once I get there, I am going

25:24

to continue to be intentional

25:27

about getting that thing. One

25:30

of the women that I interviewed for the book is

25:32

named Amy bush Etz, and her

25:34

family was in the military, so they

25:37

moved a ton and

25:40

her husband suffered a traumatic

25:42

brain injury, and so they

25:44

finally were leaving the military and trying to

25:46

think about where to go next. And

25:49

one thing she had noticed is that her husband, who

25:51

kind of was struggling with executive function,

25:53

did so much better when he spent

25:56

time in nature. And with

25:58

that in mind, we to live in

26:00

a place that connects our family

26:03

with nature more closely. They ended

26:05

up in Alaska, and it

26:08

was funny the way she talked about it,

26:10

because you know, they chose Alaska because

26:12

they're like, this is super outdoorsy place. We are

26:14

going to be different people once

26:16

we moved to Alaska, we are now outdoorsy

26:18

people. And what

26:21

she realized once they got there is

26:24

that the move did not make

26:26

them those people. They still

26:28

had to do the work. She describes

26:30

this moment where you know, it's May,

26:33

it's just starting to warm up in Alaska,

26:35

and she's like, I'm gonna go sit on

26:37

the porch and read Harry Potter, and like, you know, ten

26:39

minutes later, it's raining and she

26:42

sort of realized Alaska is

26:44

a place of extremes. But if I want

26:46

to create this outdoor, even

26:48

for myself and my family while we're here,

26:51

we're going to have to really commit to putting

26:53

in the time to get outdoors. And so she

26:56

made this goal to spend time outside

26:59

every single gold day and

27:02

did that. You know, it was buying

27:04

the proper gear and you

27:06

know, learning to live with

27:09

the weather. But because

27:12

of that commitment, you know, A, we

27:14

chose Alaska because we wanted to connect

27:16

with the outdoors, and b now that

27:18

we're here, we are going

27:21

to force ourselves to become those

27:23

people. They really did become those people.

27:25

The place changed them, but it was really

27:28

there choosing their behavior in that place,

27:30

and the place just kind of give them the opportunity

27:33

that they took. Yeah.

27:35

I love Amy's story. It's it's fun to hear you say it. She's

27:38

a friend, so it's a yeah,

27:40

yeah, that's that's wonderful. I love her.

27:42

I love her story and what they made

27:44

happened there in a laugh and

27:47

how she writes and talks about it as

27:49

well. Spaking The analogy we could use

27:51

here is like getting married right

27:53

that you you

27:55

know, do your due diligence beforehand,

27:58

ideally, and you have chosen somebody who

28:00

hopefully you know, share values with,

28:03

think has good character and to whom you are attracted.

28:06

But after you get married,

28:09

no matter how perfect the person is, there's going to

28:11

be something that comes up in the course

28:13

of your time to gather and you

28:16

have to decide to make it

28:18

work. And so it sounds like maybe

28:21

how we think about place could be very

28:23

similar that these days, most

28:25

of us or many people are not in the arranged

28:27

marriage version where you have to

28:29

go there because that's where IBM is located,

28:31

and so therefore you must go there. Now

28:34

we have broader choices with it, We have these

28:36

anywhere moments. But yeah, you

28:38

know, once you've said I do, you still

28:40

have to do the work. That's a great analogy,

28:43

Laura, and I'm going to steal it from you and go

28:46

for it. Use it widely. No, I

28:49

use it widely. Yes. I often

28:51

talk about how it's

28:53

a relationship that we have with our place

28:56

and places, like

28:58

humans have personalities and so

29:00

we have personality conflicts. You know, not

29:03

every town is going to feel like a

29:05

great fit for every person, So

29:08

you know, you do the best you can to find

29:10

a place that fits with your personality. But

29:14

I think when this is where you belong came

29:16

out, I really have this idea that you

29:18

can make it work anywhere. And

29:21

then I sometimes started to meet

29:23

people who were saying, you know, I've

29:26

really made an effort here, I've really

29:28

done a lot of these things that you suggest in your

29:30

book, and I still just

29:32

don't love it. And I think that's

29:35

like marriage, too, right. Sometimes

29:38

you put in the effort and the marriage

29:40

falls apart over time anyway, And

29:42

so I think there's no

29:45

shame in calling it quits

29:47

after you have given it that effort

29:49

and trying to find a place that is

29:51

a better fit for you. But it really, you

29:53

know, it has to come back to knowing yourself,

29:56

and sometimes you change

29:58

over time. A place that was a really

30:00

good fit when you were single isn't

30:03

as good a fit now that you have a

30:05

family, or you know now that your kids

30:07

are grown and gone, or things we

30:10

change, and so sometimes what we're looking

30:12

for in a place changes

30:14

along with us, and we

30:17

can respond to that, particularly when

30:20

we have a little freedom in where we work.

30:23

Very true, well, speaking of changing

30:26

things after a long time for different stages

30:28

of life. You recently made

30:31

a career move of

30:33

you know, you've been freelancing for a great

30:35

many years and then decided to take a job.

30:37

I wonder if you could talk about that. Yeah,

30:40

that was crazy. So

30:43

I had just finished writing If

30:45

You Could Live Anywhere, and was for

30:47

anyone who's ran a book, you know, this is a

30:50

long process. You spend a year writing

30:52

the book and then it's an entire other

30:55

year till it publishes. So

30:57

I had just turned in the draft and

31:00

a little loose ends

31:02

and saw a job listing at

31:04

Virginia Tech, which is the university in

31:06

the town where I live. My husband's worked there

31:08

for ten years, and

31:11

it seemed like a good

31:13

fit for me. I could go into

31:15

lots of details about how the

31:17

field of journalists has changed over

31:20

time and become a little

31:22

harder for freelancers, but there was something

31:24

appealing about not

31:27

having to hustle so hard to

31:29

find work and just being able to have

31:32

someone say this is what you are doing today.

31:35

And so I applied and got the job.

31:37

And yeah, like you said, I have

31:39

been a freelancer for twenty years.

31:42

This is what I've been doing

31:44

for the bulk of my career, and I really

31:47

have loved it, you know, loved having

31:49

that flexibility. I've written for some

31:52

exciting publications. You know. The day I

31:54

got something in the New York Times was like

31:57

dreams fulfilled. You

31:59

know, written a lot for Reader's Digest

32:02

and Good Housekeeping and a lot of national

32:04

magazines like that. So it

32:07

has been a great career for me.

32:09

But I think, yeah, I think I

32:11

was just ready to try something new.

32:14

It was interesting. I'm glad you asked about

32:16

this, Laura, because in

32:18

those first few days of or

32:21

first few weeks of having

32:23

a job where I'm like, oh my gosh, I have to get

32:25

up early and I have to go,

32:28

you know, sit at this desk for

32:31

hours a day. It is a hybrid job, and

32:33

I can work from home basically

32:36

whenever I want. But you know, all

32:38

of a sudden, I'm like driving to work

32:40

and it was just totally different.

32:43

And I was reading your book off the clock,

32:45

and you said something

32:48

about making time

32:50

for the things that were important to

32:53

you. And there was a story in the book

32:55

about someone who I

32:57

think the story and maybe it was from

32:59

you or life or I can't remember

33:02

who it was, but start was about someone who had started

33:04

like riding their bike to work or walking

33:06

to work or something just to like squeeze

33:09

in that time for something that they loved. And

33:12

I'm a big walker, and I had this

33:14

massive epiphany moment of I

33:17

can walk to work. And I

33:19

honestly don't know why I hadn't thought of it

33:22

before. I lived just a couple miles

33:24

from my office, but for some

33:26

reason in my mind till that point,

33:29

it was like, I have a job in an office

33:31

that means I need to drive to

33:33

work, like I have a commute now, And

33:36

from that moment on, I'm just like, I'm

33:39

walking to work and that

33:42

allows me to get in a walk.

33:44

I you know, have audiobooks or podcasts

33:47

that I'm listening to, and I have managed,

33:50

in this kind of crazy

33:52

new schedule to squeeze in this

33:54

thing that I really love and that makes me

33:56

feel whole and

33:59

more satisfied with my life. So thank you

34:01

for that key advice. That's awesome.

34:04

I'm trying to remember what I wrote, but yeah, no,

34:06

that sounds that sounds great

34:09

now. I walking to work or biking to work,

34:11

when people do that can can just change the entire

34:15

you can do that it sounds like if it's a hybrid

34:17

job too, it's it's like easing into

34:19

the world, you know, Yeah, for sure.

34:21

You know, my husband keeps having the regular employment. You

34:24

found the perfect job that is

34:26

almost a mirror of freelancing.

34:28

You know. I have a lot of flexibility to

34:31

decide where I work and even

34:33

when I work. It's been interesting

34:35

to have a book come out while

34:37

I have a full time job, totally different

34:40

than how it was last time, and so

34:43

sometimes I feel like I'm I'm still I'm working

34:45

two jobs, you know. I have a full time job

34:47

with Virgina Tech and then a second job where

34:49

I'm you know, working on this book. I'm still

34:51

doing speaking events about place.

34:55

So it's definitely been an interesting

34:57

shift in my life. But

35:00

it good so far. I

35:02

think, as with everything,

35:04

I try not to say

35:07

this is my life forever,

35:10

and so there may come a point

35:12

when I'm like, this is no longer working. You

35:14

know. The things I miss about

35:16

freelancing are things like just

35:19

being able to bail on your work

35:21

in the middle of the day and decide, you

35:23

know, I'm gonna go to

35:26

the lake with my daughter because I want

35:28

to, and my employer

35:30

frowns on that you know. So

35:33

so I have to work a little more, a little

35:36

more consistently than I'm used to, But there

35:38

have been great things about it. Turns

35:41

out you can go in and out of self

35:43

employment and regular employment one

35:46

way or the other forever. Yeah, for

35:48

sure, And I think you know, that's

35:50

a good note for

35:52

anyone who's feeling some dissatisfaction

35:56

with their job. Like, we can try

35:58

new things, and it's

36:01

sort of like place. The thing that

36:04

I always tell people is even at

36:06

the point where you move on, you're you're taking

36:08

things about your place with you. You know,

36:10

relationships and memories

36:13

and experiences, And it's

36:15

like that with work. You spend a lot

36:17

of time building up skills and those go with

36:19

you to the next job. But sometimes

36:22

it is time to try something new, for

36:24

sure. Yeah,

36:26

well, Melodie, this is fascinating. We always end

36:28

with a love of the week, so

36:30

this can be anything that is good

36:33

in your life. Right now, I'm actually

36:35

going to say my little corner of Pennsylvania,

36:37

my town where I live. We did

36:39

move, as our listeners know, we

36:42

move during the pandemic, as one does,

36:44

but we just moved a mile down the road basically,

36:47

so it's still

36:49

in the same place, so we must love it enough to stay.

36:52

You know, I think Pennsylvania's

36:54

got a lot of stuff going for it. We've

36:56

got mountains and then we're not too far from the beach,

36:58

and you know, got cities that

37:00

you could go to, And so throw

37:03

that out there as the Pennsylvania

37:06

urban Pennsylvania good.

37:09

It sound like the folks listening to this. I

37:11

know it's not Nashville or Austin, but it's

37:14

still reasonably good as well. Just

37:16

how about ye on the radar for people who

37:18

might be considered putting it on the radar. Yeah,

37:21

yeah, guys, Pennsylvania is awesome.

37:23

So is Virginia, including

37:25

the southwest part that is not the part anyone

37:27

thinks of when they think of Virginia

37:30

when I think of Virginia, Yeah,

37:32

what I love right

37:35

now. So I

37:36

am speaking of trying new

37:38

places. I went to Paris

37:41

in April by myself. I

37:44

had been doing dual

37:47

Lingo French for three years

37:50

and finally got to the point where

37:52

I'm like, oh, I'm basically

37:54

fluent. I can do this trip.

37:57

And no one in my family was super interesting

38:00

going and I was kind of tired of trying to

38:02

coordinate it. With friends, and so I

38:04

just went by myself and it was amazing.

38:07

And I also realized I do not speak

38:10

French or understand it.

38:11

But I

38:14

want to give a shout out to do

38:16

a lingo for enabling

38:19

that cross cultural exploration.

38:22

And this is so shallow,

38:25

but I got really excited

38:27

discovering new seasons of amazing Race

38:30

on Hulu because that

38:32

was another thing that just empowered

38:35

me to become really interested in

38:37

places and feel adventurous

38:39

enough to try something new. Yeah,

38:43

that's great. Well, solo travel is awesome.

38:45

And yes, I mean I think many of us have had

38:47

the experience of you know, I have a million years of high

38:49

school French, and I don't really

38:53

realize what shouldn't

38:55

have rose exactly.

39:01

Phrase, I do not speak French.

39:04

Most people will be even they're like, you're

39:06

American, I'm gonna speak We'll

39:08

speak English to you because somehow

39:11

our foreign language instruction actually works

39:13

so right, something

39:15

went right there that it isn't going right

39:17

for us, but it isn't going right for us

39:20

exactly. Yeah, all right, well, Melody, well

39:22

we could so. Melodie's books are at

39:24

this Is Where You Belong and the new book

39:26

If You Could Live anywhere, and how can our

39:28

listeners find you? You can

39:30

find the books where books are sold,

39:33

and I have a website that is my name, Melody

39:35

Warnick dot com and you can subscribe

39:37

to my once in a while

39:39

newsletter there about

39:42

place plus funny twitter links.

39:45

Sounds good? All right, Melodi, thanks so much for joining

39:48

us. Thanks so much, Laura. It's a pleasure.

39:51

Hey listeners, this is Laura. I am back

39:53

here solo after that interview with Melody

39:55

Warnick. As I mentioned in the recording

39:57

earlier, Sarah has lost her voice to to

40:00

COVID, so she is resting up and we hope

40:02

she will be back to recording very very soon.

40:05

In the meantime. This week's question comes

40:07

from a listener who is looking to start a podcast

40:09

with a friend. She says, do Sarah

40:12

and I have any advice. I

40:14

can't speak for Sarah, of course, but here is some

40:16

of mine. I think it's wonderful that

40:18

you are doing this with a friend, because while

40:20

I am flying solo this week, it

40:22

is really great that I don't have to do this all

40:25

the time. Having a co host

40:27

means that you can make an episode out

40:29

of the two of you talking, so that opens

40:31

up a lot of possibilities. The nature

40:34

of a back and forth conversation is that it is

40:36

almost inevitably going to be more interesting

40:39

than just one person talking. You

40:41

can also divide and conquer on the

40:43

podcast labor. At the beginning,

40:46

Sarah and I did all the interviews together,

40:48

but of course that was a lot of logistics to

40:50

deal with, so we began splitting

40:52

them up, and we can also divide up our

40:54

advertising recordings. It also is

40:57

great to have two people in case one person

40:59

gets sick this week, or I

41:01

went on a short maternity leave, for instance, after

41:03

having Henry. We've had various things, people

41:05

on vacations where it's helpful just to have two

41:07

people rather than one. So

41:10

as for specific advice, I would

41:12

recommend trying to record at

41:14

least three to five episodes

41:17

before you officially launch, because

41:19

if you can do that, then you know

41:22

you've got a topic that is going to be sustainable.

41:25

If you are really struggling to get to three episodes,

41:28

you're going to have a hard time maintaining a weekly

41:30

publishing schedule. Having

41:32

three to five episodes done also allows

41:34

people to try you out when they first discover

41:37

you, even if it's very early in the podcast's

41:40

history, and they can decide that they are

41:42

fans because they've listened to several episodes

41:44

without having to wait a week for you to publish

41:47

the next episode. So that can help

41:49

you build momentum right from the beginning. Sarah

41:52

and I don't script our episode's word

41:54

from word. Instead, what we do is write

41:56

out outlines. I think this is helpful

41:58

to make sure we cover all the angles of a topic

42:00

that we want to and helps keep the episodes

42:03

more on track than they might otherwise be. I'd

42:06

also recommend making regularly recurring

42:09

segments, so then rather

42:11

than facing like thirty minutes of airtime, what do

42:13

I fill this with? You know that you always spend

42:15

say three minutes on this segment, and then five minutes

42:18

on this and so forth. You end with something else,

42:20

perhaps a love of the week, Just throw that out

42:22

there. We hired help for

42:24

editing and publishing, and I think if

42:26

you are serious about doing this long term,

42:28

that is something to look into, because

42:31

otherwise the volume of technical

42:33

work that you would need to do could get overwhelming

42:35

and that might lead to you quitting, even if

42:37

you are mostly enjoying the recording itself.

42:40

Make sure you tell everyone you know, when you

42:42

start your podcast and give it some time

42:44

to grow. It is hard to get an audience

42:47

immediately, but if you do keep

42:49

publishing regularly, over time, people will

42:51

find you and tell their friends. At least we hope

42:53

they tell their friends. Are you guys telling your friends about

42:55

us? Please do so. Good luck

42:57

with the podcast. We can't wait to see what you do

42:59

with it, and in the meantime, this has

43:02

been best of both worlds. I interviewed

43:04

Melody Warnick about her new book,

43:06

If You Could Live Anywhere. Sarah

43:08

and I will be back next week with more on

43:11

making work and life fit together. Thanks

43:15

for listening. You can find me Sarah

43:17

at the shoebox dot com or at

43:19

the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram,

43:22

and you can find me Laura at

43:24

Laura vandercam dot com. This

43:27

has been the best of both worlds podcasts.

43:29

Please join us next time for more on

43:32

making work and life work together.