Book #4: This Is Where You Belong: The Art and Science of Loving the Place You Live by Melody Warnick

Warnick writes about ten specific, concrete ways that you can work to improve your connection to the place that you live. She writes from experience, having moved to five different states as an adult, and each time experiencing some disappointment that each city wasn't the perfect place she wanted it to be. So instead of being disappointed with Blacksburg, VA, where they ended up moving, she decided to take some active steps to increase her attachment to her new adopted city. Each chapter is dedicated to a different aspect of place attachment, and Warnick's research and investigation into that specific aspect and how it increases your happiness level and love of your town. She interviews people who do interesting things with each of these elements, and has some interesting stories from other people, in addition to her own "experiments" of doing things with her town.

The aspects that stood out to me were: Walking more (walking increases your attachment because you become more familiar with an area--try to run more errands on foot), spend more time outside (create a map of places to be outdoors around your hometown), eat local and become familiar with the food around the area, become more politically invested in your town.

I feel like this book would have been better to read than to listen to (which was how I got around to it)--it was very much in line with the Happiness Project of giving you concrete ideas of things to do, and the author describing her experiences with doing them, and I would have liked to see them instead of just hearing them. But otherwise, it was a fun read, and I feel like I want to apply some more of her ideas, particularly walking more and becoming more involved in knowing what is going on in our city. I don't feel like I have a great solid attachment to Frisco--I felt much more connected to Durham, even though Frisco is objectively "better" than Durham in almost every quality-of-life way--and I think I could do some specific things to improve that if I wanted to. I may have to wait a few months or a year until I actually accomplish any of these things (with baby coming soon) but maybe eventually.