Finding Home Wherever You Are with Melody Warnick

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah hart Unger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode two hundred and sixty one, which is first airing in early August of twenty twenty two. I am going to be interviewing Melody Warnick, who is the author of This Is Where You Belong and a new book, If You Could Live Anywhere, The surprising importance of place in a work from anywhere world. So that book deals with a common post COVID topic. Many people can work remotely now, and so if you can live anywhere, where should you live? Melody offers a framework for thinking this through, and it turns out the answer isn't always Austin, Nashville or Miami. Even if it does seem like that's where everybody is moving, you will notice that it is just me talking in this introduction. Unfortunately, Sarah wound up with COVID during a recent trip and has a really sore throat and a scratchy voice. So she is resting and I am taking over for this week, but I promise she will be back soon. So back to Melody. I really liked Melody's books because it is fascinating to me why people wind up where they are. You could say that my family moved to the suburbs of Philadelphia for my husband's job, and I guess that is the most accurate way to say it, but that's not really one hundred percent true. I mean, people can transfer between his organization's offices pretty easily, so really we could have lived in a lot of different places. This particular little town in Pennsylvania was certainly not on a list of places I wanted to live when I was growing up, But it turns out I really like it. I mean, there's a lot to like here. It's leafy, it's pretty, the schools are good. We are close to Philadelphia, so we can get the big city amenities. If we want them like museums, sports teams, concerts. We're ninety minutes from the Jersey Shore, so that's a day trip, but also ninety minutes from skiing and hiking in the Poconos. The Poconos aren't, you know, exactly veil, but they're not terrible, and it's nice that the kids can ski or go tubing as a day trip. I know Sarah and her family chose to live near her husband's extended family in Florida, which is certainly a great reason for choosing a place to live. Of course, there's also a lot to like about Florida as well, which is why many people are moving there. They don't have to leave the state to get to great vacation destinations. I think the cost of living is more reasonable, at least in parts of Florida. Maybe not downtown Miami, but parts of Florida than a lot of places. It's, of course, very different from Pennsylvania, which is why we all have to think through what aspects of a place we most want to prioritize when we're thinking about this anyway, it is a thought provoking topic. Why do you live where you live if it's not just for a job, Why did you choose it? Or even if it is for a job, there's something that you know about looking at the place too when you're choosing a job, so you know, ponder it. Why do you live where you live? Is it where you want to live? Do you see yourself there long term? Have you thought about other places? I don't know. But here we go with the interview with Melody Warnick. Sarah and I are delighted to welcome Melody Warnick to the program. So Melody, can you introduce yourself to our listeners? Yeah? I am Melody. I'm the author of two books on thriving where you live. The first is this is where you Belong and the second is if you could Live Anywhere? And I have been a writer for many years and you currently live in Virginia. Correct, Yeah, that's a big part of what you've written about. I live in a little town in southwest Virginia called Blacksburg, which is the home of Virginia Tech. And how old are your kids? Unbelievably, they are super old. Now. I have a twenty year old who's in college out west at the University of Utah, and a fifteen year old who will be a sophomore in college. So for anyone who has read This Is Where You Belong, we moved to Blacksburg when they were in kindergarten and fifth grade, and that is how long we've been here, because I am still in Blacksburg, you know, it's ten years later. And weirdly they grew up along the way. It's so funny because when you read other people's books, it's like their children are frozen in time at a certain point. So I was all prepared to ask you questions about like, you know, kindergarten, nurse and fifth graders they when of course they're not anymore. No, they used to be, and then they decided to leave that behind and move forward with their lives, which is yeah, like I do not approve, but they did it. They did it. Children do grow up. Ye bad thing sometimes is a good thing kind of depends what stage of life were. And but your first book, This Is Where You Belong, was about making some place feel like home. And I know a lot of people have wound up in random places in the courses of their lives, and certainly you moved around a lot as well, and maybe you could talk about that and talk about what made you decide that this was going to be home. Yeah, so this is where you belonged. Was really a personal journey for me. My husband and I had moved six times in five different states over the course of thirteen years. And you know, moving for the reasons people moved jobs and school and my husband got a job at Virginia Tech and that's what took us to Blacksburg, Virginia, from Austin, Texas. And we had moved so much that I kind of given into this magical thinking that every time we moved, you know, this was going to be the best place. You know, this new place would change lives and we'd move and realize that, you know, it doesn't work like that. Moves are a mess and they're chaotic and their effort, and so that's what happened in Blacksburg. We chose to move knowing very little about the community, just that it was kind of this smallish college town. But I built that up in my mind, you know, this is going to be my Mayberry experience and I'm going to become a small town person. And we moved and it wasn't what I expected. You know, it started raining every day and people are like, oh, yeah, we call it Bleaksburg, and you start to realize that you are now settled in this place that maybe is not what you wanted. It's not your dream community. And we had moved so much that, you know, my instant reaction to that was, well, we'll just move again, you know, like the way you solve that problem is you move again. But at the time, my kids were, you know, kindergarten in fifth grade, they just started school. My older daughter had gone to school elementary school in three states at that point, and my husband had just started this new job, and I just thought, we have to figure it out. We have to figure out how to be happy where we are. And so that kind of started this whole journey that led to this is where you Belong. I started researching what has to happen for people and what do people have to do to feel like they're putting down roots in a place, And turns out there's a term for that in the scientific literature, which is place attachment. So it became this journey of seeing if I could create place attachment for myself in Blacksburg. And the spoiler is we are still here ten years later. We love it and can't imagine living anywhere else right now. And so it worked. The things that they along the way worked. Now, no one has to read the book save you so much. Yeah, you're attached to the place, apparently very very tightly attached to the place. But I'm sure our readers should read the book. But maybe you could share with us a few practical things that you did to make it feel more like home. Yeah. Absolutely, So. There was a surprising amount of scientific research tying the way you feel about your place to your actual behaviors in a place. So people who are place attached behave a little differently than the average person. They do things like vote in their you know, municipal elections, They volunteer more, they tend to get to know their neighbors better, and maybe even you know, work with community members to make some sort of positive change. And so as I started reading through this literature and just sort of looking at, you know, what do people who really love their town do? What are they act like? I kind of developed this theory that I was just going to start doing some of those things in my town. And I called them love where you Live experiments, and they were just little action steps, little behavior changes that I did in my community, and that anyone could do in their community. So it was kind of easy stuff, honestly, things like walking more where I live. There's a research that shows that's how you build a mental map of a place, especially when you're new, and it's kind of a way to experience your community at a human pace that helps you meet people and get to know it. And so I started walking more. I started volunteering. We have a nonprofit historic movie theater called the Lyric, and I started volunteering there, popping popcorn, still do every week. I made an effort to become a regular at a local restaurant, which totally did not work. You know, Like I thought, if I just go often enough, it's going to be like cheers and they're gonna be like melody when I walk in the door. That did not happen. But what I found is that these kinds of little actions changed my perception of Blacksburg. I was intentionally actively choosing to engage with the town, choosing to see the good in it, choosing to participate in the great things that were going on here rather than regret the things that we didn't have. You know, we moved from Austin Texas, and so our first few months were like, dang, we don't have good Mexican restaurants here. But at the point where I was finally able to say, Okay, we don't have great Mexican restaurants here, but we have a good ice cream shop downtown. Or we may not have amazing museums and there's no amusement parks here, but we have Virginia Tech football games, which are exciting. So place attachment really is about becoming intentional, especially when you're new in a place, but honestly, even when you've been there for a while, it's the things we choose to do that help us feel like we belong in this community. Did you ever find like a better restule that you wanted to become a new regular at? Oh my gosh, yeah we have tons now, Like now that we've lived here for ten years, we have you know, there's a great Mediterranean restaurant called Greens. I still haven't found amazing Mexican but that's okay. Not every town can do everything well. And sometimes when we think about moving or we think about place, we expect that, you know, like we want to find the place that's perfect. No town is perfect there's always going to be things that annoy you or things that are missing, but it's sort of like an exercise and contentment, learning to be happy with what's here. And really a lot of it is choosing to engage in your town. I think that sense of ownership that people feel when they get involved, when they volunteer, when they maybe take up political causes in their community, those kinds of things are what make us feel like we are part of it here and that helps us put down the roots that mikas not want to immediately move again. Yeah, well that sounds good. I'm sorry you haven't found a good Mexican restaurant, but we can always hope. So maybe somebody will open one. It was one one in Blacksburg. But we're going to take a quick ad break and we'll be right back. Well, I am here with Melody Warnick, who is the author of two books, This Is Where You Belong and the new book If You Could Live Anywhere. So let's givot to talking about If You Could Live Anywhere. This book deals with the remote work phenomenon that has been rising over the past few decades that there are certainly people who can in fact live anywhere so talk us through you know, why you wrote this book, and then maybe a family that's considering this, like they've realized they don't have to live in any particular place, what they should start thinking about. Yeah, I think this is where you belong and if you could live anywhere's kind of companion books because this is where you belong. Is Hey, you ended up in this town that maybe you don't love, and here's some really concrete tools for you to feel happier here and kind of change your attitude toward your place. But I realized as I wrote it, and as I started talking about it more to people and started traveling more to different communities, that there is this whole other side of this issue of places, which is that a lot of people can choose where they live. We saw a huge explosion obviously during COVID of people who can work remotely, and that has given them the freedom to sort of divorce place from where they work, which is really for many, many years, that's how people chose locations. It's just I have to be here for my job, and all of a sudden that was completely upended and I just kind of became fascinated by this process of people really looking hard at where they were going to live. You know, I've met people who have done things like spend a month in twelve different communities around the United States, or people who make, you know, huge spreadsheets of communities that they're considering. I've met people who just kind of on a whim moved to a new community, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. So I started thinking really hard about what should this look like, you know, how should people think about moving to a new community, and whether they should even do that? You know, is that something that everyone who can should do. I feel like, even if you're not a remote worker one of those people who just pick up and go anywhere, almost everyone has what I call an anywhereest moment in their life, you know, like a moment of choice. For a lot of us, it's you know, when we graduate from college maybe and we're getting that first job and we're deciding where to live. And there's research that shows that, you know, it used to be people got the job and they just go wherever the job took them. Now two thirds of college graduates want to choose the place first. But we also have moments, you know, when you get married, or when you're having kids, or you know, just kind of these crossroads moments when we start thinking really hard about where we want to end up. And that was definitely the pandemic for a lot of people. Forty six percent of Americans reassessed where they were living during the pandemic, and I think that was remote workers and non remote workers. It was just kind of that moment that made all of us go, are we in the right spot? And do we want to change it for ourselves? And so if you are realizing that you might have this option to change where you are, what's kind of a rubric you can think through as you are, you know, first like do I want to move? And second, how do I choose a community? I mean, there's really truly it's like online dating. I mean there's there's just files of places that you could choose from right, so many options. There's like ten thousand cities in the world, So you know, if you are genuinely considering all of them, you are going to go crazy before you ever move. I recommend that people come up with a location strategy, you know, in the same way that businesses like Starbucks are really thoughtful about where they're going to put the next store. We need to be really thoughtful about where we're going to end up moving. So I have a chapter in the book that kind of shares some exercises, and you're exactly right. The first exercise is all around do I actually want to leave the community I'm in. I think for a lot of us, there's kind of an attraction in the novelty of moving somewhere new, and so if all of a sudden your job has gone totally remote and you have this new freedom, it's like, oh my gosh, Like how can I possibly stay put? I could go anywhere, But every time we move, we lose something. You know, you've built social capital in your community, all these relationships, and it may be that when you really think it through, you don't actually want to leave, that there are more things that are working for you in your community than not, or you know, there are things that you would lose by moving. However, plenty of people can go through that exercise and still decide yep, we are ready to try something new. And from that point on, it's like, you know, thinking about what's your magical dream land, you know, like I think of the Good Place. One of my favorite TV shows where you know the good play, Well, the pseudo good place was, you know, like full of frozen yogurt stands and you know, unicorns and puppies. So we're not going to find the perfect place, but we can think about what are places that we've lived in the past that really worked for us. What are communities that we can imagine ourselves doing well in. Maybe places that you visited on vacation. Look at the kinds of communities that have attracted you in the past and that you've enjoyed. But I think a huge portion of this is figuring out your place values. And that's something I talk about a lot in the book that every time we move, we're sort of casting a vote for the kind of people we want to be, the kind of family we want to have, the things that are important to us. And so I want people to think really hard about, you know, what are the values you want to enact in your new community. It might be things like entreprene viewership, or wealth. You know, I want to live in a community that allows me to grow a business or allows me to try something new with my work. Or it could be something like I want to spend less time on work, So I want to live in a community that allows me the freedom to do that. I want access to nature, I want to spend more time with my kids. So I think there's all sorts of values we can apply to where we live. And I really tried hard in the book not to spell it out for people, because I think we're all so different. I've met people who are really happy living in communities of one hundred people, and I've met people that would you know, they would hate that. You know, they are city people through and through. So I think we are all different in what we're looking for. And the important thing is keying into what matters most to you kind of life you want and what values you want to live out, and what kinds of elements in a community or amenities will help you become the person you want to be. And so let's say that you've looked through a bunch of places and you know, have somehow figured out that these values may match with these which is going to take some work, right, You're going to have to talk to a lot of people look at because you wouldn't necessarily even have heard of let's say a small community in Virginia if you didn't know about it, right, like if you didn't know about Virginia Tech, you would never have known about Blacksburg necessarily. So hopefully you've done your research, come up with the list, how do you try them out? Like, how do you then go about choosing like what you think is going to be right. So one of the people I talked to in the book was this woman and her husband. They've been living in Texas for a really long time, and on a road trip they drove through Iowa and you know, saw that this victorian house for sale in this little small town in Iowa, and just kind of on a whim, we're like, yes, you know, this is our next life. And they bought this house and they moved in and pretty quickly realized this was not the right move for them. So she became sort of an expert in planning the next step. And really what it is is, you know, maybe identifying like ten factors that are really important to you. You know, like it could be population, it could be cost of living, it could be you know, I really feel strongly that I want community theater here, you know, like that's a big part of my life. For you, it might be finding a choral society, so you know, you have access to this thing that you love. But her approach then was to plan visits to all these places. It's really hard to do this entirely online. It does take some research, you know, figuring out what kinds of communities might suit you. But then it's you know, just doing some legwork and actually visiting, checking out what it feels like, talking to people, you know, going to the farmer's market, walking through neighborhoods that might appeal to you. It's hard. Even if you spend a week in a place that you're considering, you're never going to quite get the same experience as when you move there. I saw a tweet yesterday someone saying, you know, I've been on vacation in Montreal and it's so amazing. Why aren't we all living in Montreal? And then you know the responses, of course it's Twitter. We're just like, you know, twenty thousand reasons that living in Montreal is not the same as visiting. And here's all the annoying things that you're not aware of. So there's always kind of this leap of faith, right, Like, you really can't one hundred percent decide in a way that it's totally the right choice, but you can definitely do some due diligence. You can talk to people who live there about their experience. There's a lot of that available online that you can research, and then you just kind of make the leap. I try to tell people I've been doing a little place coaching, so talking to people who are trying to make these decisions and are struggling, and they really are wrenching sometimes, you know, even when you do have it narrowed down to you know, these three cities, figuring out where you actually want to be is a huge challenge and it's really emotional. But I like to remind people that none of these decisions are permanent. You know, if you move to a city and realize that it just was the wrong choice, you can do this again. But you know, the second half of that is the principles of this is where you belong. That once you have moved, you will for certain discover things that weren't what you expected, that maybe disappointing. And now comes the work of becoming intentional about putting down roots and building your community here so that you do fall in love with it. So it's kind of two parts, you know, being strategic and thoughtful about what kind of place you want to move, and then once you move, doing the work to actually make it the right place for you. I'm glad you mentioned that, because I was going to ask it seemed that there was a bit of a tension between these two concepts because I think of this is where you belong as saying you can make anywhere home. Yeah, it is about what you do too, you know, is presumably you know, if it's not crazy, like if you love cities and you've moved to a place with like three people, I mean, that's gonna be harder. But given that we have myriad options of places we can live, you can make anywhere into home. But of course the problem is if I could live anywhere, is you feel more sort of like I made this choice and now it's not perfect, and now we have this problem. Like I you know, I expected it to be great because I chose this place to be the great place. So yeah, for sure, right it is that thing of I'm going to do all the work in advance I can to try and make the best choice for myself and be intentional about what I want out of this place, and then once I get there, I am going to continue to be intentional about getting that thing. One of the women that I interviewed for the book is named Amy bush Etz, and her family was in the military, so they moved a ton and her husband suffered a traumatic brain injury, and so they finally were leaving the military and trying to think about where to go next. And one thing she had noticed is that her husband, who kind of was struggling with executive function, did so much better when he spent time in nature. And with that in mind, we to live in a place that connects our family with nature more closely. They ended up in Alaska, and it was funny the way she talked about it, because you know, they chose Alaska because they're like, this is super outdoorsy place. We are going to be different people once we moved to Alaska, we are now outdoorsy people. And what she realized once they got there is that the move did not make them those people. They still had to do the work. She describes this moment where you know, it's May, it's just starting to warm up in Alaska, and she's like, I'm gonna go sit on the porch and read Harry Potter, and like, you know, ten minutes later, it's raining and she sort of realized Alaska is a place of extremes. But if I want to create this outdoor, even for myself and my family while we're here, we're going to have to really commit to putting in the time to get outdoors. And so she made this goal to spend time outside every single gold day and did that. You know, it was buying the proper gear and you know, learning to live with the weather. But because of that commitment, you know, A, we chose Alaska because we wanted to connect with the outdoors, and b now that we're here, we are going to force ourselves to become those people. They really did become those people. The place changed them, but it was really there choosing their behavior in that place, and the place just kind of give them the opportunity that they took. Yeah. I love Amy's story. It's it's fun to hear you say it. She's a friend, so it's a yeah, yeah, that's that's wonderful. I love her. I love her story and what they made happened there in a laugh and how she writes and talks about it as well. Spaking The analogy we could use here is like getting married right that you you know, do your due diligence beforehand, ideally, and you have chosen somebody who hopefully you know, share values with, think has good character and to whom you are attracted. But after you get married, no matter how perfect the person is, there's going to be something that comes up in the course of your time to gather and you have to decide to make it work. And so it sounds like maybe how we think about place could be very similar that these days, most of us or many people are not in the arranged marriage version where you have to go there because that's where IBM is located, and so therefore you must go there. Now we have broader choices with it, We have these anywhere moments. But yeah, you know, once you've said I do, you still have to do the work. That's a great analogy, Laura, and I'm going to steal it from you and go for it. Use it widely. No, I use it widely. Yes. I often talk about how it's a relationship that we have with our place and places, like humans have personalities and so we have personality conflicts. You know, not every town is going to feel like a great fit for every person, So you know, you do the best you can to find a place that fits with your personality. But I think when this is where you belong came out, I really have this idea that you can make it work anywhere. And then I sometimes started to meet people who were saying, you know, I've really made an effort here, I've really done a lot of these things that you suggest in your book, and I still just don't love it. And I think that's like marriage, too, right. Sometimes you put in the effort and the marriage falls apart over time anyway, And so I think there's no shame in calling it quits after you have given it that effort and trying to find a place that is a better fit for you. But it really, you know, it has to come back to knowing yourself, and sometimes you change over time. A place that was a really good fit when you were single isn't as good a fit now that you have a family, or you know now that your kids are grown and gone, or things we change, and so sometimes what we're looking for in a place changes along with us, and we can respond to that, particularly when we have a little freedom in where we work. Very true, well, speaking of changing things after a long time for different stages of life. You recently made a career move of you know, you've been freelancing for a great many years and then decided to take a job. I wonder if you could talk about that. Yeah, that was crazy. So I had just finished writing If You Could Live Anywhere, and was for anyone who's ran a book, you know, this is a long process. You spend a year writing the book and then it's an entire other year till it publishes. So I had just turned in the draft and a little loose ends and saw a job listing at Virginia Tech, which is the university in the town where I live. My husband's worked there for ten years, and it seemed like a good fit for me. I could go into lots of details about how the field of journalists has changed over time and become a little harder for freelancers, but there was something appealing about not having to hustle so hard to find work and just being able to have someone say this is what you are doing today. And so I applied and got the job. And yeah, like you said, I have been a freelancer for twenty years. This is what I've been doing for the bulk of my career, and I really have loved it, you know, loved having that flexibility. I've written for some exciting publications. You know. The day I got something in the New York Times was like dreams fulfilled. You know, written a lot for Reader's Digest and Good Housekeeping and a lot of national magazines like that. So it has been a great career for me. But I think, yeah, I think I was just ready to try something new. It was interesting. I'm glad you asked about this, Laura, because in those first few days of or first few weeks of having a job where I'm like, oh my gosh, I have to get up early and I have to go, you know, sit at this desk for hours a day. It is a hybrid job, and I can work from home basically whenever I want. But you know, all of a sudden, I'm like driving to work and it was just totally different. And I was reading your book off the clock, and you said something about making time for the things that were important to you. And there was a story in the book about someone who I think the story and maybe it was from you or life or I can't remember who it was, but start was about someone who had started like riding their bike to work or walking to work or something just to like squeeze in that time for something that they loved. And I'm a big walker, and I had this massive epiphany moment of I can walk to work. And I honestly don't know why I hadn't thought of it before. I lived just a couple miles from my office, but for some reason in my mind till that point, it was like, I have a job in an office that means I need to drive to work, like I have a commute now, And from that moment on, I'm just like, I'm walking to work and that allows me to get in a walk. I you know, have audiobooks or podcasts that I'm listening to, and I have managed, in this kind of crazy new schedule to squeeze in this thing that I really love and that makes me feel whole and more satisfied with my life. So thank you for that key advice. That's awesome. I'm trying to remember what I wrote, but yeah, no, that sounds that sounds great now. I walking to work or biking to work, when people do that can can just change the entire you can do that it sounds like if it's a hybrid job too, it's it's like easing into the world, you know, Yeah, for sure. You know, my husband keeps having the regular employment. You found the perfect job that is almost a mirror of freelancing. You know. I have a lot of flexibility to decide where I work and even when I work. It's been interesting to have a book come out while I have a full time job, totally different than how it was last time, and so sometimes I feel like I'm I'm still I'm working two jobs, you know. I have a full time job with Virgina Tech and then a second job where I'm you know, working on this book. I'm still doing speaking events about place. So it's definitely been an interesting shift in my life. But it good so far. I think, as with everything, I try not to say this is my life forever, and so there may come a point when I'm like, this is no longer working. You know. The things I miss about freelancing are things like just being able to bail on your work in the middle of the day and decide, you know, I'm gonna go to the lake with my daughter because I want to, and my employer frowns on that you know. So so I have to work a little more, a little more consistently than I'm used to, But there have been great things about it. Turns out you can go in and out of self employment and regular employment one way or the other forever. Yeah, for sure, And I think you know, that's a good note for anyone who's feeling some dissatisfaction with their job. Like, we can try new things, and it's sort of like place. The thing that I always tell people is even at the point where you move on, you're you're taking things about your place with you. You know, relationships and memories and experiences, And it's like that with work. You spend a lot of time building up skills and those go with you to the next job. But sometimes it is time to try something new, for sure. Yeah, well, Melodie, this is fascinating. We always end with a love of the week, so this can be anything that is good in your life. Right now, I'm actually going to say my little corner of Pennsylvania, my town where I live. We did move, as our listeners know, we move during the pandemic, as one does, but we just moved a mile down the road basically, so it's still in the same place, so we must love it enough to stay. You know, I think Pennsylvania's got a lot of stuff going for it. We've got mountains and then we're not too far from the beach, and you know, got cities that you could go to, And so throw that out there as the Pennsylvania urban Pennsylvania good. It sound like the folks listening to this. I know it's not Nashville or Austin, but it's still reasonably good as well. Just how about ye on the radar for people who might be considered putting it on the radar. Yeah, yeah, guys, Pennsylvania is awesome. So is Virginia, including the southwest part that is not the part anyone thinks of when they think of Virginia when I think of Virginia, Yeah, what I love right now. So I am speaking of trying new places. I went to Paris in April by myself. I had been doing dual Lingo French for three years and finally got to the point where I'm like, oh, I'm basically fluent. I can do this trip. And no one in my family was super interesting going and I was kind of tired of trying to coordinate it. With friends, and so I just went by myself and it was amazing. And I also realized I do not speak French or understand it. But I want to give a shout out to do a lingo for enabling that cross cultural exploration. And this is so shallow, but I got really excited discovering new seasons of amazing Race on Hulu because that was another thing that just empowered me to become really interested in places and feel adventurous enough to try something new. Yeah, that's great. Well, solo travel is awesome. And yes, I mean I think many of us have had the experience of you know, I have a million years of high school French, and I don't really realize what shouldn't have rose exactly. Phrase, I do not speak French. Most people will be even they're like, you're American, I'm gonna speak We'll speak English to you because somehow our foreign language instruction actually works so right, something went right there that it isn't going right for us, but it isn't going right for us exactly. Yeah, all right, well, Melody, well we could so. Melodie's books are at this Is Where You Belong and the new book If You Could Live anywhere, and how can our listeners find you? You can find the books where books are sold, and I have a website that is my name, Melody Warnick dot com and you can subscribe to my once in a while newsletter there about place plus funny twitter links. Sounds good? All right, Melodi, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks so much, Laura. It's a pleasure. Hey listeners, this is Laura. I am back here solo after that interview with Melody Warnick. As I mentioned in the recording earlier, Sarah has lost her voice to to COVID, so she is resting up and we hope she will be back to recording very very soon. In the meantime. This week's question comes from a listener who is looking to start a podcast with a friend. She says, do Sarah and I have any advice. I can't speak for Sarah, of course, but here is some of mine. I think it's wonderful that you are doing this with a friend, because while I am flying solo this week, it is really great that I don't have to do this all the time. Having a co host means that you can make an episode out of the two of you talking, so that opens up a lot of possibilities. The nature of a back and forth conversation is that it is almost inevitably going to be more interesting than just one person talking. You can also divide and conquer on the podcast labor. At the beginning, Sarah and I did all the interviews together, but of course that was a lot of logistics to deal with, so we began splitting them up, and we can also divide up our advertising recordings. It also is great to have two people in case one person gets sick this week, or I went on a short maternity leave, for instance, after having Henry. We've had various things, people on vacations where it's helpful just to have two people rather than one. So as for specific advice, I would recommend trying to record at least three to five episodes before you officially launch, because if you can do that, then you know you've got a topic that is going to be sustainable. If you are really struggling to get to three episodes, you're going to have a hard time maintaining a weekly publishing schedule. Having three to five episodes done also allows people to try you out when they first discover you, even if it's very early in the podcast's history, and they can decide that they are fans because they've listened to several episodes without having to wait a week for you to publish the next episode. So that can help you build momentum right from the beginning. Sarah and I don't script our episode's word from word. Instead, what we do is write out outlines. I think this is helpful to make sure we cover all the angles of a topic that we want to and helps keep the episodes more on track than they might otherwise be. I'd also recommend making regularly recurring segments, so then rather than facing like thirty minutes of airtime, what do I fill this with? You know that you always spend say three minutes on this segment, and then five minutes on this and so forth. You end with something else, perhaps a love of the week, Just throw that out there. We hired help for editing and publishing, and I think if you are serious about doing this long term, that is something to look into, because otherwise the volume of technical work that you would need to do could get overwhelming and that might lead to you quitting, even if you are mostly enjoying the recording itself. Make sure you tell everyone you know, when you start your podcast and give it some time to grow. It is hard to get an audience immediately, but if you do keep publishing regularly, over time, people will find you and tell their friends. At least we hope they tell their friends. Are you guys telling your friends about us? Please do so. Good luck with the podcast. We can't wait to see what you do with it, and in the meantime, this has been best of both worlds. I interviewed Melody Warnick about her new book, If You Could Live Anywhere. Sarah and I will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.