Your life is on autopilot and it’s as if you’ve chosen the most boring episode of your life’s favorite show and put it on re-run. Predictable, tired, spark-less, flat – your relationship with your city drowns under the depression of monochromatic daily routines. How many of you know how this feels, say Amen….
Even in New York- despite the fast-paced city and nightlife- I occasionally experience the lifestyle boredom of people in say, a small town in Ohio. Everyday, I take the same subway to and from the same stops, walk the same grid system of streets en-route to my same apartment, exercise my same workout routine at the same gym, etc… Despite the attempts to revive my city life with a concert here, an art opening there,…sometimes, the love affair with my city feels like it’s definitely over. Hey, its a fact we all experience the doldrums periodically and its also a fact that if you’re like me, you could potentially die from it, albeit slowly. The tricky part, however, is getting that LIFE control Repeat button unstuck!
“Effort” feels like a dirty word- it does and sometimes, you don’t want to HAVE to explore new things about your city outside of the tried and true. What then- as tourists- gives us with the energy to seek “newness” in other places but not our own? Taken that I love to travel and am inspired to explore things abroad (while often times taking my home surroundings for granted), I decided to put my true traveler spirit to the test and find a way to make my own city, different and my discoveries of it,…well, new! Here is the FIRST tip I’ve found to tourist my own city and to start re-igniting the passion that was once there:
Play tour guide: It’s amazing how my own city can look different and come alive when I’m playing tour guide to visiting friends and relatives. It’s as if their curiosity, enthusiasm and touristic love affair for experiencing my city are contagious. But there’s more to playing a tour guide than one thinks:
Me and my sister Lorna in Union Square
a) The real title is Party Cruise Director and the party is NOT about you.
As such, I am challenged to take a second look at what I’ve taken for granted in the 7 Great Wonders and self-discovered highlights of my own city, while helping devise an activity schedule that I think my guests would enjoy vs. me (even if I am the one who is showing them around). Planning a fun schedule for someone else’s personality, entails surrendering that niggling part of me that is sometimes closed off to experiencing new things outside of my daily grid system. I learn to walk and observe things in another persons’ shoes and must utilize out-of-the-box thinking and experiencing…which is something I don’t always practice. I might choose well-known restaurants I’ve never been to but I think my guests would like to experience. Or perhaps I may pick up the city’s Weekly event magazine and scour fun activities around town based on what I think will either be a) unique for them, b) preferential to their personality or c) very NYC centric. As a result, playing party cruise director pushes me to participate in choices I would NOT normally make for myself and it opens me to potentially, discover a new activity I may find I actually like.
b) Friends sometimes have better ideas than you do.
While I am a local who should know about my city, when I have guests in town, I inevitably become a bit of a tourist myself. This isn’t a bad thing. They want to see this; have read about and never tried that. They want to tourist my city in a way that I’ve either never thought of or would normally drag my heels on, if I had to try it alone. Empire State building- wasn’t watching Sleepless in Seattle enough? Walk the Brooklyn Bridge- didn’t think of that as “something fun TO DO”… Rather than party poop, I strap a camera to my neck and jump in to making their fun tourist memory of my city, a fun tourist memory for me too.
A recent example is a trip I took to Washington D.C. with my sister this past summer (okay, I was about to tourist party poop in a city that wasn’t even my own!) Sightseeing and laborious map-walking tours through historical monuments are not my cup of tea. In fact, it is the quickest way to hear groans from me early off & luckily my sister is a similar species as me. Unique and creatively active approaches, however, we can appreciate. My sister, proposed taking a monument tour via Bike n Roll tour where we were led by a guide on a bike excursion through all the main monuments. It was fun, brilliant, active and engaging! The fact my sister had a more creative and unique approach to touristing something I initially dreaded, made my experience exciting and opened me to exploring the active/interactive alternatives to touristing places in the future.
c) You are inspired to retrace- relive your own first love, so that you can share it with others.
My first love affair with my city was poignant- the way I strolled down the streets looking up at the skyscrapers dreamily,… fireflies in the summer in Central Park while playing frisbee, my first free summer dance concert in the open aired seating of Lincoln Center and my favorite cheap-eats restaurant that I frequented when I first arrived without a dime. We all have a special history with our city that made us fall in love with it. Additionally what sometimes, flavors the city for visiting friends and family is the fact, that at times, they are really touristing YOU! Take them on a tour and share them bits of your first love, your discovered love for Ethiopian food and eating with your fingers… or give them a silly tour of all the places you got jilted. You may recapture your original spark again and it may inspire you to notice your city in a positive second light.
The fun of eating Ethiopian food is that it entails a group participation and you get to eat with your fingers.
The passion in my relationship with my city was there until I grew blinders and stopped noticing. Yes- there are distinct and uniquely special things about my city. Yes- to other people who have touristed my city, my life is pretty exciting and cool. Yes- I have a lot to be grateful for in where I live…. So I’m blowing the dust off of the sparkling gem of my city and you can too- tourist it!
