I love Saturdays in Waco. I’ve lived here two years and a handful of months now but Saturday mornings never get old. I love getting up early (provided I wasn't out too late the night before), and driving downtown to the farmers market to grab coffee and breakfast and then maybe stopping by the bookshop or whatever other quick errands I need to run. I know that sounds incredibly simple, but that's because it is.
Waco feels simple. In the best way possible. It feels like what a town should feel like to me. It feels like a community. Sugar Land never felt like that to me, despite the fact that I lived there for eighteen years. It was a great place to grow up, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the kind of place where I could ever see myself living permanently. Sugar Land was all commercial. All hustle. All bustle. Too many people, the vast majority of which I would never even come into contact with.
Here it's different. Waco may not be tiny, but it is a heck of a lot smaller than what I was used to. I've accidentally ran into more people I know here in the last two years than I probably did in the last 10 in Sugar Land. And I know WAY more people there than here. But that just goes to show, you can know hundreds of people and still feel like you don't belong. Here I know far fewer people and yet somehow it feels more like home, like I have a place and a town that's my own.
At the farmers market I've ran into people I know several times and even people who I don't know, but I see all the time anyway, both vendors and shoppers. In Sugar Land I could basically go years without accidentally running into someone I knew. Everyone was a stranger. I like buying local food and art from people who are the ones actually farming or creating. Shopping local literally was not even a concept I ever heard about in SL.
I love going to my local bookstore (and just being able to say that I have a local bookstore) that is so incredibly unique and well-designed by someone who loves books as much as (if not more) than I do, who I actually see in the store from time to time. And I know that every book on those shelves were chosen by people who live and read in my town, not some group of people I'll never meet in an office in New York.
I love eating at local restaurants whose logo was designed by a designer in town who I follow on Instagram and can be excited and happy for (even though I don’t know her personally) when I see her work. I love being able to go to art on the lawn events where a friend of mine, who also happens to be be artist, teacher, and person I admire, is selling her work. I love that my favorite bands come to Waco venues every year to perform, usually around my birthday, and all of the memories I've made at those shows even before I lived here.
I love going to the same few bars each weekend (well you know... pre-covid), and knowing which one doesn’t serve cabernet so I have to order the terrible merlot that tastes like cough syrup even though the bartender brags about it every time but I drink it anyway because who cares I'm out with people I like and having fun and also it’s the last stop of the night anyway and does flavor really matter at this point? Sorry... was that too specific? My bad.
Am I romanticizing Waco a little bit? Maybe. But if you ask me we should all romanticize our lives a bit. Life is hard. The world in general is a messed up place, always has been, always will be. So why not enjoy the small things around us to the fullest? And I know someone (or multiple someones) are reading this right now thinking that all of the things I listed that I love are all the reasons why they hate it here. And that's fine. Maybe you should move to Sugar Land. We each have to find our own happy place. Right now, mine is Waco. Even though I miss my family terribly and could definitely go for a Japaniero's (my favorite SL restaurant) sushi roll right about now. Will Waco always be my happy place? Maybe. Maybe not. But right now, it is. And that is what's important. I'm in a city and a community that I love, building a career I love, and doing my best to enjoy all the little things. You can't ask for much more than that. At least I can't.
*❤️Special shoutout (because she requested it): I also love Waco because Kaitlyn is in Waco.❤️*
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