Focusing on joyful pursuits with others helped me fall back in love with my hometown.
Focusing on joyful pursuits with others helped me fall back in love with my hometown.
‘D id you see the Zillow link I sent?” I called out to my husband. I didn’t have to wait for his response — I could already imagine he was resisting an eye roll from his office downstairs.
It was 2020 — the thick of the Covid-19 pandemic — and with all three of our kids in “Zoom school,” we were, like thousands of other Americans, reevaluating our lifestyle choices. My solution to the upheaval was to move from D.C. to Maine. That would easily solve everything. We have family in Freeport, and I blissfully envisioned my fictional life: sitting in a fleece on my deck, looking out on the ocean from a house on a dirt road — sans traffic or crime — with an endless buffet of lobster rolls.
I scoured Zillow listings, made a pro/con list, recruited two-thirds of the kids to the “pro” side, and was ready to load up the moving van.
After nearly 20 years of living in the DMV, I was tired of Washington. We were disconnected from and exhausted by the politics that originally drew us to the city; fatigued by the intensity of living in an over-educated, hypercompetitive environment; and worn down by both the pandemic and the serious spike in crime plaguing the city.
My husband — more level-headed when it comes to major decision-making — remained reluctant about my New England fantasy, so we ultimately stuck it out in D.C. Eventually the pandemic began to recede, and it was clear we had missed our window to move to Maine — if there ever was one.
We were in D.C. to stay, and it was time to make a different kind of change.
Flash forward to 2024. I’m a senior executive at the R Street Institute, a national think tank headquartered in Washington, and a unique feature of how we work is to close our offices every other Friday to ensure our team is taking enough time off to rest and recharge.
During the first year in my role, I typically used these days off to run errands and squeeze in doctor’s appointments. But on the first Friday of January 2024, there was an art exhibit at the National Gallery of Art I was eager to see: Mark Rothko: Paintings on Paper. I grabbed my husband, and we headed downtown. Exquisite canvases full of color and depth opened us up to the tortured life of Rothko, who eventually took his own life. We spent hours at the museum and followed it up with a cozy lunch at our local Bistro Aracosia — a favorite Afghan restaurant of ours situated in the Palisades neighborhood.
It dawned on me that this could become a regular “thing,” and I quickly made a New Year’s resolution: “Use all my Fridays off in 2024 to do something that brings me joy.”
Rule No. 6 in Marie Kondo’s KonMari philosophy is “Ask yourself if it sparks joy.” Kondo may have been talking about how to declutter your home, but the sentiment shaped how I thought about these free Fridays: Does this day off bring me joy?
With that in mind, I slowly started to replace running errands with resuming hobbies — like playing tennis or running — while also renewing interests that had started to fall by the wayside, like my passion for art. Initially, these free Fridays were modest in scope, but as I settled into my new routine, I became more intentional with my planning, and my outings got more involved.
I mapped out walking tours of Dupont Circle and got lost in Pierre Bonnard’s world at the Phillips Collection; spent a day at the International Spy Museum; visited local galleries like American Painting Fine Art, a fixture on MacArthur Boulevard; browsed the shelves of Kramers bookstore; explored public spaces like Book Hill Park; visited the Washington Printmaker’s Gallery — an art co-op on Wisconsin Avenue that I never knew existed; reacquainted myself with the world of post-impressionism, expressionism, and modern art at the Kreeger Museum; and enjoyed lunches at Millie’s Spring Valley and the Georgetown Waterfront, as well as coffee at Open City on the National Cathedral Close.
As the seasons shifted, so did my excursions. Museums gave way to runs on the National Mall — something I used to love to do when I first moved to Woodley Park in 1999. I took long bike rides down the Capital Crescent Trail — once to find one of the Cherry Blossom Festival’s “Art Blooms” sculptures, which disappointingly was not where it was marked on the map. Another time, after reading Kristin Hannah’s bestseller The Women, I pedaled to the Vietnam Memorial and across the Memorial Bridge to Arlington National Cemetery, which, despite living in D.C. for two decades, I had embarrassingly never visited.
April allowed for a spectacular bike ride with panoramic views of the Potomac down the Mt. Vernon trail to George Washington’s Mount Vernon home. And in May I ventured to Flower Mart — an annual event hosted by All Hallows Guild at the Washington National Cathedral, where artful flower arrangements donated by dozens of foreign embassies lined the nave.
Some weeks I traveled to the city’s outskirts. I visited Frederick, Md., where I walked the Public Art Trail and admired the iron sculptures, wall murals, and clever trompe l’oeil that decorate the town and enjoyed falafel at Hippy Chick Hummus (what’s not to love?). At the start of summer, I brought my daughters with me for some strawberry picking at Wegmeyer Farms, followed by a visit to historic Leesburg, Va. And, of course, other times I explored my own neighborhood, biking to local farmer’s markets like the Bethesda Farm Women’s Market (where, notably, I did not find any women) and Norman’s Farm Market stand on Massachusetts Avenue for fresh peaches.
No matter the activity, everywhere I went I met someone new — a gallery owner, a shop owner, a docent, a restaurant server. My world was expanding, and so was my pride in my city. When family came into town, I no longer found myself immediately grumbling about the latest smash-and-grab (well, maybe still a little bit); rather, I sought out slightly off-the-beaten-path adventures like a trip to the Glenstone.
Amid this fun, it was hard to ignore that all the errands that typically occupied my Fridays — UPS, dry cleaners, hair appointments — not only could wait, but often got completed so much more efficiently over the weekend after I took this time for myself.
Most important, I found that adventure begets adventure. The more I dove into exploring Washington, the more space I made for other pursuits that brought me joy. I was reading more — and tearing through audio books — running more and setting new goals for distances and races. I was writing more, but with a renewed interest and a change in focus.
On their own, these bimonthly adventures were fun; but what actually helped me reconnect with my city — dare I say, fall back in love with D.C. — was the ability to engage with friends and strangers alike, something that had sorely been missing when I was busy planning our move to Maine.
There’s a famous study out of the University of Chicago that explored the effect of interacting with strangers on public transportation. While most commuters claim to want to sit in silence while making their daily trek, the researchers found that “people were significantly happier when they talked to the person sitting next to them than when they sat there in solitude.” Not only did participants underestimate strangers’ interest in making a connection, but they also misjudged how engaging with a stranger would impact their own well-being.
This research took on new meaning as the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic set in. It was hard for everyone to be separated from family and close friends, but it was also challenging to lose those everyday interactions and experiences that help us feel tethered to our communities. In 2021, Amanda Mull captured this phenomenon in an article for The Atlantic titled, “The Pandemic Has Erased Entire Categories of Friendships.” Mull noted in a subsequent interview that in losing what social psychologists refer to as “weak ties,”
we lose the opportunity to learn new things, be introduced to new information, to have low-stakes social interactions with people who don’t know all of our flaws and secrets and background. We lose serendipity. We lose an opportunity for joy.
And there it was: I had lost the joy of living in Washington, D.C. I was unaware of how much I longed not only for casual small talk but also for the connections created by participating in the life of the city.
Recently I ran the Army Ten-Miler. It was the 40th anniversary of this D.C. event, which brought together nearly 28,000 runners to celebrate the spirit of the nation’s capital — running across the Key Bridge, past the steps on Potomac Avenue, along Independence, across the 14th Street Bridge, and finally across the finish line on the north side of the Pentagon.
At the sound of the starting cannon, I’d never felt so connected to my city. There was a beautiful camaraderie that emerged between the runners as we fell into a rhythm with one another, gave passing high fives, and traded sympathetic looks around mile eight. It stirred something in me I hadn’t felt in so long.
Absent these opportunities and excursions during the pandemic, I hadn’t been learning or engaging and slowly felt depleted. The more adrift I felt, the more I resented my home and fixated on moving away — and I wasn’t alone.
Of course, no amount of “weak ties” or “free Fridays” can change the seismic political shifts reverberating across the country, reverse the uptick in crime, or temper the competitive daily grind. But seeking the joy on my Fridays off got me back out there and gave me a chance to see the city from a fresh perspective, engage with new voices, tap into my creativity, explore my likes and dislikes, and ultimately reconnect with a city that has shaped my adult life and our family.
It turned out, I didn’t dislike D.C. — I’d simply forgotten all it had to offer.