flâneur

Where to live - Tommy Dixon

substack.com · 2,404 words · saved by 1 readers

They say the three biggest decisions in life are: who you're with (partner), what you do (career), and where you live. I don’t have any of them figured out. So I decided to write about each—the only way I know to make sense of my busy head—starting with the one that's been on my mind the most: Where to live1. It’s a strange thing. To not feel I belong in the place I was born. I keep explaining to people how little I like southern Ontario, how nobody takes care of it anymore, I'm starting to sound like a badly broken record. I’m not saying I believe in past lives or anything, but if I did have a past life, I certainly didn’t live in some cookie-cutter suburb appended to a big city, surviving off its buzz like a parasite2. But, if not my hometown, I'm left wondering: Where to live? Choosing a place to live is perhaps the most consequential life decision I will make, maybe only after who I marry. Too consequential to be casual about3. The expanse of options at my fingertips, all the place

Cape Cod Morning (Edward Hopper, 1950) They say the three biggest decisions in life are: who you're with (partner), what you do (career), and where you live. I don’t have any of them figured out. So I decided to write about each—the only way I know to make sense of my busy head—starting with the one that's been on my mind the most: Where to live1. It’s a strange thing. To not feel I belong in the place I was born. I keep explaining to people how little I like southern Ontario, how nobody takes care of it anymore, I'm starting to sound like a badly broken record. I’m not saying I…

related reading