This is the room I’m renting in Charlottesville, Virginia. I’ve been here over a week now.
I found it as a sublet on Airbnb (referral link) for the month. This is the second time I’ve used Airbnb to find a really cool place to stay during my little nomadic adventure (without having to sign a lease!). I used it to find the place I stayed at in Baltimore, which was a great experience. You can use the site to find a room to stay in for a night or a week or a month (or more), in pretty much any country it looks like. To me, it’s like a cross between Craigslist and Expedia. I love that the site allows you to see who your hosts are, view photos and details about the room they’re renting out, plus read reviews of guests who have stayed in the room before you. My current host has about a dozen positive reviews, so that helped me with my choice. She is also an artist and I love artists. Her home is beautiful and old and full of original art and flowers and light. The neighborhood is very walkable, lined with trees and plants and situated just a few blocks from the University of Virginia. This is why I didn’t mind paying $800 to stay here for a month. I have full house privileges, so I’ve been able to cook, do laundry and drink bourbon on the porch whenever I want.
Last week I attended the Virginia Festival of the Book for the 10th year in a row, I believe. The festival is the main reason I came to Charlottesville, really. I majored in English and studied poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University about an hour from here, so that probably further explains my intense love of this area.
Plus, I love it here in spring. Plus, the authors and poets that speak at the festival events always inspire me to write more and better and with a full heart. My favorite part of this year’s program was hearing Nikki Giovanni and Nikki Finney read poems about love and what it means to love people. I also learned a lot from Lisa Russ Spaar, who spoke beautifully about poetry, spirituality and the practice of paying attention.
It strikes me that what I’m doing here in Charlottesville is paying attention.
In the mornings, I get up around 8:00 am and read the daily passage from Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening. After my reading, I meditate by sitting and stretching in silence on my yoga mat in the corner. Well, almost silence. The birds begin singing long before I open my eyes. After meditation, I go downstairs for water or tea, then I start on my writing for the day. I try not to read any email before I write so that I can stay focused. I write best in the mornings or late at night, no doubt about it. I write until about 10:00am in my room, then I get up from the desk and go downstairs to make breakfast. Right now, I’m having a love affair with hashbrowns and eggs from a local farm, fried and topped with sauteed mushrooms and green peppers.
Yes. It tastes just as divine as it looks. Especially if you crack lots of black pepper in your hashbrowns and season your veggies with just a hint of rosemary salt.
Sometimes, after my morning writing, I get in my car and drive down the road to Hotcakes. They have THE best muffins. And every day, they feature only one type: blueberry, lemon poppyseed, pineapple-coconut, you never know which, but it doesn’t matter, really. They all melt in your mouth.
In the mornings, I write blog posts. I eat breakfast, I shower. In the afternoons, I process email. I talk to speaking clients and work on upcoming speeches or Powerpoint presentations. I talk to my mom. I talk to my grama. I take walks. In the evenings, I cook dinner and talk to coaching clients and work on my longer-term writing and web projects. (I’m developing a new online training that should be rolling out in the next few weeks!)
Now that I’ve written it out like this, it sounds like a boring routine compared to my life of dates and happy hours and events in DC. But maybe that’s the point. The pace of everything is slower here. I feel calm and at peace. I feel like I have the time to enjoy poetry and clean air and trees and fresh farm eggs.
For whatever reason, I am able to do things here (and in some of the other places I’ve lived in the past 6 months) that I struggle with making time for when I am in my familiar surroundings. Kind of like when you go on vacation and suddenly discover that sleep exists and that 8 hours of it is good.
Right now, I am just enjoying the quiet productivity that’s been possible for me here. I am writing and working and I am happy.
Where are you living now? What do you like about it? How do you spend your days there?
happyblackwoman
happyblackwoman
happyblackwoman
happyblackwoman
I live in Queens, NY and it is a quiet neighborhood, but living with a roommate is getting old! I need my own space I need to occupy more than just the room I sleep in the bathroom and kitchen! It is tiring at times.
I live in Old Greenbelt, MD.one of three planned green communities in the US, sponsored by Roosevelt’s New Deal program. I love it because it’s quiet, safe, and my mini me can walk to the library. There are lots of trees and the community is very walker/runner/biker friendly. I spend my days in a local cafe, using its WiFi and trying to find a job. It worked! I start a new job on Monday and have decided to re-start (again) the reset.
I LOVE your room!! It looks sooo peaceful and relaxing!!!
I love this post! I live in Atlanta and while it can be a very inspiring place, I am always on the go and never really take the time to slow down and enjoy what’s going on around me. It’s a beautiful city full of beautiful people but I spend most of my days running from one job assignment to the other. I usually try to get down to Savannah during the summer to disconnect with the world while reconnecting with myself.
You have inspired me to do better at taking more time out for myself!
Atlanta is a beautiful city – hope you find a way to enjoy it more on a daily basis!
I love this post Rosetta! I’ve been living on the island of Dominica for the last 3 months after living in Philadelphia for almost 10 years, and it was one of the the best moves I’ve ever made. The island is called the Nature Isle, and being able to connect to nature, enjoy the 365 rivers, black sand beaches, natural hot springs has definitely been the perfect backdrop for inspiration and creativity! Im having anxiety about heading back to the States because I know my environment will be completely different. I’m praying I can remain as open back at home as I’ve been here!
Read my latest blog post…Memoirs of an Ego: When Keeping it Real Goes Quiet!
That sounds beautiful, Tracee. Reentry can be tough! But maybe you’ll return to your old environment with new eyes.
This post really resonated with me. I am living in Newport, RI. I love it here. It’s the perfect place my creativity. There’s enough action here to prevent me from being bored but, not so much that I get too distracted from writing. Keep up the good work!
Read my latest blog post…Bougie Girl In The Kitchen: Potstickers On The Fly
Isn’t it funny how the place you live can affect your creativity? I often felt like DC had too much action going on for me to be staying in the house writing.
Oh, I love the new blog redesign this is great! :3 Also, I checked out the website – it’s so nifty! It makes traveling so much easier, it seems like.
I live in NYC currently, not Manhattan, which everyone thinks. But Queens, which is more residential than anything else. I’m still not sure how I feel. It’s far from the hustle and bustle of NYC, and there’s not a lot to do in my immediate area. But it’s fairly quiet, which I like, and it’s not far from transit – which is perfect. There’s also a library up the street which has been feeding steadily into my blossoming reading addiction. So it’s a nice place to come to after a long day out wandering about, and the people who live in my building – thus far – have proven to be great too.
Thanks Tatiana! Sounds like you have the best of both worlds with the quiet and being close to transit if you wanna get a piece of the hustle and bustle. So cool that you live near a library. I could spend all day there (or a bookstore, but libraries are safer for my wallet!).
Right now, I have a really small work/live space in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. It’s in the former stockyard district. We’re surrounded by other artists, quirky restaurants and nostalgic nods to a way of life gone by (old hitching posts on each corner, for instance). I like that it’s quiet at night when I get most of my writing done as well and because it’s so small, I have been forced to tailor my lifestyle to fit it and have divested myself of a lot of excess junk that I have dragged from place to place.
Read my latest blog post…Lost Weekend
I love quirky neighborhoods – your space sounds really cool. Small is the new big for me!
BTW I’m glad I know about your personal blog – your reference to Oda Mae Brown was priceless LOL. I went to a panel at the festival about publishing ebooks that you would have enjoyed, I think. There were 2 fiction writers there who had amazing success with selling on Amazon via the Kindle.