from unfamiliar to building roots
my three-year in Austin and convo with friends [85]:
In February, I will be celebrating my three years in Austin, the city that I have grown to call home. I moved here in 2022 sight unseen, without knowing anyone. The journey feels like a caterpillar growth, unsuspecting and slow but eventually gets to the beautiful metamorphosis.
Contrary to my expectation of feeling the need to celebrate, I feel at peace. Three years sneaked on me and it is probably good that I wasn’t counting down the days. There were a lot of lessons I owe to time and living here after college.
Foremost, I got to practice humility and patience. I came to accept that initial impressions reflect some but very limited about the whole picture. No one was happier than me during my first year in Austin. I felt welcomed and engulfed in Austinites’ conviviality and acceptance. I was over the moon about the prospects of making new friends, being young in a hip city, etc. Time slowly revealed the whole picture and not every scenario panned out in the way that I dreamt. Fortunately, not all of my hopes were squashed by the negative chatters that were circulated.
When I first moved here, I was eager to meet new people. I learned that just because there are a lot of people I can hang out with doesn’t mean they can all become my close friends. People are in it sometimes to make acquaintanceship and that is okay. I should not take that personally even though it disappoints not to have the depth I desire in a friendship.
I learned that there is a component of time that ultimately transforms situations and relationships in a way that I cannot. Time brought people into Austin and into my life who became good friends. Time allowed me to meet my partner. I learned to grip less tightly on situations out of my control. I learned to surrender.
What happened in three years? I found and built the adult self, formed and nurtured a community, made myself part of where I live by supporting local businesses, self educated on local policy change, explored the state, advocated for causes I believe in whenever possible. I had conversations with locals and transplants alike. I went from a fresh graduate to being on the verge of my late 20s.
Living in a young and up-coming city is fascinating. You grow alongside the city and see not only your community but your ties to it grow deeper. I start thinking about spending more time in Austin and growing roots rather than moving away. I want the emphasis to be “making a place home” instead of chasing new places to find the feeling of home. How do I make a location I already like into a place I love?
A friend recently posed a question that I shared: “Am I getting old or do I suddenly want to settle down?” Settling down can mean a multitude of things: stability in your career, stopping moving around, a foundation to build your future vs. moving in and out of school/job phases, a serious boyfriend/girlfriend that can become a prospective spouse, having kids, etc.
It is almost impossible to disentangle this feeling from your social context. If none of your friends has stability or cares about having a serious partner, it is likely you won’t care much. Possible stimuli for this question then can also be the “biological clock” or milestones expectation that we are all acquainted with, no less if you are from an Asian background.
I feel some but not immense pressure for stability. The stronger urge I feel is to have a solid, reliable community where I live. The Lunar New Year, Tet in Viet Nam was January 29th this year, and every year I reflected on how much excitement, warmth, and holiday feel I had at home because of the people around me.
Imagine this: My parents set the house up nicely with peach blossoms and kumquat two weeks before the new year day. We clean the house religiously during the last days of the year as it is taboo to clean in the new year. Each family prepares a feast of dishes to offer to our ancestors on the altar: nem (Hanoi-style fried spring rolls), bánh chưng (sticky rice cake with pork and mung beans), canh măng (soup with young bamboo and mushrooms), miến (vermicelli), giò (Vietnamese deli meats). We shower with water from boiling old cilantro (really long and tough stems cilantro - mùi già) that smells super fragrant. Small kids receive lucky money envelopes in the new year (Lì xì).
When I was in America during Tet years prior, I didn’t feel much spirit. I lived in a dorm/apartment far from the celebration, which usually happened in Chinatown or Asian-dominant neighborhoods. I went to school like usual so I could easily forgo celebrating. This year was different as I was fortunate to attend a couple of Lunar New Year parties with decked-out decorations, food, and high spirits. It also made things easier that I have a partner to cook, eat, and celebrate with.
Reflecting on Tet, I came to acknowledge that the warmth and spirits were from people practicing rituals. Community is built through customs: traditional rituals, cooking and eating food together, conversations, and attitudes towards a holiday. The rituals are what build holidays, not the dates or seasons even though they are strong markers.
For people like my friends and I who live away from family, how do we grow a community that can replicate that spirit? Does my friend who has been single all her life start talking about a husband because she wants to foster the feeling of warmth with her partnership/own family like her family once did?
As I explore the concepts and meaning of community, I ponder about how we can foster a sense of community with and without tradition and rituals. How can we make adult friendships feel as close as childhood ones?
Onto my fourth year here, I am looking to expand my life and connections further. I want to feel closer and personal to the city that I am in and the community that I am a part of. My partner and I, we have this dance where we frequently debate whether we should do [labor/time-intensive things] in [our space in Austin] as we don’t know where we will be in a year. Should we spend all this time going all in if we are going to leave anyway?
I love my friend’s settling-down question because it is blunt yet relatable to us in our grey zone mid-20s. Three years ago, we declared to be single forever and buy a group house when we turn forty. Now we are tired of not knowing where our roots will be planted.
I grapple with uncertainty most days and am destroyed by the fear of it on bad ones. But what can we do? To be defiant against uncertainty is to champion your life. To be defiant is to decorate your apartment anyway even if it’s not your forever home. To be defiant is to do what you do daily at work or at home well, to show up and create art, to put yourself out there, to hang out with acquaintances, and hope you grow closer. To live is to have hope. Kumail Nanjiani said at the end of his stand-up show in Austin: “Hope is a radical act” and I just had to share. We do good things because we believe in our future. We do good things so that we will have a future.
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In my twenties, I moved from city to city, wondering at each junction if this would be the place I'd call home. The mixture of uncertainty and hope made life exciting and worth living. Cherish the time you have now—when you look back a few years later, you'll miss those times!