Airbnb & Me | The "Why"
I’m 29 years old and I live in the same city in which I was born. I literally live .6 miles from the hospital where I was delivered. Typing that sentence actually kind of freaks me out. There’s a reason for the tightness in my chest when I admit to things like that, albeit brief. I always thought I was going to live somewhere else. When I was young I imagined that someday I’d be leading an adventurer's life in the Colorado Rockies, soaking up sunshine with fabulous friends on the California Coast, or making moves in the European art scene. Like every other kid in my age bracket I just knew I was cut out for something major.
Well, I graduated in 2009 during the recession and as I watched people I knew lose jobs, sell homes, and long-time business collapse, my dreams of grandeur were put on pause. Many of my friends moved away to cities like Chicago, LA, Denver or Austin where the economy wasn’t hit quite as hard as it was in Michigan. After 15 months working two part time jobs on top of an unpaid internship, and applying for jobs all over the country, I finally found an opportunity to work for a small non-profit focused on community leadership development that was housed out of the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce.
During my tenure at the Center for Community Leadership I was privy to many conversations with employers, leaders, politicians and passionate community members who were all putting their heads together to figure out ways to keep people from leaving the state, and how to bring people back. “Attraction”, “retention”, and “millennials” were words I heard in meeting after meeting. It started to make me wonder: why would I keep trying to leave when all of these people I look up to are doing everything they can to get people just like me to stay? Why would I leave when I have access, insight, and connections that would take years to build in a new community?
Yet every time I would feel confident in my decision to invest in Grand Rapids as my home there were always others, who had left, who would question my decision - as if that’s what it was. They would tell me that “in order to grow professionally” I needed to leave - that I would “get stuck thinking too small” and they expressed their “concern” that I was simply settling. I began to wonder that too. I would flip flop from feeling empowered and grateful for the opportunities I was being afforded to feeling weak and scared that if I didn’t leave soon I never would, and then perhaps my whole life would follow a path of least resistance - or even worse, mediocrity.
Fast forward a few years and with the help of experience, confidence, mentors - and an exceptional coach - I figured out how to reconcile some of my inner quandaries. I learned two powerful lessons about what it means to live up to your own expectations: one, is that wanting to achieve “something major” has a lot of room for interpretation - and sometimes the way you get there is by stringing together a lot of “something minors". And secondly, when you take the time to identify what you really want, deep in your heart, you find that there are infinite ways to get there.
When I used to express that I wanted a life of “adventure," what I discovered was that I really wanted a life that included meeting new people, challenging myself and creating unforgettable memories. When I said I wanted a “fabulous” life, what I really wanted was to find a community that was fun, fast-paced and full of energy. And when I expressed that I wanted to be an “artistic influencer,” I am now able to realize that what I really wanted was to be surrounded by interesting people, doing great work, who were pushing the envelope and who were passionate about beauty, design and introspection. Now I know that I didn’t need to move away to find these pieces of life, I just needed to be intentional about seeking them out.
One way to bring many of these experiences to bear was to think creatively on how to use the resources I already had: my time, my energy and my home. I decided to start hosting guests through Airbnb. Since I decided to become a host, I have found many of the things I was looking for right here in my own home, plus so much more. I have a house filled with the wares of local artists; one guest even generously described it as feeling like “every room is an art gallery.” I have extra income that this year alone has allowed me the financial flexibility to travel to Nashville, Paris, Amsterdam and Croatia. I have new friends with wild stories who live all over the world. I have been intimately acquainted with people from communities I’ve only ever known from a distance and who find themselves in Grand Rapids for a myriad of reasons. By deliberately welcoming individuals of all creed and conviction into my home, I’m challenged to look at the world with fresh eyes every day. I ask questions, I listen intently, and I’m finding ways to invite the world to me - to sit on the same couch, to drink the same coffee and to sleep under the same roof.
As I sit here, in the final months as twenty-something, I am finally able to boldly claim: I am not stuck in Grand Rapids. I am choosing to be here. My home, my neighborhood, my roots are becoming a destination, and thanks to Airbnb, I’m enjoying every second of this fabulous adventure welcoming the world to my living room.
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Keep an eye out for the next post in my Airbnb & Me Series focused on The "Who". :)
