one week in chattanooga
I’ve been in Chattanooga for a week now. Boy, how time flies!
This isn’t my first time settling into a new place and community — in fact it’s somewhere near my 30th or 40th or 50th (depending on how you qualify it) in the past four years.
Pandemic withstanding, all that practice has essentially left me with a process for integrating into a new community, and I figured I would detail what my first week looked like in that regard.
Consider the five points below:
1) learn your neighborhood. I made sure to cover every block in my neighborhood during WFH walk breaks this week. Fortunately, it’s small, mansion-filled historic district on the top of a hill adjacent to the university, overlooking downtown, so it didn’t take too long to do. I don’t have many amenities within walking distance, but there sure is plenty of architectural eye candy. This is important because I always try to understand my own context before I seek to explore anyone else’s.
2) find the local landmarks. On the first night, I went to the nearest Walmart, the second night to the nearest Publix, and now I’m in-filling my local geographic knowledge with the primary business districts, commercial corridors, and public and historic landmarks. I pride myself on my sense of direction, but wayfinding begins with actually knowing where things are in your community.
3) map and engage with the digital community landscape. This is vital in our coronareality. Under normal circumstances, I would have filled my calendar with morning coffee hours, lunchtime info sessions, and evening community forums and networking events, but instead I scoured Facebook events and Eventbrite for all the Zoom convenings I could find. My calendar is full — I hope Chattanoogans get used to seeing “Kenny Andejeski” in Gallery View.
Join and follow all the relevant social media accounts, groups and pages too. If my neighborhood had a public group, I would have joined it, but anything relevant that has “Chattanooga…” in the name has a new follower. There’s also a municipal election in the works right now, so I willingly subjected myself to all of the political fodder from candidates’ digital platforms.
4) if you’re single (or in an amenable relationship situation), get on the dating apps! No, actually, as enticing as the prospect of budding love and lust is for this relatively young lad, there’s an incredible value to it. From my personal experience and sociological perspective, there’s no better tool for informal ethnographic research, albeit a likely gendered one. It’s a cross-cutting insight into identity, politics, preference, culture and, especially since I live next to a university, all or those Gen Z trends that I can’t even begin to understand.
The number of socio-cultural reference points I’ve gained over the last week are nearly endless. I’ve begun to build personas for southern belles, ardent Trump supporters, outdoorsy ladies, dog moms, alt Gen Zer’s and the rest. Now, how do I find out about the fellow dude bros?
5) find an entry point of personal perspective. When I moved to Detroit, seven(?!) years ago, I knew one person there — a childhood friend, Jessica. I was fortunate enough to have her host me, tour me and share her perspective as my first insight into the community through a local lens. This weekend, I did the same thing in Chattanooga, when I had a college friend, who has lived in Chattanooga for nearly a decade, grab coffee and walk me through her neighborhood. No matter how much research you do, nothing compares to embedded local perspectives.
The small world what it is, I actually had the opportunity to see that Detroit friend, Jessica, in Nashville yesterday, but decided to take a nap instead. 😅 [More on serendipity in my next post!]
Speaking of naps, I’m going to go lay in my hammock in the backyard now because it’s nearly 60 degrees in February and this northern boy is going to make the most of it.
I still have no reason to believe I’ll find belonging or purpose here, but I know I can control the process that leads me to finding out.
More. To. Come.
