Sunday, August 01, 2010

There is an app for that...

I have always said that I would much rather be a small fish in a big fishtank than the other way around. So its not surprising that I've lived in some of the biggest cities in the world and I've liked it. What is surprising though, is my small fishtank mentality and the lengths I go to building a bubble in the big fishtank I've selected.

Ahhh the remnants of the Jersey girl.

I suppose I could be all politically correct and apply my "creature of habit" label to this quirk I have but this would be a big fat lie because if my random behaviors are driven by habit, what fuels them is familiarity.

My mother says that I have issues differentiating between the words "friends" and "family"and that as a result my priorities in regards to people are often askewed. Depending on how you look at it, this may very well be true; but as far as it being a bad thing, I am not so sure.

Hillary Clinton wrote a book I've never read called "It Takes a Village". The premise of the book is that it is not only a task for the parents to raise children, but for the community. The title has always caught my attention because I was raised by/in a village (or a small town in NJ if you wanna call it that). Despite the proximity to NYC and the exposure I had to the world from an early age, my "home" was a place where everybody knew my name and where it wasn't only my mom driving me home from cross-country practice.

I find comfort in rituals and familiarity and I've always strived to keep normalcy in my life by being an active part of my community (which is no small feat considering that in my block alone there are more people than in the town where I grew up). Back in the day, before there was twitter, foursquare or meetup and I ordered food from FreshDirect, it would have been so easy to become an unhappy workaholic (and I might have been except that I was a publicist) but now it is so easy and if it gets too hard, just download the app!

I like to walk over to Publix and know that I dont' have to tell the fish guy what I am going to be needing for that week. I like that I have a favorite Starbucks barista, and that there are at least three restaurants where the waitstaff comes to kiss me hello. It brings me comfort to know that at any given outing I am bound to run into at least two or three people I know, though I may not necessarily like. I LOVE that the day my friend Sarah fell and sliced her head open, we were able to get into a stranger's car and that there was a cool stranger who would volunteer to take us to the hospital.

This is not everyone's Miami. But I'm so glad it is the little bubble in mine.

1 comment:

Janie Coffey said...

it's your Miami because you MADE it your Miami. You connected with fishmonger, the barista and the waitstaff. You made it your home, your village and your community. They are happy to see YOU. I bet there are others they see just as often but haven't connected with because those people didn't care to connect with them. They didn't make it their fishbowl! You did!