Fair Warning — You're About to Get Less Cool

I have to be honest with you about something. Owning a house — especially owning it on your own — will probably make you a little less cool. Which is really concerning if you weren't very cool to begin with.

A bluebird in my backyard - this is a stock picture because I'm not fast enough to actually capture them

I say this from experience. I am significantly less cool than I used to be. And I think it's the house's fault.

Here's what happens: when you own a home, especially when you're doing it solo, you start getting more in touch with yourself. You start figuring out what you actually like. And that process — the whole long, overwhelming, deeply personal process of buying and owning a home — is really just one extended exercise in discovering your own preferences.

You become more yourself.

There's no right paint color. There's no correct curtain. There's no objectively good way to lay out your living room. It's all preference.

And figuring out your preferences, truly figuring them out, is a refining and sometimes exhausting process. But at the end of it, you come out knowing something real about yourself. These are the things I'm drawn to. This is what I like. This is who I actually am when nobody's giving me a template to follow.

For me, what I discovered is that I am so much weirder than I ever fully realized. Or maybe more accurately — weirder than I ever fully acknowledged.

Owning a house let all of my weird out.

When people came into my home, the first thing they'd say was "oh, cool art" — but in that specific tone that really meant "woah, weird art" as their first thought.

And I want you to know that before I listed that house for sale, my realtor made me take down a significant amount of art.

My house, in its natural state, was a physical manifestation of all of my weirdness. And honestly? That's kind of beautiful. Your home gets to be a reflection of you — the real you, the uncurated you, all of it. That's one of the best things about owning one.

But the uncool thing is real. Let me give you a very specific example.

I now spend an embarrassing amount of time looking at and talking about the birds in my backyard.

I blame my grandmother for this entirely. She has always been passionate about birds. My aunt showed her the Merlin Bird ID app so she could identify birds by their sounds, and that was basically it — she was obsessed. And when I bought my house, one of her first priorities was to sit on my back patio and figure out all the birds in the neighborhood together.

My grandmother was, without question, my number one supporter through the whole house-buying process. She just could not fully believe that a single woman on her own could do this, and watching it happen in her family meant everything to her. She helped me make my first wreath for the front door. Then she helped me build out a wreath for every season. And some of my absolute favorite memories are the two of us sitting on my back patio, completely quiet, just listening for birds.

If you want to get into this rabbit hole yourself — and I am warning you that you will not come out — download the Merlin Bird ID app, made by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It is free, it is incredible, and it will identify birds by sound in real time just by listening through your phone. My grandmother was obsessed. I am obsessed. You will be obsessed.

Most of my phone calls to her — several times a week — included a full report on the birds. Especially when I spotted a cardinal. And then several cardinals. And then, one miraculous day, bluebirds.

I am not cool anymore. Instead of being out in the city knowing about fashion trends and what's happening and where to be seen, I am texting my grandmother pictures of birds I found in my backyard. And she is texting back with equal enthusias.

And cardinals?! This backyard is basically a mini zoo!

I keep the windows open basically 99% of the time now, just so I can hear them. I had no idea that bird sounds were something I was missing in my life. Turns out they were.

So just be warned. You might become a little weird. A little quieter. A little more interested in what's happening in your own backyard than what's happening out in the world. You might find yourself caring about things you never expected to care about, and letting go of the version of yourself that you performed for other people.

You might get less cool.

But I don't know. Maybe a little bit happier too.