I hopped in the car after a quick dinner and headed east, a bottle of scotch rolling around the trunk. During my week at home in southeast Pennsylvania I ate, lounged, relaxed, and swapped the scotch (a gift for my dad) with a case of Yuengling—which rolled around my trunk on the ride home.

I was definitely expecting to hear “so how’s Detroit?” from pretty much every friend and relative with whom I was lucky enough to chat in such a short period of time. Unlike those dreaded hot-button dinner discussions that we all want to avoid during the holidays (Welfare! Gun control! Eric Garner, so help me God!), the Detroit conversation was always exciting and often refreshing. Who doesn’t want to hear that a bad situation is getting better? I was happy to finally spread a bit of Motor City gospel, and even happier that folks were digging it.

The one elevator-speechy phrase I eventually settled on in these discussions is “Detroit is kind of a bubble.” I would explain that at least in my experience, Detroit (as place, pride, story, metaphor, whatever) is always at the front of people’s minds, that it’s nearly impossible to be here and not feel a low hum tuned to that fact. There was a similar buzz around the small (~2,400 student) college I attended, and my colleagues there would often express their relief at “leaving the bubble for a while” when heading home for breaks. Though endlessly inward and sometimes incestuous environments like this can be frustrating, I think that in Detroit’s case there’s a mostly positive reason for the symptoms—everyone is here for a reason, and almost everyone genuinely cares. That’s why no one can stop thinking about “it.”

But during my privileged Christmas at home, I did take several moments to remember that some people’s reasons for being in Detroit are less warm and fuzzy. A majority of the city’s residents lives in poverty. A staggering number cannot get or maintain a job, cannot afford a car, cannot read, cannot shop at the kind of grocery store where my family bought Christmas turkey. Some of us will say “I’m in Detroit because I have a great idea” or “I’m in Detroit because there is a lot of energy here.” But even more will not get the opportunity to say “I’m in Detroit because I can’t realistically go anywhere else.” That’s a very different kind of bubble, don’t you think?

And so because the season beckons, a New Year’s resolution: maybe when I have my Detroit conversations in the future, the ones in which folks more or less pick up what I’m throwing down, I should make the chatter uncomfortable. I should do what I can to remind people that Detroit isn’t just a business venture or a hotbed of cool and funky things—it is a place with problems, and even more importantly it is a place with people who have problems. I don’t necessarily know them, I can’t necessarily speak towards their experiences…but I can remind myself and others that charmed lives are not the only kind in the world

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