Home.

Tomorrow is the day.

For the first time in 456 days, I will have an address. A place to call home.

I suppose it’s a rather monumental moment and there’s no doubt that I should be blogging about it...I just don’t know what to write. Maybe in part because I‘m not sure how I feel. I suppose some might imagine that there would be nothing but happiness, relief, joy at settling in again and benefiting from some stability after months of adventure and change. And it’s partly true.

I’m absolutely excited about seeing my things again, but not for the reason some might imagine.

Mostly I can’t wait to send another huge honkin’ load of it to the Goodwill.

Over the last year-plus I have edited, and then edited, and then edited my edited edits of belongings. Still, tonight when I stood gaping at the stockpile of cardboard boxes full of perplexing heaps of mostly-unwanted clothing and shoes in my storage space, I kind of wanted to take a flamethrower to it all. I have lived without all of it for more than 10,000 hours and I am absolutely fine. Finer than fine. I partly hate that I have to do anything with it at all. That it even exists. Can I tell the movers to load up the truck and just keep on going?

Yet, I do look forward to sleeping on my space-age Tempur-Pedic mattress (after a year-plus of sleeping on everything from straw mats in Laos to fold-out futons in friends’ basements); I can’t wait to curl up with a glass of wine in my gigantic, squooshy Montauk chair; I visualize what my bookshelf will look like when it is once again populated with my favourite books.

I do miss some of my things, but my wants are diminished now. My needs are few. I have changed my life, and as a result, I have changed. Or perhaps it’s the other way around.

As much as I look forward to getting re-acquainted with an elite selection of my stuff, it brings a certain sense of sadness with it as well. That storage space, the steel box that represented my freedom and my mobility, will be no more. I will once again be the keeper of my keepsakes, paying a monthly fee for essentially just a different kind of storage place...one that has windows and Wi-Fi and cable TV.

The adventure isn’t coming to an end, but it’s definitely about to take a different direction, and change is always scary.

It is said that home is where the heart is, and my heart belongs to the world now.

504 Osborne is just the next stopover.


"I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself." Maya Angelou