A Wondering Soul

Oh dear readers. I have been neglectful. Woefully so. Has Facebook become my mistress? Away from you?! Never! Has working for The Man tired me out? Not enough to keep me from you. So, why have I abandoned you for almost the entire month of February?  I want to think it is because I have been pondering an interesting concept. Home.

So often easily defined, but I have found myself surprised by what I have considered Home. All my years in Dallas, I never felt Home. I always thought Home was somewhere else. At times, anywhere else. Milwaukee? No. South Bend...only when my ND family is there. Dickinson? Perhaps. FdL? Yes and no. 

It's a odd thing. It took moving to Chicago for me to realize I had made a home in Dallas. I had wonderful friends, I absolutely loved the area I lived...I was settled. And the entire time I never felt settled. I never thought Dallas would be permanent.  I suppose that is true considering I did indeed move.  Was I not living in the present moment? Not accepting of my current circumstances? Always looking for something more, something better? 

All these feelings and thoughts came about recently when I was running. I was trying to get through another TM run and had in my mind's eye my little Dallas neighborhood where I first started running.  Oh, the success I felt when I ran my first mile without walking! And White Rock Lake where I had taken up running every Sunday morning last spring (defined my own personal religious meditation). I realized I missed Dallas. I missed Home. 

Do I fear Chicago, my love-city, won't be home? Not necessarily. The love of my life is here and surely I will meet the intellectual, humorous women whose company I seek. And I will raise a family here and will have a strong, challenging career. What I do fear, or rather, what I am saddened by, is that from '04 until this past October I yearned for Home but didn't realize I had been home all along.