Home

In less than a week, I plan on traveling halfway across the continent to go home. The journey is something I planned on making a while ago. The trip home is something I need to do. It is the holidays, and because of that reason alone, I am somewhat obligated. Other than that, though, I am obligated to go home because I haven't been in months. I owe it to all the family and friends who have helped me get here to go back and visit every once in a while.

While I feel obligated in doing do, it feels somewhat bizarre to go home at a time like this. At this point in my life, I am not sure what my place at home is. I love being at home, but I could not possibly be successful there, not when compared to my own personal aspirations. I clearly love living my life on my own, but I also clearly am still having trouble putting it all together.

What makes it more difficult is that every time a major holiday comes around or an event where I should be with my family, I feel like I am missing out on some great opportunity by leaving New York. In this case, I had the opportunity to be cast in my first movie, probably as nothing more than an extra, and in a short, independent film, but, still, I had to turn it down because I will be out of town during shooting.

As of right now, though, New York is not a home for me. My apartment is a refuge from the cold, hard city, but it is not a home. It is too inconsistent. I have roommates and we all get along great, but we are not a family. I don't have obligations to them like I would my family. And for now, I would be missing out on far more if I did not go home for some time during Christmas. I would miss out on seeing nearly all of my family together again. Who knows how long that is going to continue to happen? My distance from them only makes it harder.

I novelty of being able to travel is not in seeing wild destinations and experiencing new things, while that is a big part of it. The great value of travel is being able to come home afterwards. When you have been away for so long, the only thing that brings the journey to an end is coming home afterwards. Those familiar places, people, and things that make it home are what make the trip so worthwhile.

Home is not defined by location. It is defined by the people who make it so. I am able to go back to the place I was born every once in a while, and even though I was moved from there many years ago, I can still call it home because there are people still there who care about me. As soon as those people leave, though, I will find it a very foreign place indeed, despite how familiar it is to me. New York is familiar to me, and it is getting to be more of a home for me with each passing day, but until I have the people in place that I can consider family, it will not be my home.