Thoughts of Home

Wow, I need a makeover around here.  It doesn't help that my point and shoot camera is broken (sand got in it in HI) and I just don't want to carry around my Canon SLR right now.  So, new pictures are needed to inspire a new design here on the blog that reflects where I am now.

Where am I right now?  Home. I'm home, at last.  You all probably know how much being home means to me.  If not, it means everything.  I am finally ME, as I prefer to be, as the world needs me, in my element.  You could say I could have learned to be ME in whatever place I found myself, and you would be right.  But, I didn't wanna!  I know how to do that.  Been there, done that.  Done with that.  I want my energies to be used to further my plans and dreams in this place I have chosen.  Or has it chosen me?  I don't know.  All I know is that when I am here, in this town, in this house, with these people, I feel...at peace, energized, comfortable, strong, happy.

It wasn't always this way.  I wasn't happy here, at various times in my life.  I had to go away, to find out who I was and wanted to be.  I had to go away to become the person I needed to be to be able to be here and for here to be HOME.

There are some amazing places in this world and I am so blessed to be able to have visited and lived in them.  When we travel, my family always looks around and says, 'Oh, this place reminds me of (insert some other place we have been)."  I found that the places that reminded me most of this little spot on Earth in Upstate New York were the ones I liked best.  Matamata and Cambridge, New Zealand.  Hood River, Oregon.  The Todd Mall, Alice Springs. The differences made each place seem exotic, but the similarities made them feel comfortable.  Like I could live there.  If only my family and friends could be transplanted there with me....

See how much easier it is just to come home and call it good?