Chris Wiegman
Before COVID I traveled a lot. While it isn’t even part of my job description I was on the road over 4 months in 2019 alone. It was fun, I won’t say otherwise, but being home makes me realize it isn’t a life I hope to go back to.
These past few weeks I’ve been writing a lot about the concept of home, but where we’ve been and where we would like to move. I’ve commented a lot about why we’re unhappy where we are but I’ve yet to really put into words the “why” part of it. Why did we make the decision to move here?
In the end it’s quite simple. We moved here after a rather quick decision because, for the most part, we looked at our home as a hotel we’re in a bit more than the rest. In other words, it didn’t matter where we lived (as long as we could walk to places when we got there) as the places we want to be would still happen during our travels.
Today I realize this was the wrong approach.
I still dream of some trips, for example I dream of walking The Way and of visiting numerous places I’ve read about since I was a child. Joy still dreams about seeing the shows on stage and being part of the theatre in various cities as well visiting her own bucket-list, if you will, of sites. That won’t change.
I also realize that I want to travel to see these places and experience these things. I no longer want to travel just to feel at home.
That’s a huge change from how I’ve looked at the world since I first wanted to be a pilot. Home, I now realize, needs to be a place where we’re both happy to return to after any trip. It should also be the place where we can stay without needing to take a trip at all.
Since we’ve moved here, and even in Austin, I’ve tolerated summer solely because it would be the season where I would travel away from our house. That’s not a home. It’s time to fix it.
Now, the travel I dream about the most is the travel I want to do from a place that really does feel like home, not the trips I need to make to escape a house that isn’t really home at all.