Do you know how heavy carrying your desk around is? I spent all day yesterday toting around laptops and cords and monitor stands and too much more as we flew from Vegas back to DC. I keep saying I'll pack lighter and not sure I've achieved that - just keep using different bags and calling it better.
Being back brings back memories of August last year - our first sit ever, learning how it goes, and mostly learning a new city. I hadn't been to DC since I was a kid and then I was living here for a month. And now I'm back a year later. Man - times change but do they really?
My partner and I realized while we still had an address that home really meant the people who make it home and not a place, so coming back to DC really rings true. We've been here, we've done the tourist thing, we've been settled here long enough across multiple visits to even live like locals, and however familiar it all is - the train routes, the museums, the food - we still feel like we're discovering new bits about the city.
Home really meant the people who make it home and not a place
New sits put us in new locations, giving us a new micro view of a specific neighborhood, but overall the city really hasn't changed. We've changed though - we've gotten more comfortable with the housesits, with packing up our stuff and moving, with walking into a stranger's home and calling it ours.
Something about this life I didn't expect was how skewed my definition of certain terms would become. Now it's what familiar means and looks like - instead of spending years in a place and it being familiar, it's that we've been here three times and the vague shape of it is what's familiar. Forget specifics and knowing all the history of a place - it's knowing how to get around and rebuilding the mental map in days instead of the raw construction that used to happen over weeks, and looking up your map history to find that one restaurant you liked last time.
I'm looking forward to hitting the streets later, getting a little lost in the metro underground, and seeing my repeat-sit homeowners again. The adventure doesn't stop just because I've been here before - if anything it changes into a challenge against myself about how well I remember what's here.