Home at Last

It's a hot, steamy night here in Troy, Ohio. I'm writing from my back porch, using the laptop purchased by the company I work for to allow me to work from home. I've been doing so for a couple of weeks, but I'm just now allowing myself to think of this as "home." We brought our last load of stuff from Bowling Green on Sunday, cleaning out our apartment there and handing in our keys. It's now official: we live here, and nowhere else.

Being here doesn't seem as strange as I thought it might. I've always loved Troy, and I always knew I'd end up back here again someday; but I didn't think it would be quite this soon, and I wasn't sure the time was right. I wasn't sure how I'd feel being back on a full-time basis, especially since I'm back on the very street I grew up on, a mere three blocks from my parents' house. I thought, at the very least, that it would take some time to get used to it. It hasn't been like that at all, though. It feels completely natural. I'm home, in every sense of the word.

That's not to say that I won't miss Bowling Green, although leaving there was surprisingly less sentimental than I thought it would be. That is still home for me as well, and it always will be. My heart, though, lies there in the college community, and with the campus emptying out with the end of summer term, the electricity it holds for me was mostly absent as we cleared out. We'll be back often, for football and basketball games and any number of other events, and then it will be harder to leave.

Being here, though, has been great. We're still in the process of getting ourselves settled in. Once we do so, I'll post some pictures, particularly of my office. I've always wanted a dedicated workspace to call my own, and now I have it and love it. We're having another bookshelf delivered next week--having already filled two--and that will go a long way toward us considering this project "done." We're putting off having people over until we're "done," and I'm ready to cut the ribbon and show the place off. The place will feel even more like home once we're able to share it with our friends.

As for the job, it's going very, very well so far. The transition from working at the office to working at home has been nearly seamless. I spent so much time thinking about it and planning the workflow that everyone I interact with was very prepared when the day finally came. More to the point, I find that I'm not nearly as distracted by being at home as I thought I might be. I'm not going to pretend that I've not attended to something else for a few minutes while I was working, but I honestly think I've probably frittered away much less time than I would have at the office. I feel very focused here. I get the work done, and it feels like the time passes very quickly. I love it, and the feedback I've gotten so far tells me that my co-workers have no problems with the new arrangements. I feel confident that this situation will work out long-term. And that's phenomenal.

So now we're here, all our stuff is here, and we're getting settled in. That means I'll be finding my comfort zone in terms of routine (as much as I allow myself to keep a routine, at any rate). I plan to start working out again, either this weekend or early next week, and hopefully the posts on here will show up with a little more frequency. Well, have no fear on that score--high school football season will be firing up before the end of this month, and you know I'll have plenty to say about the Trojans, if nothing else. And I'll see if I can find some other things to capture my attention as well.