Home is where you find it

One of my many homes.  Family cabin in Deadwood/Lead, SD

I have needed to complete some paperwork over the last couple months that required me listing all of my addresses for the last ten years.  It is really quite humorous to see.  I have moved way more than should be humanly possible.  I will be moving to some-as-yet to be determined location in August 2014.








Here is the line-up: (multiple citations in the same city mean that I moved to a different house or apartment)

1. St Peter, MN
2. St Paul, MN
3. Denver, CO
4. Denver, CO
5. Boulder, CO
6. Fort Collins, CO
7. Fort Collins, CO
8. Pueblo, CO
9. Bozeman, MT
10. Helena, MT
11. Fort Collins, CO
12. Denver, CO
13. Denver, CO
14. Lakeside, MT
15. Sioux Falls, SD
16. Lakeside, MT
17. Sioux Falls, SD
18. Deadwood/Lead, SD
19. Sioux Falls, SD

What I have learned in this crazy moving around process…

a. You don't need nearly as much junk as you think you do.  I have gotten the moving process down to a science.  When I moved to Minnesota last January I got rid of most of my belongings and all of my furniture.  That was awesome.  I sort of regret the day when I need to buy a bed again.

b. Home is not solely a place where you keep your stuff.  Home is a state of mind.  Home is people and community.  Home is wherever you happen to find yourself at any given point in time.

c. I feel blessed to meet SO MANY people from all over the world in all of this crazy moving around.  And many of my circles of people have started to overlap, which is really awesome to see.

d. For better or worse, I have gotten fairly good at saying goodbye.  I have also been around the block enough to know that people end up back in your life for all sorts of crazy reasons, so "goodbye" is usually "see you later."

e. It's sort of a chicken and egg situation.  I am not sure if wanderlust spawned this moving around, or if the moving around spawned the wanderlust, but I have kind of an insatiable desire to see new places.

f. I have had to start over in new cities so many times that I have been forced to develop self-confidence and an extroverted self, that I don't ever doubt now that I will be just fine wherever I end up.

Backyard of my Madison Street house in Denver