Long struggled with feeling at home: can count two, maybe three times that I've felt what could genuinely be considered "at home": my maternal grandparents' home at the lake (long since sold), my first apartment in Boston... and... I think (thought) that's it.

(What about when you were growing up, with, you know, parents? Pretty sure that the only times I felt like I was Home in that situation was when I woke up before anyone else and played with action figures under blankets and, later, when I was behind the drumset, making my stepfather's ears bleed.)

But, inside these feelings of Home is the revelation (to me, if to no one else) that "Home" is as much a time as it is a place – or, rather, it's a point in time inside a place, a place and a time at which I feel truly most myself without having to hide it or apologize for it: Home for me is, now, this first chunk of (The) Work, 530, give or take, in the morning, until about 0700, before the first insulin shot, the sweet sweet lifeblood of the first cup of coffee surging through my veins, The Sanctum lit only by a monitor light, a backlight, and the dark mode screen of white on black text to the tune of unobtrusive ambient music, Kirby snoring on the couch behind me, my still-too-emphatic pounding on the keyboard, and the scritch of pen against paper and, while the second, post-run, daylight block of The Work is great too, I do feel like I've gone to work – my day's run being my commute, a circle by which to come back to from whence I came and to see it, literally, in a different light.

For now, though, as of this writing – my adult form of action figures under blankets – I am Home. And Kirby snores on.