Just got home yesterday. A long travel day after a short but action-packed work trip.
Sleep-deprived. Exhausted. But exhilarated. Still carrying the afterburn of an O.M.G. successful speed run. Muscles stiff, bones crackly—late-30s reminders of what a cramped five-hour flight in coach can do.
The moment I stepped inside, I couldn’t wait to shed the weight of outside travel. To drop bags, shoes, expectations—and summon whatever scraps of energy I had left for the sacred act of couch.
Couch is not sitting. Couch is not lounging. Couch is the unapologetic flop. The full-body surrender. The temporary transformation into useless potato. The soft landing you look forward to the whole way home.
(I think KPOP Demon Hunters captured this energy perfectly.)
I was home.
A familiar place. A humble little space that’s somehow mine.
But here’s the thing: it’s not the only home I have.
Many
We’re surrounded by homes. Homes we’ve made. Homes others have made. Spaces we share.
As George Carlin once said:
“A home is an abstract idea, a home is a setting, it’s a state of mind.”
And it’s true. Home is not just where you sleep—it’s where you return to. Where you can breathe, recharge, and... just be yourself.
Most of use carry little homes in our pockets. Our phones. An always on, cellular connected, glass covered, mini-micro-nano chip powered virtual place where we stash our digital stuff.
And yet, for something so familiar, they can feel strangely foreign. Even though we all have and use (basically) identify rectangular bricks of modern tech, we somehow find ourselves lost after the unlock.
Familiar icons and apps, but in strange places. Like walking into a house that looks like yours, only the furniture’s been rearranged overnight.
This happened on my trip. A coworker grabbed my laptop to do something. Within seconds:
“How do you scroll?!”
Cue the universal hand gesture of frustration—palms out, eyes wide, “what on earth is going on here.”
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Sidenote: I still revert macOS trackpad settings to the way they were years ago. Back when versions were named after big cats instead of California landmarks. Some habits you can’t let go. Back to the post.
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Stuff
Carlin nailed this in his routine Stuff—one of my favorites. Home isn’t the walls. It’s the stuff. The arrangement of things that makes the space feel like yours.
These homes extend beyond our phones. They’re the workplaces and workspaces we inhabit every day. Your office. Your desk. The cubicle walls you quietly claim. The little box of stationery you’ve curated over time. Your calendar—half prison, half compass. Your notebook—dog-eared, ink-stained, lived in. Patinaed.
Even the objects that only make sense to you: that very specific Starbucks coffee cup you once hunted down on Facebook Marketplace because the design caught your eye and you just couldn’t let it go. Now it’s yours. A tiny artifact that says: this is my space. This is where MY coffee goes.
When things tipped into chaos, I’d retreat home to my notes. Back to my notebook. Back to a daily page where scattered thoughts were corralled into numbered lists, each one paired with a checkbox—some proudly filled, others still waiting their turn. All of it compressed into a tiny 3”x5” rectangle. A small space, humble but steady, where I could breathe again. Where, for a moment, I felt like I had some measure of control.
That’s the thing about homes—they often start with stuff. Objects that anchor you. A cup. A notebook. A page. Small things. But they add up. And when they do, they stop being things at all. They become sanctuaries.
Sanctuaries
Homes are the spaces we build to process, decompress, and express.
The kitchen where you bake something that fills the air with memory. The garage where half-finished projects wait for your hands. The studio splattered with the proof of attempts. The living room where you dance like a dumb dumb, grinning to no one but yourself. The quiet corner where you write, sketch, hum, or just… breathe.
They don’t have to be grand. Most aren’t. They’re improvised, cobbled together, tucked into the cracks of daily life. A desk drawer arranged just so. A playlist that pulls you back. A worn notebook where you pin down a restless mind.
It’s not about square footage, real estate listings, or the HGTV dream of an open-concept kitchen.
It’s about sanctuaries—tiny and mighty, instinctual and intimate—where the outside world falls away and you can return to yourself. Even for a moment.
A place where you can be 100% useless and still 1000% yourself.
And when you stumble into one—when you recognize it—you feel it in your core.
There’s no place like it.