A New Sense of Home (Sense of the City)

Perhaps the best part of taking a long trip is finally returning home. After seeing amazing sights, tasting amazing food, meeting amazing people; you start to see home with new eyes. Everything is as new and delightful as what you've seen on your journey, only colored with a sense of familiarity.

On the drive to Chicago, the skyline pops-up out of the tangle of on-ramps and freeways, and the first red line stop appears long before any well known landmark. If this sounds familiar to you, it's because I've already written about this scene in one of my first columns. Coming from the south is still one of my favorite ways to see the city skyline.

When I first wrote about it, it was filled from a sense of coming home. Now, I feel a bit of happiness from returning, but mostly I feel sad that I will soon have to leave my adopted city. When I pass the red line, I get goosebumps. When I see the skyline, I am flooded with happy memories. When I get on Lake Shore, I roll the window down and turn up the radio and smile at all the different faces that I see.

My sailing trip was meant as one last hurrah before I have to start my new life, whatever that will be. The only thing clear is that I can't afford to live in Chicago anymore. And besides, if I want to eventually live there and work as a reporter, I have to move away to work my way up through the ranks and back to the city. At least that is what I keep telling myself.

Though out this year and a half or so, I tried to bring a little bit of the greatness I see in Chicago to the area. I tried to show that there really isn't much different between the two places. I don't know if I succeeded. Perhaps with a little more time, I could have. But I can no longer write what I see or feel or smell or taste or hear in the city if I am no longer there. This is not my columns distraction, more of an evolution. I hope you will see my byline in this paper again.

My life is changing drastically, one way or another. My writing will have to change along with it. It might take me some time to find my footing, to get used to my new world. But I will, and I'll find my new voice along the way. After all life goes on. And I've got new eyes, and a new sense of home.