If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll know that my recent trip to New Zealand was Ahhhhh-MAZING. I spent nearly three weeks between the North and South Islands and covered a lot of ground. First an 8-day road trip on the South Island, hitting landmarks like Milford Sound, Queenstown, Aokari/ Mount Cook National Park, and Christchurch. I spent four days in Auckland, hanging with old friends, making new ones, and running a 10k for the World Airline Road Race. After that, I spent two more days with friends, exploring glow worm caves and having adventures in rental cars. Finally, I spent four days alone on the North Island, hiking, sitting in hot water, taking in Māori culture, and standing in awe of mother nature.

New Zealand has been a dream destination of mine, and the trip lived up to the hype. Our three weeks were packed full of beauty, adventure, joy, and lots of laughs. It was quite literally sunshine and rainbows. And yet, there was a little something else. Something sort of like.. homesickness?

I opened my laptop, on my 13-hour flight from Auckland to San Francisco, and tried to get started on some fun New Zealand content for the blog. But the first thing that appeared on the screen, the best my fingers could type, was the post below. The thing most on my mind that day, leaving New Zealand, was how excited I was to go home.

This might sound obvious, after three weeks of travel, but for me it was interesting. And scratching that itch of a feeling, digging deeper into things that surprise me, is kind of the best thing about writing. So, today I’m sharing that post, written en route from NZ to CA. About being homesick… or something.

I plan to write plenty more about all the awesome things I did in New Zealand (If you haven’t already, check out my post about Bungy Jumping in Queenstown!)  But for now, while the feelings are fresh, I’d like to share a little about the other part, too.

If feelings aren’t your jam, no hard feelings at all. Check back in two weeks for some outdoor adventure stuff.

Now, let’s do it. All aboard!

Years ago, an ex and I made whimsical, romantic plans to take work off and spend three months driving around New Zealand. We’d live like dirtbags, do all the outdoor activities our hearts desired, be in love and stuff. Today, I’m leaving New Zealand after 19 days away, just shy of three weeks, and I have never been so excited to go home.

It’s not because New Zealand wasn’t amazing, (it was), and it isn’t that I saw everything I’d ever want to see (I certainly did not). It is just that the days stretched long and the trip, done in sections, seemed to last and last. Meanwhile at home—my new home—my friends gathered, and the perfect weather persisted, and new romance waited, and so did my bedroom with the yellow rug and the tree outside my window. I missed it; all of it.

For as long as I looked forward to this trip, for as long as New Zealand has been a bucket list travel destination, for as much as I love the great outdoors and being far, far away, on this trip, this year, I found it harder to be fully immersed in the experience. Instead, I felt the strange pull of my heart in two different places.

It’s not the longest trip I’ve taken—far from it. When I came home after walking the Camino de Santiago, it had been nearly two full months of away. I stayed in Colombia for seven weeks straight, learning Spanish, and eating arepas, exploring the country. But this not-quite-three-week stint in New Zealand hit different.

My trip to New Zealand was planned long before my move to San Diego was. It’s a trip I’ve been excited about since last September, when the destination was announced at the World Airline Road Race in Calgary. This trip felt like a saving force—my first “fun trip” after a year of traveling for illness and love and death.

And it was so much fun.

But between last September and now, my life has changed so much I have to pinch myself sometimes to believe it.

For the first time in such a long time, my home life feels like something to miss, to cherish, to board a plane excitedly to get back to. It’s something to long for. And boy, did I long for it in my final days in New Zealand.

What’s “Home” anyway?

For a long time, “home” was hard to put my finger on. Was it the apartment I lived in but only stuck around long enough to shower and sleep and pack my suitcase again? Was it the house I bought? Where I had my long-distance partners stay for love-in-a-bubble visits, but spent the rest of my time largely alone? Where my space was cozy and cute and brought a sense of calm, but where I never made a single local friend? Was home hours away, could it only be found when visiting family? Could it only be found in a suitcase?

I used the term “home” so casually—it was a place I was. Or a place I was from. Never diving deeper into what it really meant. For a long time it just didn’t feel that important.

When you’re single, and your friends live scattered throughout the U.S., and you work on airplanes, and spend half your time living in hotels, when you live, and work, and travel alone, it is easy to feel untethered. What bound me to home besides a place to keep my things? And in all honesty, I didn’t keep many things.

Are you my home?

I moved to San Diego because it was a place I could picture being happy in. It’s a place I love for a lot of reasons, including the weather, topography, people, and the size of city. It turns out I was correct, so far I’m very happy in my new home and with my decision to come out here. And a big part of that satisfaction is having made the decision. Being in a place not by default, but because of desire. I wasn’t born here, nobody asked me to come along with them. I chose this place. And in a way, that makes it mine.

During my three weeks away, I had a blast with my friends—the people I met through this wild and wonderful life in aviation, who I’ve held onto for nearly 11 years. And, at the same time, I missed my friends back home in San Diego. I had FOMO watching their Instagram stories when they hung out without me. Each of the three Thursdays I was gone felt the tiniest bit sad because I wouldn’t be making it to run club. And I thought about my bed, my keyboard that I promise to be better about practicing once I’m home, my easily accessible (and free) washer and dryer. My roommates even, I missed them too. I longed to see the palm trees lining my street and drive through Balboa Park and drink a Fox Trot Latte from Genteel and go grocery shopping at my local Trader Joe’s—what has to be the tiniest branch in existence. I missed my gym, the dopamine hit from both the workout and impressing my instructor. I missed a lot of little things. And aren’t those little things the things that make up “Home”? I’m no expert, clearly, but I think they just might be.

Champagne Problems

I know this sounds like I’m whining and must have had the shittiest trip to New Zealand, but it’s just the opposite. I had a stunning dream of a trip with spellbinding sights and surprise perfect weather at almost every turn. I did things I never thought I’d do (like jumping off a bridge), I marveled at the wonder of nature, I soaked in the time with my friends on a very near-perfect adventure. And this post is also the opposite of whining. The reality is I’m in awe. How could I miss a place so much? How could I be so happy? How could my leap of faith have worked out so perfectly?

Happy.

It seems I finally have a life. It seems I’ve found the thing I was after when I decided to move. The home life I’ve cultivated in these short six months is one that can compete with snow-capped peaks and adorable lambs and jumping off bridges and tropical rainforests butting up against the sea. A home life that can hold its own against the excitement of hopping a flight, not knowing what you’ll do when you arrive, of having a full month off to spend how you please in a foreign land, of being totally and utterly free.

This satisfaction feels big. It marks a serious shift for someone who has always found comfort in movement, eyes forward, rolling luggage, searching for the next right thing. For someone like me, for whom the urge to run away was so strong that I made it my personality, and then my career, this wanting of “home” feels noteworthy.

I guess there’s no point to this, except to share an update:

Y’all, I’m really happy.