Coming Home Is Its Own Kind of Travel

By the time you’re reading this, I’ll have been back in Cleveland for a night—but I probably won’t be entirely back to normal yet.

I left my house in Mexico Monday evening and spent the night near the airport before catching a 5:00 a.m. flight. Then came a layover, another flight, and a two-hour time difference from the life I’d been living for the past three and a half weeks.

Travel is usually described as movement: leaving one place and arriving in another. But the hardest part is often what happens afterward. The body may be home, but the mind is still somewhere else. The suitcase is unpacked—or at least sitting there judging you—and your internal clock has no idea what day it is.

For the past few weeks, Mexico has been my rhythm: the light, the sounds, the streets, the meals, and the familiar little routines. Now I’m back in Cleveland, surrounded by email, laundry, schedules, and all the small responsibilities that apparently continued existing without consulting me.

I’m home. But it’s going to take me a day or so to get my act back together.

Coming home means returning to responsibilities, but it also means carrying something back with us: a new perspective, a favorite meal, a memorable conversation, or simply a reminder that the world is larger—and more interesting—than the routines we sometimes mistake for reality.

So please bear with me while I find my footing, remember what day it is, and convince my body that sleeping at the appropriate hour is once again a reasonable expectation.

I’m home, gentlemen. More or less.