December 14, 1996

It's hard to think of myself as home. So far nothing about it feels that way. Initially the surroundings and seeing family and friends did, but something is missing - namely that place where I can hang my hat. Funny, I never thought that things like sheet rock, plaster, wood and shingles would defines the word 'home' for me, but they seem to be doing just that - or at least the absence of them is defining for me that I am not yet there. Maybe all this 'away from home' has distorted what 'home' is. I won't know for sure for another two weeks when we can finally move into our new walls. Maybe even then I will feel as if I am still floating.

I've decided traveling is synonymous with floating. I first came to this realization somewhere in Turkey when Hana, whom we were traveling with, had a sudden urge to get back to England. Did she have a home there? 'No'; a job? 'No'; friends?; family? 'No', 'No'. Why then the rush to get back? She was experiencing what I now call flotation anxiety - the uneasiness associated with having no deadlines, no appointments, no immediate goals; no reasons for not doing whatever she wanted.

Early in our travels John and I had felt this same anxiety but we lacked a diagnosis. I've come to believe that we all spend so much of our time attached to daily details that when they are absent for any length of time, we feel directionless. Hana wanted to get back to England because it was something to work toward.

For most of our lives we are goal oriented. As children, we have schoolwork; we must do well to move on to the next grade. We must find jobs, find homes, find partners. John and I spent over twelve years in the work force, a place of endless goals. At home the same was true - shopping, laundry, cooking, cleaning, aerobics, weeding through junk mail. We are governed by our watches. Even relaxing, R & R was governed by that one four letter word - time. It was always a finite factor. But suddenly that variable no longer applied. We had become so goal-oriented, we had forgotten how to float. We didn't have two weeks to explore the Rockies, we had three or four, it didn't matter. If we began heading to Oregon, we could change course and head to Wyoming instead. Stop for another swim in the Mediterranean? Why not, we had no where we had to be.

So here we are back home and we are still floating. But it won't be long before those dormant goals reappear. We'll be scheduling our days with appointments, making to-do lists. Like flowers at the first spring thaw, each opening pedal will beckons us back to our goal-oriented lives. Find an apartment - hurry. Buy the classified ads - quickly. Polish the resume; register at the gym; schedule a dentist appointment - don't delay. At the start of our trip it took so much effort to get beyond flotation anxiety. Now with all these goals staring me in the face, I'm not quite ready to return to solid ground.