I think the most helpful thing I have realized while visiting and working in D.C. over the past week is how important it is to be near friends and family. I guess something has changed in me over the past several years. Perhaps it was right around having met Toby, I’m not sure. But either way, I have realized that part of my happiness as a person relies on being surrounded by – or at least near – friends and family.

I went out for dinner the other night with Missy. Like most friends who see each other after moving apart, we caught one another up on new machinery. I found myself introducing her to my feelings about living out west, she told me about her recent weekend in Toronto and her thoughts about her future. We both talked about loneliness and feeling bored. Our stories, as if new to even ourselves, stumbled around a bit, newly equipped with words. Before I knew it I was thinking out loud, trying to figure out why I have felt so down the past few months, why I have felt so crazy, why I feel that my voice has changed.

Since returning here I haven’t felt at all crazy. I haven’t felt lonely or lost, confused or totally displaced. I have missed Toby and my cats (which I have said probably a hundred times in my own head and maybe 99 times on here) but I haven’t felt lost. And though I have been without home since arriving here (I’m living out of a suitcases, sleeping a strange bed, and I have no Toby) I feel more at home here then I have in the 5 months living in San Francisco. That’s a strange feeling, considering.

There are a hundred clich