I’ve been back in my house in Florida for a few months now. I do apologize for not writing any blog posts for a while, for anyone out there who has been reading. This leg of the journey has been a combination of happiness to be under my own roof again and being lonely in what feels like a new location for me after being gone for eight years now. I’ve tried to treat this all as a new chapter that is open to possibilities, but I’m also being reminded of why I didn’t mind being gone so much in the first place.

After loading up my Uhaul and pulling my car behind it on a trailer, I spent a few days getting back here to Florida from Arkansas. One night I stayed at a hotel, where it became a real lesson in trailer maneuvering in the hotel parking lot. A couple watching me told me what a great job I did, and wasn’t sure I was going to pull it off. One time when I stopped to get gas, I noticed the tire strap had come off one of my front tires, and I was panicking while trying to get the car secured. A man asking for gas money came up to me, and I told him sorry, but I have to take care of this situation. The man ended up helping me with the tire strap to get it back on, and for that he got his gas money.

It was certainly an adventure getting back here, and really had me thinking that I don’t want to ever own a travel trailer RV. I’ll probably go motorhome if and when that time ever comes. The full effect of moving back into my house didn’t hit me fully until I pulled up to my driveway. It was about 2:00 in the morning if I remember correctly, so luckily I had a set of spare keys that still worked. I was planning on getting my keys from my property management company, but that wasn’t happening at 2am.

Since that time, I’ve gotten my place painted, which it really needed, and now I’m in the process of getting my AC system revamped. It’s extremely outdated, and is not going to be cheap to replace, but as anyone in Florida knows, living without air conditioning here is like trying to live without heat in Boston in the winter. It’s been a slow but gradual process, getting renovations done that needed to be done but couldn’t happen while I had tenants living here.

I know I am very fortunate to have my house and have my job so I can actually have my own place to myself and earn my keep. When I drove back into Florida and start getting the old memories that made me happy to leave years ago, I said to myself that I need to treat this time back as a clean slate, and start over again with a more positive experience. As much as I have tried to do just that, I’m getting the reminders of why I wasn’t sure about staying here before. I am getting older of course, which is getting me closer to retirement age in retirement land, but I’m not exactly in that stage of life just yet. I’m also not a young college student any more, so I feel like I’m somewhere in between the demographics of residents here. This has made having any sort of a social life difficult, not to mention the fact that I’m the new guy here after being gone for so long.

As I work my day job, and manage house projects that are really taking their toll on my finances, it makes me think about the long term picture here. I do have a long term plan as to what to do with my house, but I’m uncertain as to what to do with myself. As long as I’ve been a nomad, it’s become the only life that I know where I truly feel alive, like I’m doing something right. It’s a reprieve from living a “normal” life, but at some point I’ve always had to land again, as is the case now here in Largo. Living as a nomad, traveler, whatever you want to call it, when you do come back down to land, you start to think about what you’ve missed, if anything. I never steered my life toward having a family.

There’s a Seinfeld episode I remember where Jerry and Kramer are having the conversation that there must be more to life, and Kramer refers to family life as “man made prisons”. If there’s anything I’ve ever heard that relates how I feel about a family of my own, that’s it. I like having a significant other, really missing not having one at the moment, but I enjoy my freedom as well, and as anyone knows, you can’t have your cake and eat it too, as the saying goes.

As I live out this little section of my journey, this house has become my institution. Dealing with contractors, having people coming over to give me estimates on getting jobs done, having repairmen come in, all while I’m working my remote job filled with virtual meetings, fills up my day and makes it challenging. It’s what is happening, or not happening, with my life that has me wondering what I’m doing here, and where this is going.