Today I’m flying to Seattle for a week for my birthday (which is the 15th). I have been gone since September, and I’ve definitely missed it. It’s the first city I really consider my home, and in many ways it still is. It’s where I get my identity. I’m looking forward to spending my birthday in my old haunts, drinking coffee in a city where coffee is a lifestyle, acting like I’ve been here the whole time.

I’m not regretting moving to Boston by any stretch of the imagination. The people here are wonderful, and I feel like if there is a place I will do well, it’s here. But it’s not home. I still feel like I’m visiting. I’m learning the tangle of streets and the public transit systems fairly well, I know the lingo, but, as a man on the streets of Seattle once told me, this place is like Mecca. It’s a city of travelers. Brilliant people, people with bright futures–but a home to none of them. We aren’t from this city.