When I am away with work as I am today, I do try and keep to a routine, or I find myself struggling with energy levels. So, my bed time is roughly the same time and I get up at roughly the same time. I try and fit in some exercise to offset the travel weariness that hits my body. Nevertheless, I am feeling discombobulated and aware that I am spending too much time surfing social media, which is usually a sign I feel out of sorts in some way.
I find it intriguing. I seem to settle best when I feel at home. My mother pointed out once that wherever I travel, I start making my home. She is right, I always unpack, I make sure everything has a place in the room or the tent or even the plane seat. I nest. I need to feel “at home”.
I used to suffer horribly from homesickness and was reminded of that when it hit me out of the blue last year on a work trip. As the train was moving through Birmingham, I happened to look up and see my home turf as it slid away through the window. And that hideous, empty, desolate feeling of homesickness hit. I was going away to a place I know fairly well for one night, and yet, homesick! It lasted all day.
Homesickness may be a universal feeling – I’m not sure it is though, I know some people who struggle with it, but I don’t know everyone does. It does intrigue me, as it seems to be an attachment to a physical place or the routines and behaviours that happen in that place, at least it is for me, I can be homesick with my family around me. Very odd. I wonder if anyone has ever researched what it is and why we suffer from it.
Meanwhile I am feeling far from homesick this morning, just slightly out of sorts, possibly because I am drinking tea and not coffee when I write this, and horror of horrors – I had to make it myself. Here’s to home comforts.
Thinking quietly 