I moved to Cape Town. I’m not sure what that means in the bigger picture of my life but for now I’m quietly reveling in all of the joys of novelty and fresh starts. My mother (who, incidentally, is also one of my heroes) always said that if Johannesburg is my wife, then Cape Town is my mistress. Which is weirdly fitting, since I kind of feel like living here is sort of like an illicit pleasure.

This transition is about more than just being in a new city. It’s about more than just the normally big process of moving, which already involves making tough choices about which pieces of your history to throw away, which pieces to put into boxes to be hauled into the next phase of life. Moving to Cape Town isn’t itself the big thing; I love this city so (and the wonderful people who live in her). The reason this is big for me is because this particular move, at this particular point in my life, actually meant shifting out of safety, surety, the known, and into limbo and uncertainty about just about everything in my life.

In the (long) lead up to leaving Jozi, I found myself really grappling with the idea of place and the concept of home. I arguably first moved away from ‘home’ when I was 12. I left a rural town in New South Wales where everyone knew your name, your family, and all the things you wish they’d forget and I went to the anonymity of big-city-Sydney. Somehow during that time I convinced myself that I was really a city girl who had mistakenly been born in the country. So I called Sydney home for a while. But every time I went back to the bush again, I felt myself rest into an overwhelming sense of being in the right place. Then I moved again, this time to study on a different continent. I tried to find home in a new language and in a culture that was a riddle I could try to untangle. When my attempts were thwarted I came back to my equilibrium; I returned to Sydney and tried my hand at settling down. But there was something about the promise of the unknown. I felt like I was missing out on something, somewhere else in the world and I was too restless to stay in that beautiful city for long. So I left for South Africa.

That was more than 6 years ago. While the restlessness didn’t ever really go away, now it’s returned with a vengeance. For a while I believed my own dreams that Johannesburg would be where I made home. But a year ago I started to cut all the fledgling roots that I’d been putting down over the years and cast myself adrift again, by no one’s choosing but my own. And so I find myself asking again, what role does place have in my life? How can I wrestle with working out where I want to be, where I want to build?

So I’ve tried to force some order into this deeply heart-driven matter. I think for many people the idea of place doesn’t really feature on their radar — it’s taken as read that Whereverville is home. And then for others it’s arguably even more nebulous than it is for me — those who relish going wherever the wind takes them. As I wrestle with my own ideas about where I want to be, I’ve tried to work out what draws people to places. I’ve taken to thinking of it as three vague categories.

People — This one is all about relationships. For lots of us, this on its own is enough to make the question of place a no-brainer: you choose to make your life where the people you love most are. But what happens when the people in your life aren’t conveniently in one area? Or when, like me, your friends have the fascinating tendency of wandering off to other exotic locales, seemingly at the drop of a hat? How do you prioritise? Family first? Ok. Easy. That has me in Sydney… although I’m questionable about what family even means anymore. So maybe it’s about friends too? But then you have to decide whether you’re choosing based on where that one individual is (that would probably be Edinburgh for now) or where the majority of your friends are (Johannesburg, Cape Town, New York and Sydney all come in pretty close here — which is kind of odd since I’ve spent a total of 5 days in the USA in my life). This category tears me apart, because I really believe that people are everything. But the people in my life are spread all over the world, and humans don’t really stay in one place.

Location — This one is all about the physical reality of where you are. I know people who would never want to live anywhere other than the land they grew up on. I know others that don’t have any emotional attachment to the actual space at all. This for me includes things like being able to speak the language (something I take for granted all too often), or the level of security you feel in a place. Having lived in a city where you don’t walk in the streets at night I’m always surprised by my level of joy when I find myself in other parts of the world where that freedom isn’t questioned. It’s anything from whether or not you can hike up a mountain or go for a surf before work, to whether or not you are free to love the person you want to love or to worship the god of your choosing. It’s city vs. country, mountains vs. sea. It’s about freedom, about functionality, and about how where you are makes you feel at some fundamental level.

Purpose — This is about the opportunities you find. Employment, education, personal or spiritual development, or something else entirely that lets you feel like what you’re doing has meaning (to you as an individual or in the world at a higher level). Purpose is the one that has driven my life up until now. My last big moves were because I was following the opportunities that presented themselves in my life and I built my life wherever they led me. But now something’s shifted for me and I want to let the other two lead me; I want to try a new approach — to create opportunities in whichever place I chose to be.

At the moment I’m rootless and I’m trying to enjoy the discomfort of it. As I ran along the misty promenade this morning I watched the sky turn from grey into pink into blue, I watched the mountain emerge from the wisps of cloud and I wished that I could make this place feel like home. But I can’t. Maybe one day, but not yet.