Right, now a full response! Or, something inspired by it, sort of — especially with respect to the themes you came around to towards the end. I’m not really good at these things, so hopefully what I’m saying comes off well in the wee hours of the morning.

A few weeks ago, I found out I had been accepted to school this fall. I was amped. I’d spent a year out of school from the program I had thought I’d supposed to be in, and it was a disaster. To be going back to study something I loved was incredible.

I also found that I was seriously considering moving back in with my parents. I was thinking of excuses: My brother is starting high school and I wanna be there for him, I need a little structure in my life to complement school, etc. All it came down to, mostly, was, “God, it’d be nice to save money on rent and food when I move back in.”

Moving back in, though, meant a lot of things to myself, things I hadn’t really seriously considered. It would mean house rules. It would mean (presumably) a lot fewer midnight escapades and adventures in the suburbs. It could even mean someone cooking and doing my laundry and sorting things for me — the most awful of things, really.

The two things, though, that I was really worried about was a) the possibility that whatever growth in managing my mental health (and the environment of school which had aided in crashing it) would be collapsed, and b) that whatever growth I’d made in the last 10 months of living on my own would be totally and completely gone.

That growth was, and still is, important to me. I had had a lot of firsts for myself, and tried a lot of things. I stood up for myself in ways I hadn’t, and explored opportunities I might not have tried if I hadn’t set out on my own on a blustery November morning in 2015.

I took advantage of all the things I could have done, and with the exception of jetting around the world, I tried to get as much done as I could in my city because in my head, there was always the thought of an expiry date.

So now, I’m back home. It’s nearly 1 AM. The school year’s in session, and I’m sitting here with my thoughts and this beautiful story you’ve woven and I’m thinking to myself, “Has my environment changed, or have I?” The place I called home for the last 10 years and made my memories is one thing, but the place where I threw myself into my passions and my began to seriously consider this whole “creative” thing — that’s something too.

And now, I’m out of it, back where it all began. With that means slipping into the old way of doing things. And like it or not, I’m regressing little bit little into the way things were before for myself.

This is a little longer than I intended it to be, so I’ll cut it off here for now. I suppose the point I was trying to make (if at all) is that I completely understand your story here — identifying where you belong in the midst of home, away, and everything in between, both now, in the past, and looking into the future. It’s a weird situation to be in, and your writing puts a beautifully artistic and creative spin on “The Holy Land” that so many folks aspire to in their technical work.

Keep doing good work and making awesome things, Stephen. I’m jazzed to see what you create. I hope you find a little bit of yourself in every area you live in, and that no matter what changes happen in it, that Mountain View always has something to hold your heart.