This Must Be the Place

Home, routine and quiet peace

Sometime in my early 20s, when I was juggling full-time graduate school, two jobs and a quest to qualify to the Olympic Trials in the marathon, I latched onto a quirky song by The Talking Heads called “This Must Be the Place” as an antidote to the maelstrom that was my life.

It’s a happy, quiet little song about home, someone you love and being OK with things. It’s a feeling so fleeting to me, a restless soul who always seems to be bouncing from one thing to another, one place to another, one obsession to another.

I’m in the middle of a whole month at home. A whole month! This is a luxury that has largely eluded me since the beginning of the pandemic; yes, even throughout much of 2020 and 2021, I traveled so much that routine, sweet routine, remained elusive.