The title of this blog I figured was a good place to start out with my first blog post. "Home is a place in your mind" is a fitting title for my whole life. I moved around a lot growing up and have lived with and without my direct family. Everyone needs a little place they call home. It gives them a sense of identity. It is something where they can relate to some and set themselves apart from others. This is the reason why people like places even though that place doesn't have much going for it. A great example is my roommate who is from St. Louis. I've been there a couple times and it did very little for me. Though, what I think doesn't matter because both he and Nelly love St. Louis and it is home to them. My home just happens to be in my head.
To me home is truly a mental state. For many people, home is where there family is and the house they grew up their whole lives. The only family I have remotely close to me is my Mom's cousin, which I hadn't seen their family for 10 years previous to moving to Denver. On a side note this is why family is so important because they treat me like their own. Home has become adaption to me. Home is the place where I feel most comfortable at any given time whether it be my parents house, where I live now, or the couch I am crashing on for the night in Boulder (thanks for being so hospitable Erica and Grace). The places where I am most comfortable consistently have something in common, having good friends and family around. Thankfully, from having some interesting genes from my Father and moving so much growing up, I have never had a problem making friends. I have family just about everywhere so home has become where ever I am at any given time.
There were a couple reasons I started this blog. First was because I for a couple months now have been reading my friend Erica's blog (http://clickyourheelsthreex.blogspot.com/). I have thought since day one it was great to put what you think out there and have other people read it. Second, I love to write and though most of what I used to write was songs, I have really come to enjoy things that are a bit more wordy (thanks to my brothers interest rubbing off on me, I started writing screen plays). The last thing is that I think this will be a great way to document everything in my life. That being said I think a great place to start is to write down all of my homes from the beginning to end in hopes to avoid all the confusion that all of my friends often have.
December 6, 1985 the city of Richmond, Virginia had the pleasure of welcoming me into the world and not too long after that (about 6 months) my parents moved me to Saratoga Springs, New York.
Saratoga Springs was my home for three years at which point I moved to Skaneateles, New York (picture above). This is a very small town outside of Syracuse, and usually the place I claim as home when people force me to give a place. I lived there until the middle of my 5th grade year when my Dad's job took us to Rochester Hills, Michigan.
I was in Michigan until the Summer of 2000 when my mommy decided she wanted to finish her bachelors degree. So... My mommy, my two brothers, and me left daddy all alone in Michigan and moved back to Skaneateles, where we moved in with my grandparents. My mommy did one semester at Syracuse University and found it was to much being away from my daddy and she and my two brothers moved back to Michigan after the semester was over. I however, stayed until this summer living with my Grandparents because I was on the Varsity basketball team and wanted to finish the season.
In the summer of 2001 I moved back to Michigan until my dad got transferred to California in February of 2002. I again stayed behind to play Varsity basketball and lived with a friend on the team and his family. I lived with them until the end of the basketball season and moved to Mission Viejo, California in April of 2002.
I was in Mission Viejo until February of 2004 when I graduated high school and moved to Lawrence, Kansas to find a job and hopefully get in state tuition for the following Fall at the University of Kansas. Unfortunately or not (depending on how you look at it) I ended up drinking way to much for a month, ran out of money, and moved back to Mission Viejo. The summer was spent in California only to return to Kansas in the fall for school.
The Summer of 2005 was spent living in Cressona, Pennsylvania working for, and living with my grandparents on my Dad's side. As most Summer's are short lived as was this one and back to school I went.
In school I had a short stint studying in the Spring of 2006 abroad in Angers, France (Chateau at Angers at left). I was there for four months followed by a month in Florence, Italy. I was lucky enough that Europe wasn't my only chance to get abroad. I had an internship in China for the summer of 2007, and got to see many cities while I was over there including Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai.
Once school finished I spent the Summer of 2009 in California only to remember that I didn't like it that much which brought me to Denver, Colorado. I have been living here since October 2009 and it has been one of the best homes I have had.
Photo at left is on Hong Kong island.
