#164: Where is home
This is a question I have been asking myself a lot.
I find the word ‘Home’ very evocative.
When I think of Home, I think of warmth, cups of Tea, my Mum, my Dad, my Family.
I think of Stoke where I grew up. I think of the tree me and Sarah got engaged under which is just round the corner from my parents house.
I think of Sarah’s family and hugs from her Grandma.
I’ve never called a place I’ve rented in London Home.
I’d never say “I’m coming home” it’d always be “I’m getting back to the flat”
Then, when we moved to where we are now, Putney Bridge/Fuham I started to feel a little more at home.
The River makes me feel at home, at peace and some of the people in the area, like Ray who owns the local book store or our neighbours who we’ve gotten to know.
Yet it’s still not truly home, because I don’t fully feel like I belong here.
Sarah and I go for a walk around the Fulham, Parsons Green or Wandsworth area and we look at the the lovely Townhouses that one day would make a nice Home for a family.
Yet the stark reality is that those houses are well out of reach unless something remarkable happens in our lives.
So whilst I love this area of West/South West London and London in general - I don’t feel at home, because I don’t feel like I can belong here, I don’t feel like I can sustain here, I don’t feel like I can be here. I can’t afford to be here and have the life I’d like to have. Or if I could I’d have to sacrifice everything to get it, in many many years to come.
That goes for the whole of London really. The economics of the city are oppressing.
When I go deeper into Home and what it means to belong it’s not just about home ownership, it’s about fitting in too.
In London, I love the diversity, the creativity, the expression, the vegan options on the menus, the different cultures and openness in attitudes and conversations. I love the choice and the opportunity, even if I don’t take it up all the time I like knowing it’s there. I feel like I fit in here.
Will I fit in outside of London? If I were to lave London, yes I may be able to own something that suits the quality of life I’d like, yet would I feel like I belong?
These are many of the questions that are swirling around my head when it comes to this evocative word; Home.
These are questions that have long existed for me, yet I wasn’t able to ask them before.
I needed to work 5 days a week in a London office and that was that, so whether I liked it or not, I needed to make London my home.
Now though, I’ve experienced something different, working from “Home” and now imagining a different relationship with work, in how often we connect in person.
So this big question is there, where is Home? Where do I want to live? Where do I want to settle? In what place do I belong?
It’s a big question and feels all the bigger when I put pressure on myself to answer it immediately.
This questions has started to feel urgent as I’ve begun to let myself feel disillusioned with my current quality of life.
The one-bed-London-flat-working-from-one-room-life. Where the flat was rented to be a place to commute from, a place to socialise from is now an office, a meeting room, a gym and more.
It’s been tough and now I’m questioning what else and what next?
I imagine many have been asking questions about their home and many too may still feel a little stuck like I do.
I feel like I have one foot in the “old world” and another in the “new world” and I’m caught in between. I’ve peeled back the curtain and seen something else, but the curtain is half drawn again.
With questions about ownership, about settling, about family, about priorities, about culture, about belonging and about where. There are all there, swirling.
All this with the backdrop of no holiday, no breaks, no time outside of this one country where I met get some perspective.
A lot of big questions and less chances to reflect or to get away, that’s quite a concoction.
Today I have no answers, just lots of questions on the topic of Home. I can’t write this as a story of something I’ve figured out, more a series of questions of something I’ve not got worked out yet.
Where is Home?
I don’t know.
What I'm up to:
I'm reading Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
I've had a bit of press with Sanctus recently.
Is this the end of ambition? (MR PORTER)
The Sanctus Story so far (The Independent)
How Sanctus can support your employees? (Maddyness)
I'd love to write regularly for another publication too, like a column sort of thing, I've been thinking about that, how do I do that?
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Who am I?
I'm the Founder of a Mental Health mission called Sanctus and I'm the Author of a Book; "Mental Health at Work" that's published by Penguin and out in October.
I write this newsletter about mental health, startups and my life, my journey and 8,000 people like it enough to still be here. I try to respond to everyone who emails me, it just takes me a while.