Today was not a good day. Today was a bad day. Today was a “what have I done by moving here” day. My first since moving, I think.

Today was a fine day, objectively. It was lovely, in fact, an overcast respite after yesterday’s picture-perfect height of summer. Yesterday the sun shone wide in a cloudless sky, warming the air to 86 degrees as we scampered about a sparkling swimming pool. We ate vanilla soft serve in wafer cones with sunscreen melting down our backs. We careened down water slides and braved loud waterfalls without a second thought given to time.

Today, I needed calm. I needed clouds. I got both. I got indoor swim class and shiny blue ribbons and casual driveway basketball.

But last night I dreamt about my hometown, Denver, and the ghosts who still haunt me there. Dreams almost always become my shadow the next day, lacing this day with unease and the realization that for me, home is a moving target.

I left Denver for California because there was nothing left for me there. I left California for Chicago because what was left for me there? So here I sit, in my queen-sized bed in the upper Midwest, hurling myself into a new life. As I walked to the playground today, I wondered: How long before I let this, too, grow old?

I’m lucky. I’ve been able to combine two of my greatest passions – writing and the concept of home – into a way to make a living. I write all day at work and I write here at night. But the truth of home continues to evade me. Denver is no longer it (although I’ve since realized the value of the phrase I was born and raised here). The Bay Area wasn’t it until two months ago; now I stare longingly at the past 10 years. Sometimes it’s innocent nostalgia; other times it’s a deep, sad ache.

But I’m here, now. In Chicago, a beautiful city by its own right. And I’ve decided to do a little mind-fuck. To play a trick on myself by pretending that I’m a local. To ignore when people comment on my California license plates, which I still haven’t changed. To act like I belong. To take for granted that this is my turf. I even lied at Starbucks tonight and told the guy who asked that I’d lived here for years.

I’ll pretend the extremities in weather are just something I deal with. I’ll pretend the fireflies lighting up dusk aren’t a novelty at all. And I’ll look up at the night sky and believe: This is where I call home.