It has been three months now and I’ve slept in 16 different beds thus far. I’ve booked the tickets for the return journey, yet that is still another month away. More and more I long for my own space. It’s hidden in the details. As a guest in different houses, or camping on different campsites, I adjust to different environments. I sleep well, eat well, life comfortable and happy. En yet, I think about my house in The Netherlands more and more. Where I have everything I need, where I know exactly where everything is, where I don’t have to ask for anything, where I can do everything in my own way. It’s not the possession of stuff that does it, because I have all I need here. It might be in the way you arrange the stuff around you in a way that it is comfortable and fits your needs. Preferences for the place where things are and how to use them. Nothing big and important, on a lifetime these are futilities, but in daily life it starts to grow in importance.

While traveling I create my own little nest with my stuff in the accommodation I am at. I set my bags around me on places easy to reach, but not in the way for others. I might effectively use only 20% of what I brought, I could have travelled lighter. Yet I secretly mark out my little territory within somebody else’s. If it needs to change for the sake of the host I change it without resistance or doubt. I adapt to my environment and I wonder:

How much adaptability can you display without loosing yourself? How much space does my existence need to express itself? How much expression of my being is anchored in my surrounding? And how deep is the link with my personality in it?

I lay my hat aside, grasp my hanky, cover myself under the duvet that is my bed tonight and I dream about how I move my house from Koog aan de Zaan to England.