I should be pack­ing right now. I should be mak­ing plans to make sure that tomor­row goes as smoothly as pos­si­ble. I should be enjoy­ing my last night home with my fam­ily, before I make this belly-flop of a splash into what the old-timers refer to as "the Real World".

I should be doing a lot of things.

But of course, doing that would mean that I'm actu­ally able to com­pre­hend that I'm really doing this. I am really doing this. And I won­der when this will hit me.

Maybe tomor­row. Maybe next week. Maybe never.

It's always strange to think of the idea of "home" when, for the first time, you're doing it by your­self. But I imag­ine this is normal.

I sup­pose I'll find out tomorrow.

I remem­ber sev­eral months ago, look­ing through old boxes in the stor­age room. Much of our "junk" was being finally taken to the dump, and I was look­ing for what I thought was sal­vagable. Between Mom, Mike, Megan and I, we went through just about every­thing. But I remem­ber look­ing for an audio­book of one of my favorite nov­els, "The Lost Boys" by Orson Scott Card. I got it sev­eral years ago from the pub­lic library's "10-cent shelf", and for what­ever rea­son, I loved lis­ten­ing to it.

I found it today.

Time to pop it in the stereo and pack, pack, pack.