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Supermarket cheese aisles depress you in a profound, almost existential way.

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Home is the people who remind you of who you are.

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If politics really don’t matter, if the market makes all the decisions, than how about I treat my vote like I would the marketplace?

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It feels like the work I do is only for myself and the company that employs me. Not for the good of the nation. Not for my family. Not for any “greater good.” In a way I prefer this.

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Bonds will be forged, traveling companions will become life-long friends, and memories will transcend the imagination.

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The next day I went to meet someone I needed to tell something. It was raining in Williamsburg. Kids ran past McCarren Park smiling, no umbrellas, soaked. I had a little collapsible black thing she gave me last summer when I lived in Brooklyn and we were still seeing each other.

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We might yell a heavily-accented “DOMO ARIGATO HAHAHAHAHA” at a man in the subway in Tokyo, but of course, they would know we were not being serious and therefore not judge us on our deaf ear for language.

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But there are the fears. And yes, life has gone on without you. And the longer you stay in your new home, the more profound those changes will become.