Your little routines, the same song on the walk, the same snack after practice, are what home feels like later.

Home turns out to be built from repetitions rather than from a building. The same song on the same stretch of pavement, the same thing eaten at the same hour after practice, done enough times, become the texture your memory later calls home. You are laying that down now without meaning to, which is why a smell or four bars of a chorus can drop you back into a year you were not thinking about.

Keep one of your repetitions on purpose this week instead of letting the day decide. It can be tiny. Tiny is what the good ones are made of.