Writing My Way Home: A Place to Think, Dwell, and Discover

Home is a house. Home is safety. Home is a shared space of language and private memories.

It’s where the kettle lives, where the heat clicks on in winter. It’s where the people who love us—or at least the ones who know us—are nearby. But lately, I’ve been thinking about home in a different way. Not just as comfort, but as a place where we are afforded the space to be ourselves; a place to think things out and allow our ideas to take shape.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve started reading more; a lot more. Not racing to finish books, but following ideas where they lead. It's been reading as an act of worship. It delightful! As another writer put it, it was like jumping into a puddle but the "puddle was actually an ocean".

I came across a line about 6-months into this reading journey and it's stuck with me. I can’t remember the exact words or who said it, but it went something like: until we write down what we’ve read in our own words, we don’t really know what we know—or how we know it. We haven't in really begun to think. Maybe it was from something on Zettelkasten, or maybe from someone reflecting on journaling as a spiritual habit. Either way, it landed.

It made me wonder: what if home isn’t just where we live or rest, but where we write? A space for shaping what we’ve been thinking, or at least trying to. Maybe that’s how we find out what we actually believe.

When Reading Starts to Feel Like Scrolling

I love reading. Since I first came to faith in Jesus, I begun reading and haven't really stopped. I love the smell of old books. I love the crispness of new books. That sense that something important might be waiting on the next page.

But recently, I’ve noticed something off. Even with serious, worthwhile books—stuff I want to read—I catch myself skimming. Moving quickly. Collecting quotes and insights the way you might scroll through a feed. I finish a chapter and realise I haven’t really taken anything in.

It’s like doomscrolling, just dressed in footnotes.

The content might be better, but the experience is the same: fast, passive, surface-level. A few things excite me, others frustrate me, most just pass by. And when it’s over, I don’t feel full—I feel numb.

Writing is the only thing that slows this down. It interrupts the scroll. It makes me ask: What was that really about? Why did it matter? Do I agree? What’s being assumed here?

Without that space, reading becomes another way to avoid thinking. Not an escape into imagination, but into abstraction. I'm not learning. I’m not challenged, I’m just busy.

A Room to Think

So I’ve started thinking about home not just as a physical space, but a mental one. Writing makes it feel real. Not in a big, polished way, but in the small, slow way I can begun furnishing a room with thoughts, ideas, questions, problems and recollections of thankfulness. It doesn’t take much. A corner of a desk. A quiet hour. Enough stillness to let something land. And, in time, this home might become familiar. It would be a grace. A well furnished home, simple, honest, mine to share with others.

We dream of retreats and cabins, and sure, those help. But maybe what we’re after is already here. Not somewhere to run away to, but somewhere to return to. A space where we can stay long enough to hear ourselves think.

When I write, I begin to notice what I’ve absorbed and what I’ve only brushed past. What I understand and what I’ve simply agreed with out of habit. Writing is how I wrestle. It’s how I find what’s mine.

Sometimes I’ll write a line that feels like it belongs to me. Not because it’s clever, but because it’s honest.

That’s when I know I’ve come home.

Words I Want to Live With

Here’s something true about me: I live in ideas.

I think visually too—patterns, shapes, images—but mostly, it’s words. Their sounds, their roots, the way they sit next to each other. I don’t just use them. I like them. I want a place to lay them out and look at them. Turn them over. Hold them to the light. That's what I want but I fear my impatience and reliance on easy fixes of dopamine distract me from keeping a good home.

Writing, for me, is both work and joy. It’s rarely easy. And when it is, it’s usually not very good.

Good reading feel effortless, right? Sentences flow like a stream, the current turns pages with ease and the plot refreshes us. Like a crisp clear stream we return to drink again an again. Good writing, if ever I knew such a thing, is the inverse of this. It is slow, tiresome. The step from word to word is an uphill climb to ascents with no way on. So we must trek down and start off again on a different path.

But when someone gets it right you can tell they did the hard work. Not just of editing, but of thinking. Of staying with a sentence until it stops pretending.

That’s the kind of writer I want to be. Not perfect. Not prolific. But patient. Willing to wait for the words to come. Willing to keep going when they don’t.

I want to dwell, not just to live somewhere, but to attend to a place with care.

That’s what I want from my reading life, and my writing life too. I don’t want to skim through days like I skim through essays, collecting highlights and forgetting what they mean. I want to dwell. To sit with Scripture, with ideas, with questions—long enough that they begin to do something to me.

Writing gives me that. It’s not flashy. It’s not fast. But it’s where things start to stick. Where things begin to grow.

Home as Memory, Home as Meaning

Augustine, in Confessions, talks about returning to God as a kind of remembering. As if truth isn’t always something new, but something we’ve forgotten. “You were within me,” he writes, “but I was outside myself.”

I think about that a lot.

We can be in our own kitchens, surrounded by our own things, and still be far from home.

Writing helps bring me back. It connects memory to meaning. Even when it’s messy, it’s a way of making room. A way of saying: this belongs somewhere. Let’s figure it out.

That’s what I hope this space can be. Not a collection of final thoughts, but a place for thought to happen. A workshop, not a gallery. Some things will be rough. Some will need time. But all of it will be written from that same hope—that writing is a kind of return.

Home Is a Resource

Home is also where the resources are. Not just books or notebooks or quiet, but your own life. Your story. Your doubts and half-formed thoughts. The things you’ve seen. The things you keep circling back to.

I think a lot of us wait for someone else to tell us when we’re allowed to think seriously. When we’re allowed to say something out loud. But maybe home is where we remember we don’t need permission. Maybe we already have what we need. We just have to notice.

In that sense, writing from home is an act of stewardship. You take what you have and you work with it. You turn it over. You see what grows.

Writing to Know, Writing to Be Known

I still haven’t found the original quote that started all this. But maybe that’s not the point.

Writing isn’t about remembering perfectly. It’s about making meaning. It’s how I figure out what I know—and what I don’t.

And when I share what I write, I’m not just broadcasting. I’m offering a kind of welcome. Saying: this is where I think. This is where I try to pay attention. Come in, if you like.

That’s the kind of home I want to build here. Not just for myself, but for anyone who might need a room to think in too.