The instinct to return to the familiar, what feels like "home", can mean both security and stagnation. Are we bound to fall into periods of excitement and growth that seem genuine in the moment, only to feel a hollowness lurking once the moment has passed?

In my mid/late twenties I was plagued by this feeling of drifting in circles just wide enough to give me the illusion of forward progress—of a slow suffocation in my own complacency.