For the first time in ages, I’m alone.

This was expected, but that doesn’t make it easy.

I’m sitting in a recliner, some mindless nonsense on the TV and a bit of music in the background, and I’m the only sign of life.

My wife and kids are over a hundred miles away in the house that’s been home for the last seven years while I’m here in the city that will be our *new* home in a year or so, starting my new job, meeting new coworkers and (soon) my new students, and I’m alone.

(Well, the dog is here, too, but she’s so lazy and so quiet it almost makes no difference.)

It’s hard to appreciate just how noisy a house with four people living in it is, even when it’s quiet. There’s always the sound of a video game from the kids’ rooms, or of my wife’s clicking away on a laptop as she works from home (even though she should leave more of her work at work), or of the cats calamitizing the house.

I’ve spent the odd night or two away from home here and there — a stay in a hotel for some work function usually — but a hotel room is temporary by its nature. It’s designed as an empty, transient vessel: a place you stay while doing something else, to which you will form no attachments and from which you will very soon move on. This is not that.

I can’t help feeling like I’m doing this wrong — I should be living some kind of bachelor’s dream. But it’s impossible to do that when all I can think about is how much I miss my kids, my wife, and yeah, even the cats. And, sure, it’s temporary. Sure, in a week my son will be joining me, and we’ll be in the thick of work, and school, and there won’t be time (or, probably, energy) to focus on the empty spaces where the sounds of the rest of the fam are, at least not until I’m in bed feeling that empty spot next to me.

I thought I loved the times when the wife would take the kids to the store and leave me a quiet hour. But I don’t know how single people do this day in and day out. I’ve got less than a week ahead and I’m already going out of my mind.

Time to take the dog for a walk. She may not be much of a conversationalist, but it’ll give me something to think about besides the clicking of these keys.