Home?

Erik Austin
Aug 10
1 min read

I just watched And Just Like That, and they mentioned the saying, “You can’t go home again.” they even looked up who wrote it—Thomas Wolfe. The timing was uncanny, because I had just spent three days in SLO, and it stirred up the same emotions I felt when I was here for Oz back in May.

Being back is… strange. This is the place where I grew up, where I found my voice in theater, and where I had some of my biggest creative successes with Kelrik. Over the weekend, I ran into so many familiar faces—at Little Shop of Horrors, at The Music Man—friends, collaborators, pieces of my past. And somehow, Joe is here too, doing a gig at SLO REP.

I miss this place. I miss who I was here. And yet, I can see how much I’ve changed. It’s a cocktail of emotions—nostalgia, joy, maybe a little sadness—but mostly, it leaves me feeling all over the place.

So here’s my Carrie Bradshaw–style end-of-episode voiceover: Maybe Wolfe was right. Or maybe coming back isn’t about reclaiming the past—it’s about stumbling into a new version of home, one you didn’t even know you were searching for.