When people ask me how do you make it in show business or whatever, what I always tell them — and I’ve said it many years and nobody ever takes note of it because it’s not the answer they wanted to hear. What they want to hear is: here’s how you get an agent, here’s how you write a script, here’s how you do this — But I always say, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” And, I just think that if somebody’s thinking, “How can I be really good?” people are going to come to you. It’s much easier doing it that way than going to cocktail parties.

But then, just as you missed home while you were away, you start missing away while you’re home. You remember the other coffee shop, the one you discovered on your adventure. The unfamiliar foods, so strange at first, that you learned to enjoy. Your small-but-important victories in learning to communicate in another language.

Many of your friends and family, who are otherwise intelligent and compassionate people, don’t understand what’s happened to you because they have no context for it. To them, your experiences far away are an “other,” in a place they’ve vaguely heard of but whose connection exists entirely with you. They listen politely to your stories, but they’re ready to move on long before you are.

“You’ll never guess what I saw!” you tell everyone you meet for weeks on end. “I’ve learned so much about the world.”

“That’s great,” they say. “Have you seen what’s happening with American Idol?”

When you went away weeks, months, or years ago, you were prepared for culture shock in your new surroundings. Coming home, the reverse culture shock hits you out of nowhere, which is all the more difficult because you didn’t expect it to be so strong.