It’s been over two weeks since I returned home from my European vacation. Some things became abundantly clear very quickly. Afternoon visits to taverns to drink red wine could no longer be thought of as tapas research. Flashing my Chicago Pass to get on the subway no longer signified an entré into a subterranean adventure but rather was just a commute.

John and I came back to Chicago during a bit of a blizzard (ah, the joys of January in the Midwest), but neither winter weather nor jet lag nor playing catch-up on projects loomed large as homecoming challenges. The enemy now was boredom. Or maybe a better term would be loss of juice.

When you’re in a new place, everything seems new – and exciting. While on vacation, everything was oddly interesting. I noticed my concentration amped up whenever I studied a menu at a new restaurant. I’d make mental notes during a walk whenever I passed a place I wanted to come back to before I zipped my suitcase for another rail excursion to our next destination.

I am not sure if I felt more energy because everything I saw or did was set in new surroundings or because I was very aware of the temporal nature of things while traveling. When I had only two days to enjoy the alleyways and Christmas decorations of Sevilla, I wanted to pay extra attention to each banner of the baby Jesus I saw hanging over a courtyard balcony. I never seemed to forget the fact that I may never walk the same path again.

Back home, I seemed to be overwhelmed by a feeling of “sameness.” In the first few days after coming home, I wrote in my journal and for my blog, and I briefed my friends on trip highlights. Then I resumed routines. I returned to every other day health club visits, networking for project work, paying bills. Oh hell, I thought, will nothing feel new again?

Then, last week, after I locked the back door of my building and headed towards my garage, I noticed a little garden statue of a bunny rabbit standing next to a splash of snow that hadn’t yet melted during the latest January thaw. I realized I never noticed it before even though I must have walked the route a couple dozen times since moving in.

The bunny statue was funny in its pose; sort of mischievous looking. It was simultaneously hard to miss, as an immoveable cement form with unnaturally perked up ears, and well-camouflaged in color, perfectly blending in with shades of winter leaves and dead grass. No, I kept thinking, I had never noticed Mr. Rabbit before.

And I started to laugh. Was it placed in the back yard to scare off wandering critters? As some sort of decoration? Were there other stone bunnies or birds lurking behind patches of weeds waiting to be discovered?

And what about me; being so completely surprised by seeing something in my own backyard that I had not seen before. A good reminder this was, in the form of an inexpensive eight inch tall cement rabbit, prompting me to remember that the newness of something has less to do with being in a foreign city or seldom frequented neighborhood as it does with me seeing things with fresh and open eyes.

Seeing a bunny statue in your own backyard – despite the heavy expectation of sameness – is no small thing.