I was at home. A few months before I went on a two week retreat that had been amazing but left me wrung out and overwhelmed. Lots of concentration states, body movements, crystal clear equanimity, as well as floods of emotions like panic and anxiety -- but all of it experienced as states within awareness, objectified through noting. However, I was feel very fearful and alone. (Ultimately, I was trying too hard to make things happen -- don't do this!

) Anyway, I worked with a teacher for a few months, got my practice consistent again, and got back into just the joy of exploring the mind through meditation.
I had confronted my own striving and controlling nature and seen how it caused so much suffering. I had given up on trying to attain anything in practice. By then, I just sat and did my practice and whatever happened happened. It wasn't in my control, so why get frustrated by it? At the time before stream entry, I was in a kind of blissy state, looking at thoughts as thoughts, meditating on the mindstream, even the thoughts that seemed to be about the thoughts about meditating on the mindstream. It was nice and somewhat spacy/dreamy. And there was a small hiccup in reality, no big deal, and I kept sitting.
It became clearer what had happened a few days later when I noticed things were different, but when had the change occurred? Oh there was that hiccup a few days ago... When I checked in with my teacher, who had been tracking my sits over the months, I barely started describing things and he kinda laughed and said "Yeah, stream entry."
These things are kind of predictable, yet no one knows exactly when it will happen. (My teacher had predicted SE a month earlier, but it just made me all ambitious and threw my sits off for a while!) People who are able to practice with a gentle touch, move through yucky stages with awareness, and continue to sit when nothing much is happening, without trying to control things or overly focusing on expectations... they are doing good work. Even if stream entry never happens, just going through that work makes you saner and happier than people who get angry and frustrated when they have to wait 5 minutes while standing in line...
Retreats greatly help, do them if you can, but retreats aren't essential. However consistent practice is essential 99.999999999999% of the time. Teachers or spiritual friends really help, too. In fact, I was hanging out with two people from the DhO community at the time. One had recently gotten SE and one who had awakened. Seeing that they were normal humans, going to work, raising their families -- that helped normalize the whole deal, too. No big deal, just human awakening.

Hope that helps.