Headed or heading?

This is more of a claim than a question. I claim that a construction like "I am headed home (which you will hear a lot in America) is wrong. The present progressive must utilize the ing-form. Try substituting "head" with "walk". You wouldn't say "I am walked home."

Solution 1:

If someone or something is headed somewhere, it means an orientation toward a particular destination. If someone is heading somewhere, then there is motion toward that destination, either currently or the near future. This, of course, is not a mutually exclusive distinction:

One afternoon I had been rambling around in the hills east of town and was headed home.

Now this hiker could just as easily have said he was heading home, since if he were headed home he'd eventually get there if he walked long enough in that direction. But the contrast here is with rambling: after having wandered about the hills with no particular goal, he's still hiking as before, but he has changed direction and is now headed home. In other words, headed makes the direction topical, while heading describes the motion toward it.

Soon, the train had left the city behind and was heading south.

When we arrived in Philly, they divided the train as a portion was headed south to Atlanta and we were headed to St. Louis.

In the first example, the train is currently moving away from the city in a southerly direction; the direction is not topical, but leaving the city behind is. In the the second, the train cars are being recombined according to their final destinations. Since this difference of direction is the sole content of this sentence, that direction is topical. If you jump on a train about to depart and you want to make sure you're on the right one, you're far more likely to ask, “Where is this train headed?”

I had survived three years of army service in World War II, and now I was heading home on a train to Newark, New Jersey.

I did not feel comfortable in letting it out that I was headed home after such a short tour. Even with me going home under medical orders, it just did not seem fair.

In the first example, a soldier is on a train to his home in Newark. The travel itself is topical. In the second, a soldier is reluctant to tell anyone he is about to go home after such a short tour, i.e., whatever travel is involved is secondary to the reluctance to tell anyone about his destination: home.

There is thus no reason to disfavor “I am headed home,” much less consider it an error. Such a usage simply is giving you slightly different information even when a person is actually in the process of going home.