You know how sometimes everything in your life seems to line up in the right place, at the right time? All the puzzle pieces fitting together to make something beautiful, with a precision that can only be attributed to a Creator and Maker of all things?
Well, in the spring of 2015, that gorgeous convergence of timing and logistics was obscenely far away. In fact, it seemed as if all things were beginning to unfold in a series of events headed into a vacuum, a black hole of loneliness.
I’d been living in Silicon Valley for 15 years, every few years flirting with the thought of a new a city, a new job, a new start. It had become home, friendships developing over a decade with people who had become family. Life and adventure shared with them. Then in just a few months time, four of the five closest of these friends I’d chosen as family all announced they were moving away. One, just over an hour drive, and the farthest, to another continent and hemisphere.
Couple this with a change in where I was living, our landlord selling the house we were in. I’d spent the last year and a half with three fantastic ladies, one who would be married at the end of the summer, and two who wanted to move closer to their work, in a direction much farther from mine.
In just a few months, I would be without home and community. After a decade and half of investing my life in a place, in the people of that place, and in growing myself as a person in that place, the dock ties were being loosed. Things were starting to bang against what had always been, to pull for the next shore. But all I felt were the waves, the beating, the motion sickness. Loneliness and frustration where a future should have been.
Then, in what seemed like a moment, a very distinct dream began to take shape. Moments of clarity amidst the rocking….I’d been hanging around helping everyone else live their lives. Joining married friends and kids on adventures, melting into the 5th seat in the car, taking that end spot at the dinner table, working hangouts around nap schedules, and birthday parties. I’d been trying to stay in a lane that wasn’t made for the vehicle I’d been given. So I had to ask myself, if I don’t have these standard benchmarks of adulthood, then what have I been given? It was time to stop asking what I was missing, and starting asking what I had been uniquely gifted. I had to start asking myself…With right where I am, and what I have, how big and loud can this life get?
That question changed everything. It changes everything. Go ahead, ask it. At least think about asking it. I get it, you might not be ready. But when you are, dreams will be unleashed. This one life…..how can I go after it with everything I’ve got? How big? How loud?
Now that you know the backstory, let’s get this adventure started…..
Following My Fernweh 