I have changed my life’s trajectory several times over the past 10 years.

I’ve been a college admissions adviser, a ticket booth operator, a family-owned farm employee, a fruit and veggie factory worker, a radio intern, a content producer for newspapers, a nonprofit children’s counselor, a photojournalist, a freelance magazine writer, an EFL educator and a linguist.

I’ve worked in two states, four countries and have made friends from 100 nations around the world. I’ve studied education, journalism, and linguistics. I have three degrees, a home I have paid for completely and even the start of a retirement plan.

I look fine on paper.

But I still do not know exactly what I need to do with my life.

I am learning to be OK with that.

I recently turned down three good jobs in three different parts of the world because they did not feel right. I am not one to base my life decisions on a passing hunch, but I believe I made the right choice when I bought a one-way ticket back to Texas. Part of it feels like defeat, to come home when there is more to see and learn. Another part thinks I’ve been gone too long and there is work that needs to be done in my home state, especially as things get worse there.

I will still make mistakes. I will struggle with intimacy and intrusive thoughts. I will often wonder what I am doing and why does it matter.

But I will not stop wandering the world or trying to write about it in clear sentences.

Here’s to mental health, hard questions, vulnerability and risk. Here’s to coming home. Above all, here’s to the hope and determination of love, which works to dissolve borders and barriers at home and abroad.

I look forward to seeing y’all in 2019 and 2020. May we shake things up as we lean into vocation and preserve more of this world. <3