It has now been exactly 1 year today since I moved from Atlanta to Silicon Valley. A lot can happen in such a relatively short period of time, and indeed, my life has changed forever. Here are some highlights of the past year, roughly in chronological order:
[Warning: This is a rambling brain dump of a lot of random things I’ve been meaning to blog about over the past year, all written here in one evening, but I just had to make the deadline of writing this before my one-year anniversary of a truly life-changing decision.]
…driving/sightseeing across the country with my dad, coffee shop hopping (working remotely to Atlanta), going through some extreme – no, really extreme – homesickness, living a month in SF, touring my mom around the bay area, starting a new job, finding a ‘golden-handcuffs’ apartment in San Jose, going through more homesickness, joining a church, making new friends, joining bible studies, overcoming my homesickness, making every Friday dinner+hangout with friends, joining Facebook again :/, working out, attending large church get-togethers, having midnight bonfires in Santa Cruz, touring my sister around the bay area, learning about investing, messing around at Google late at night, finding a roommate and new apartment (freeing me of the golden handcuffs), visiting Atlanta for Christmas, co-leading and hosting bible studies, more working out, grilling-out and hot-tubbing, late-night game nights, almost finding a girlfriend, and most importantly – some self discovery and maturity…
There is so much more to add to the list above, but notice the inflection point around joining a church. That has been the pivotal moment in my journey thus far. If I had not attended South Bay Church and decided to join a Life Group (bible study), I would not be in California still today. Watch the first 50 seconds of this video [http://vimeo.com/83638768] – it’s a testimony I gave for South Bay Church about the results of my decision to connect with a church community by joining a life group.
Looking back, I actually had a very comfortable life in Atlanta: a good job I liked and was friends with everyone at the company, a sweet apartment location near Piedmont park in Midtown, all my family family and a few friends close by, plenty of time to work on my hobbies… etc. Yet, something was missing.
I’m still not yet sure why I decided to leave it all and embark on this journey. There were many things going on in my life (both personal and professional) that all came together at the right moment to push me away from home. Some of those included the realization that I wasn’t really “tied down” because of school anymore, and knew California offered more opportunities to progress my career. Some of it was personal, like wanting to explore and not wanting to regret just staying complacent somewhere for no real reason. The Christian in me wants to say “the Lord called me here”, but I’m really not sure – maybe my situation at the time was God’s calling, but I didn’t think of it like that. I do feel now that I’m where I need to be at this point in my life.
It is now scary to imagine what my life would be like now, having not left my home to come to California! I’ve grown in ways that I never would have if I had stayed, but could only have happened by leaving everything I knew and starting over. I am a different person that I was just one year ago, and definitely for the better. My eyes have been opened to many things about me that I can’t believe I had not fixed / dealt with earlier. I unknowingly needed my world turned upside down before I could discover these things, man-up, and take charge of my life, and I’m so glad it finally happened.
Though I have already made many truly awesome and deep friendships out here, I do miss my family, and moving away from them made me develop a fundamentally new appreciation for time spent with them. I realize I had taken for granted living ~35 minutes away from my parents and sister when in Georgia. I now cherish every moment spent with them; I even try to apply this with my friends here, knowing you can never guarantee another chance to see someone.
Despite missing my family dearly, the decision to move away from one world and into another, starting anew, has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made (another one is randomly changing my major in college to computer science, but I’ll save that story for another time)! Unfortunately, time for my side projects has been reduced to near zero, but I’ve chosen to focus more on building relationships/friendships over those for the time being.
Continuing my photo-a-day project helps me document all that has happened over the past year, [2013 & 2014] and I love going back through my pictures to re-live all the highlights. Now, I look forward to another year of new adventures, new friends, new opportunities, and new perspectives on this journey called life.
Now for some related inspirational quotes:
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. ~H. Jackson Brown Jr.
You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself. ~Alan Alda
In breaking away from the familiar and the expected, you’ll be forced and privileged to face greater challenges, learn harder lessons, and really get to know yourself. ~Kelly Cutrone
There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. ~Nelson Mandela
(^ this quote reminds me of my grandma’s house, the only thing in my life unchanged)
Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home. ~Matsuo Basho