Hello Again: October 2023 Life Update

Hello from the beautiful but mosquito-ridden land of Texas!

Boy, do we have a lot to catch up on.

Part 1: America’s Next Great Author

The last time I posted an actual factual blog post with words instead of video was almost a year ago, when I drove up to Newark, NJ to film the pilot for America’s Next Great Author. I recounted the experience in detail, but the story never had a proper end…what happened with the TV show anyway?

Well, I haven’t posted an update because there isn’t much of one. The last email I got from the team was in May, when they said, “We are close to being able to show footage from the Proof of Concept. It takes so long to get the editing right!” The pop-up on their website promises a “big announcement coming soon!”

But that’s all I know. Maybe this TV show will get made, and maybe it won’t. In either case, participating was an interesting experience!

Part 2: Moving to Texas

Filming happened at the end of October, and at the beginning of November, I moved to Texas.

Why Texas?

Well, my post-college living situation has been pretty haphazard. I spent a year traveling, then went back to Oregon to write a book about those travels. Then the pandemic hit. So I stayed in Oregon until the summer of 2021, and then moved to Virginia for a year, where I lived with my sister Jenny while she pursued her PHD in math.

Virginia was a bust. I hated it there and was desperately lonely. So I tried PA out for a few months, hoping to find permanent housing in Philadelphia, but when that didn’t work out, I moved to Texas.

My brother Matt works at NASA, and he and his wife Phoebe had just bought a big house and offered to let me live with them.

If you watched any of my videos last spring, you have somewhat of an idea of what life in Texas is like. We’re always finding cool things, making cool things, and planting cool things.

And I really love living by the bay.

Part 3: Texas Difficulties

Unfortunately, there are drawbacks to living in Texas. The difficult thing about being a writer and working from home is that it feels nearly impossible to make friends.

The best way (that I know of) to plug into a community is to find a church, attend regularly, and get involved. But finding a church to go to is much more difficult than you’d think.

First, although Houston has seemingly endless churches, I’m not willing to drive an hour on those harrowing Houston roads every Sunday just for church. It’s too stressful. I want something within 20 minutes or so from my suburb.

Second, although I don’t have anything against old people, I’d like to go to a church where I can plug in socially with people my age. Church after church I’ve attended seems to have a smattering of older people, and that’s it.

And finally, I want a church that’s politically neutral, at least from the pulpit. I’m still theologically Mennonite to the core, and I just can’t go to a church that believes we need to use politics to make others follow our Christian values. Sorry. That’s my line in the sand.

Church hunting is exhausting, and last year I had trouble mustering up the energy for it every Sunday. But I’m determined to try harder.

Part 4: The Epic Train Trip

Early last spring, my friend Kathrine informed me that she was getting married in Maryland on May 20, and I was invited.

I started thinking through my options. I knew that I wanted to go to Oregon for the summer. So should I fly to Maryland and then to Oregon from there? Or should I fly to Maryland, back to Houston, stay in Houston for a few more weeks, and then fly to Oregon?

But instead, I decided to fulfill a dream I’ve had for oh, ten years or so, and take a grand Amtrak tour of the United States of America.

Step 1: Buy a $500 rail pass.

Step 2: Carefully plan how to wisely use my 10 segments to visit as many friends and cool places as possible.

I have never spent so much energy planning a trip, and I pulled it off, going from Houston to New Orleans to Atlanta to Maryland to Lancaster to (briefly) Pittsburgh to Chicago to Hutchinson to Flagstaff to Los Angeles and finally, to Eugene, Oregon.

I kept a detailed journal, and I planned to recount the trip in a series of blog posts, but I grew so busy over the summer I never got it done. Maybe I’ll still do it?

Part 5: Summer in Oregon

I arrived in Oregon on June 8 and stayed until September 13. That was a nice length of time to be in Oregon. Unlike last year, when I only stayed five weeks and spent the first week sick, the next three weeks working almost nonstop, and so only had my last week free.

This year I took it easy a bit more. I only drove combine two days a week instead of six. Of course, I still worked part-time for LifeX Marketing and did my own writing projects (which unfortunately did not include keeping up with this blog.)

I also did a cool new project this summer that I called my Red Barn Coffee Hour. Basically, every Thursday morning at 8:30 am, I invited everyone I knew to come hang out in the loft of our red barn and drink coffee or tea. That project turned out quite well, and I was able to regularly see my friends without the stressful back-and-forth of trying to set up times to get coffee with everyone individually.

Part 6: The Book Tour

This year I was scheduled to go to a staff retreat in Pennsylvania in mid-September, so I asked Mom if she’d be interested in doing a short book tour around that time so I could kill two traveling birds with one stone, so to speak. (Mom came out with a new book this year titled “Coming Home to Roost.”)

Well, then Mom wanted to go see Jenny in VA while she was back east, and I wanted to see some friends too, and Dad wanted to come along, and soon it became a Very Complicated Trip.

Which became even more complicated when Mom came down with Covid.

I don’t feel like recounting every detail of what went wrong that trip and how we resolved it, so you can read Mom’s version of events on her blog.

Part 7: Back to Texas!

The past five months have been a nonstop adventure for me. The train trip was almost a month long, I spent the summer going on fun adventures with my friend Ashlie and/or my brothers, and my back-east trip was three weeks of events—some stressful, some fun—with family, co-workers, and friends.

But now, winter is approaching—as much of a winter as we get in Texas, that is. I’m ready to stay put for a while and focus on writing some books!

Part 8: Next Book Project?

I have a big announcement coming soon. Stay tuned!

***

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