Nothing makes you love a place quite like leaving it.

Everything I own is packed in the car: a couple of boxes full of books and mementos; a few suitcases full of clothes; artwork and photos, and my basketball.

I’ve spent the last couple of months in Los Angeles after returning from my two-and-a-half-year sojourn in Japan. Now, I’m on the road again, leaving Los Angeles and heading north to Oakland.

LA has always been home base.

My immediate and extended family live there, plus a couple of my best friends. It’s home and always will be. But it’s not my home. I’ve grappled with this over the past decade: I want to appreciate LA, but that doesn’t mean I have to feel bad for not wanting to live there.

I was raised in LA, and tried living there after college. Then I traveled. I lived elsewhere. When I’d return to visit, the aspects I didn’t like became more pronounced. What I did like (beach, family and friends), wasn’t enough to make me stay. That, of course, is difficult.

I want to live close to the people I love.

But I also have to find a place I truly want to call home, and to do that, I need to experience fresh places, try things, explore. So that’s what I’ve been doing.

Over the years, as I’ve journeyed for extended periods around the world, I’ve left things behind at my parents’ homes — old journals and snow clothes, camping gear, that sort of thing.

I’m blessed to have three loving parents (mom, dad, and stepmom) who have let me crash at their pads over the years when I’ve needed time to regroup in between my foreign escapades. But I don’t want to have to stay with them anymore.

This time, for the first time, I’m taking all my shit, which admittedly isn’t a lot. I’m finally ready to cut the umbilical cord and find my own place in the world, and despite my not wanting to live there, it’s because of the beautiful pocket in time I just experienced in LA, staying with my mom.

We overcame some things.

The seeds of my friendships were watered, as I had some much needed quality time with two of my best friends.

I felt like a kid again, playing basketball several times a week at the local park near my mom’s house, or just laying on a bench in the sun.

And I finally had the launch party for my latest book, When the Sky Opens and the Answers Shimmer, and it couldn’t have gone better, a night to remember with the people I love.

I healed some childhood wounds and continued to make progress on my quest to overcome chronic pain. I needed this visit. And now I’m leaving LA on a high, ready to set down some roots of my own.

There are many places I’d be psyched to try living in. For a while, the plan after Japan was New Zealand; I thought about backpacking South America, spending time in Europe again, or trying South Africa, an expat hot spot.

But then, near the end of my time in Japan, something happened. I fell in love. She’s a seeker, too. We’ve both been on the move for years, living nomadic lives in pursuit of an unordinary existence. She’s lived all over the U.S. and even built a bus to live out of for a while. She’s creative. A doer, with such a captivating spirit.

I followed where my curiosity has led, up and down the West Coast, to Europe, and then to Japan.

And then, at a rather opportune time in both of our lives after navigating the topsy turvy roller coaster that is one’s twenties, we found each other.

Seeking doesn’t mean pushing oneself to the ends of the earth. Seeking, I’m coming to realize, is a continual exploration of the heart and soul.

That’s what I’m doing out there anyway, isn’t it? That’s what we’ve both been doing?

I want to feel something inside. Traveling does this. Jumping out of an airplane does this. Love definitely does this. Yet all of life does this if we’re open to the magic, no matter what moment we’re experiencing.

Life is beautiful.

I’m not traveling the world. Rather, I’m going deeper inside of myself than I’ve ever been, striving to arrive at the place where no matter what happens, I’m at peace.

Content.

In love not only with another human being, but with life itself. That means letting go of what I’m holding onto inside, so life may flow through me like the wind.

I’ll always love to travel. I’m never gonna lose my wanderlust, as there are still so many places I want to experience. I will continue to get out there. But right now, this move up north feels right.

Of course I have my doubts. I’m human.

As somebody who’s built a brand based on traveling and garnering unique experiences, it scares me a bit to feel like I’m settling down. But who is it that’s really scared? The ego.

It says I’m giving up on my dreams. This is just a narrative spun by the mind, which is just as valid as a narrative that says you’re exactly where you’re meant to be, and this is the step you need to take to get to the next level.

It feels like an exhale, and that feels good. We all know our mind will talk. Often, it will just feed us nonsense. I’d rather follow the heart than the mind.

I’m not settling down.

I’m settling in.

I’m creating a nest with the woman I love — a foundation — flowing with the current of life instead of forcing myself upstream.

This is to live in accordance with the Tao, the way.

It’s written in the Tao Te Ching:

Less and less do you need to force things,

until finally you arrive at non-action.

When nothing is done,

nothing is left undone.

“This ‘nothing,’ is, in fact, everything,” writes Steven Mitchell in his translation.

“It happens when we trust the intelligence of the universe in the same way that an athlete or a dancer trusts the superior intelligence of the body. Hence Lao-tzu’s emphasis on softness. Softness means the opposite of rigidity, and is synonymous with suppleness, adaptability, endurance.”

What I like about Taoism is how it doesn’t suggest one renounces life, sitting on a mountaintop away from the troubles of the world. Its teachings allow one to feel harmonious with nature, attuned with the way things are, even amongst the trials of modern life.

It feels good to live this way, embracing whatever happens as what is supposed to happen. I want to enjoy the journey of being alive no matter where it leads. Why else are we on this rock other than that?

With this move I’m still in California. It’s not Buenos Aires, or Cape Town, or Paris. It’s Oakland — gritty and vibrant, colorful and real, rather unassuming, and I like that.

It feels good to be closer to my family down south, instead of on the other side of the world. I’m stoked to be a part of a community I can relate to, while having a funky new cultural hub to explore.

I’m looking forward to having some stability, a girlfriend, a home to write my next book in which will be my first fiction novel, based on my experiences living and working in Japan.

I have so much to be grateful for, so much life to live, so much to learn; while it doesn’t always make sense, and while it definitely isn’t always easy, it all feels undoubtedly meant to be.