When I left Hawaiʻi in September 2025, I returned home without a clear plan for what came next. The previous years had been intense, professionally expansive but personally destabilizing. I needed distance to understand what had happened and who I had become within it.

At the same time, I remained open to the next opportunity. I continued searching for work in the food systems and nonprofit sectors while focusing on strengthening my professional credentials and rebuilding my internal footing.

The experience was unexpectedly restorative. Many of the students were younger than I was, and being around that energy was revitalizing. For the first time in a while, I found myself laughing easily again. The course demanded technical focus and teamwork under pressure, but it also reminded me how much I enjoy learning in environments where competence is built through practice and shared effort. 

Alongside professional development, much of this period was devoted to reflection.

I began transcribing my journals, entries stretching back to 2010, into a digital archive. Reading through years of writing allowed me to trace patterns in how I thought about responsibility, ambition, and identity. Some of those patterns were uncomfortable to see clearly.

That process forced me to confront the expectations and projections I had carried for much of my life, ideas about success, leadership, and personal worth that had quietly shaped many of my decisions.

Working through those patterns was difficult at times, but it also allowed me to see myself with more compassion. Instead of judging earlier versions of myself, I began to understand the pressures and assumptions that shaped those choices.

It was the first time I had truly learned how to forgive myself.

During these months I continued applying for positions while also assisting several colleagues in Hawaiʻi with pro bono website and communications work. At the same time, I continued developing this site and organizing my journal archive.

Job opportunities in my field (and jobs in general) were limited during this period, particularly with federal funding uncertainty affecting many nonprofit organizations. Rather than forcing a premature decision, I kept preparing for a long-held goal: hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in spring 2026.

Preparation was steady but not obsessive, learning about gear, logistics, and the rhythms of long-distance travel while leaving room for uncertainty. If the right professional opportunity appeared, I was prepared to take it. When none did, the trail remained.

The most meaningful work of these months happened internally.

For much of my life I had carried strong projections of what success and responsibility were supposed to look like. Those projections drove many accomplishments, but they also created pressure and distortions in how I saw myself and others.

Through reflection, journaling, and honest examination of those patterns, I began loosening their hold.

I feel calmer and more aware of myself than I have in many years, a steadiness. The release from those conditioned expectations has created a sense of freedom, not freedom from responsibility, but freedom from the belief that my value depends entirely on what I produce.

By the time winter turned toward spring, I felt something I had not felt in years, steadiness. The past several months had forced me to slow down, examine the expectations I had carried for most of my life, and loosen my attachment to the idea that my value was determined by what I produced.

I had spent much of my adulthood moving quickly from one responsibility to the next, often measuring myself against a timeline that I never consciously chose. Stepping away from that momentum allowed me to see those patterns more clearly and begin replacing them with something more deliberate.

The Pacific Crest Trail now sits ahead of me (as no jobs turned up during this time), but I do not see it as an escape or a grand turning point as a may have earlier in my life. The deeper work has already taken place during these months of reflection, study, and reconstruction. The trail simply offers space to continue walking with that clarity.

If you're interested in following that process as it unfolds, I keep updates through my PCT Field Notes.