Hello from Las Cruces, New Mexico.

I'm sitting here surrounded—literally—by paintings, sculpture, and dusty Southwest charm. I'm staying at a bed-and-breakfast called the Lundeen Inn of the Arts, and it’s living up to its name. Every wall, every hallway, even the breakfast room feels like a museum curated by the kind of eccentric aunt who drinks her coffee black, her whiskey neat, and doesn’t give a damn about what’s trendy. It’s the perfect stop for a cowboy poet in transition. Which is affirmed by the fact that it smells distinctly like my beloved grandparents’ home.

Why am I here?

Let me back up a bit.

About 6 months ago, Virginia and I (with Andre's input) decided to move from Austin to Mexico City. We'll be visiting Portland often, too, since that’s where the rest of the Foster crew lives. Virginia and Andre flew out last week to get the process rolling. Finding a place to live and inevitable logistics, all with the added element of immigration red tape.

Phase II of our move to Mexico City began yesterday. I finished clearing out of our house in Austin, and now I’m on the road, just me, a truck and trailer full of carefully chosen belongings, and a long stretch of America between here and Portland.

I’ve decided to share some reflections from the road here. Back to the original use of blogging. Old-school storytelling. Observations, insights, stray bits of wonder.

This isn’t just a road trip. It’s windshield therapy.

This is the longest solo trip I’ve ever taken. And honestly, I’m grateful. Grateful for the space to feel the full weight and possibility of this moment in my life. For the first four hours after leaving Austin, I drove in silence. No music. No podcasts. Just road noise and my own thoughts. I permitted myself to feel whatever came up; very aware of any attempt to avoid feelings I didn't like having. I cried. I remembered. I reflected. I listened to my soul.

And I realized something.

This move, unlike previous big moves in my life, isn’t an escape. When I left Portland in 1995 to move to Boise, I was creating distance from family drama. When I left Boise in 2014 to move to Austin, I was escaping conditions that no longer matched my soul. But this time, I’m moving toward something. Austin is a beautiful place. It was just time to go. But because of an evolution, not an evacuation.

I chose a longer route to get to Portland. I’m running west on I-10 almost to the Pacific before cutting up the California coast. I want to see parts of this country I’ve never laid eyes on. The dots on a map, ghost towns, roadside shrines, and forgotten places. I want the long horizon and the heat mirage to burn off what's no longer mine to carry. I want the space between places to stretch me open, like a rib cage cracked to let in more breath, more Spirit, more meaning.

Yesterday afternoon, I left Austin. With the energy I had left, I made it as far as I could safely drive. Which ended up being Fort Stockton, Texas. West Texas has a way of feeling abandoned by time itself. Fort Stockton, like many towns out here, feels sun-bleached and hollowed out, despair coming out of the cracked concrete of abandoned buildings. The kind of place where even the wind seems to give up. I walked into a gas station for a snack, and the air smelled like (as Tim McGraw sang) refried dreams and Dollar Store sweat.

This morning, I made a point to visit Marathon, Texas. It’s a town I’ve always wanted to see. It is the opposite of Fort Stockton, yet also proudly not Marfa. It’s got this cool, defiant energy to it. I can see why artists like Miranda Lambert, Jack Ingram, and Drew Kennedy come to Marathon to write and make music. It’s the kind of stillness that isn’t empty, but charged. Charged with stories not yet told, songs not yet written, ideas waiting to be wrestled onto paper. Creative energy hums in the silence, like static before a storm. Out here, the landscape doesn’t distract you. It dares you to listen. And in that listening, something stirs.

This morning, while sipping coffee on the front sidewalk of a coffee shop in Marathon, I did my own listening and creating. Here some things I journaled on that I’d like to share here…

Maria, a longtime housecleaner and friend of Virginia’s, came to do the final deep clean of our Austin house. Her English is limited, and my Spanish is still embarrassing. So we relied on pantomime and Google Translate. And in that awkward dance, I felt a familiar panic. Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD) flared up. The crippling and overwhelming fear of not being understood along with the fear of making a mistake. That’s the trap of RSD: it turns every moment of awkwardness into a referendum on your worth. You’re not just miscommunicating; you’re failing. And when that fear takes over, even small things—like not knowing the word for “sink” or fumbling with a translation app—can send you spiraling.

It reminded me of the same RSD I used to feel in my relationship with Virginia: that pattern of either trying to be perfect or disappearing altogether. In those moments, I’d get hyper-aware of my tone, my posture, even my breathing, like I was auditioning for acceptance. And if I sensed the slightest confusion or disapproval, I’d start rehearsing an exit. That kind of hypervigilance is exhausting. It trains your nervous system to treat basic human moments, like a language gap or a facial expression, as existential threats. And it hit me. I’ll need to meet this version the same way:

• With self-compassion: the kind that doesn’t rush to fix, explain, or justify, but simply sits beside me and says, "You’re allowed to be human." It softens the nervous system, disarms the inner critic, and gives me space to breathe.

• By asking for help: not as a last resort or a sign of failure, but as an act of strength, wisdom, and humility.

• By building skills: consistently, patiently, intentionally learning to speak Spanish. One word, one gesture, one imperfect attempt at a time. Getting the reps in. Learning, fumbling, trying again.

I thought about how the first forty years of my life were basically improvised. No real plan. Just instinct, dreams, and a shit ton of hustle. Then I swung hard the other way and became an obsessive planner, fixating on every detail and step. Over-researching, over-thinking and always, always under-enjoying it all. Both extremes are traps. Over-planning robs you of presence. Under-planning invites mistakes.

Part of this move is to continue to learn a third way between the anxious grip of controlling every detail and the disorder of making it up as I go. This third way is slow on purpose. Intentional without being rigid. Curious without being reckless. It’s about listening as much as deciding, noticing as much as navigating. It’s the way of a man who’s done both extremes and come to crave the terrain in between, where the plan is flexible, the pace is honest, and the road teaches as much as it carries.

It’s a sacred liminal space, the kind William Least Heat-Moon sought when he left the interstates behind and turned onto what he called “blue highways”; roads that follow the lay of the land instead of cutting through it, literally and figuratively.

To honor that, I knew I needed more than a plan. I needed a mantra. Something portable. Something holy. A compass made of language to keep me grounded and intentional as the days unfold in the hands of a map I don't own.

Here’s what came to me:

• The eye of a photographer

• The curiosity of an explorer

• The skills of a navigator

• The faith of a mystic

That’s my compass right now. That’s how I want to move through this trip, this move, and maybe the rest of my life in general. Paying attention. Asking good questions. Knowing where I’m going, but open to surprises. And trusting something larger than my own plans.

Tomorrow I’ll be in Cochise, Arizona. A place named after one of my favorite Native Americans. Stay tuned.