I kept
moving
forward.

My weeks in Texas were full. I worked a full-time data job at a company that helped people who were incarcerated rehabilitate and rebuild their lives. I ran every day, volunteered at my local library, was learning drums, and learning French, Japanese, and Chinese at the same time. I felt like I had it all, but I still felt alone.

I had worked hard to build a life for myself, but I felt isolated. I didn't have people to share much of it with.

When I interviewed to volunteer at the library, I told them the truth: I felt like I had done all I could by myself. I wanted to start connecting with my community, and helping seemed like a good place to begin. I spent weekends volunteering and also served on the arts commission.

Languages came from a similar place. Through tutoring, I met people from Colombia, Lebanon, Algeria, Cameroon, Spain, Japan, China, Toronto, and the Philippines. I enjoyed hearing about their lives and discovering how we were similar and how we were different.

I was beginning to make room for people. I was still learning how to make room for myself alongside those people.

Two days before Christmas in 2025, I woke up with an urge (that I still don't understand to this day) to go on a trip. I was 29 and had never taken a personal trip by myself.

I had spent years putting work and my goals first. Taking a break felt like something I could do once I had achieved enough. There was always something else to work toward.

I really tried to dismiss the urge to go on a trip, but it stayed with me all day. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't shake it.

I was nervous ("what if I miss my flight?", "what if I don't have fun and end up wasting money?", "what if I get kidnapped?!"), but I kept telling myself I would see a side of myself I hadn't seen before. Whether I liked what I discovered or not, it would be information I didn't have. I could only learn so much about myself by staying home, working, and following the same routine.

Eventually, I asked ChatGPT where I should go. Before it answered, I told myself that I would go wherever it suggested, no matter what it said.

It said Scottsdale, Arizona. A week later, a day before New Year's Eve, I was sitting on the rooftop of a hotel in Old Town Scottsdale.

For five days, I let myself have fun.

I visited museums, the Phoenix botanical garden, and an aquarium. Every day brought something I hadn't done before. After spending so long feeling like enjoyment had to wait, I was giving myself permission to enjoy my life. And I had an amazing time.

On the last day of the trip, I had nothing planned. I had woken up during the night thinking about what I could do, and the idea of visiting an open house came to me. I have always liked houses and aspired to live in a beautiful one. I figured I would go see a place I could imagine working toward.

What I thought was an open house wasn't actually an open house. But I arrived just as a realtor was giving other people a tour, and she invited me along.

I ended up seeing five houses, all more expensive than the one I had planned to visit. I had gone expecting to look around one place on my own. Instead, I spent the afternoon exploring houses and talking with people.

However, on that last day of the trip, the same day that all of the serendipitous things happened with the homes and the realtor, something else happened with my family. Something incredibly significant. That's why I moved.

I extended the trip, found an apartment in Phoenix the next day, and flew back to Texas two days later to pack.

Three days later, the company I worked for cut the data team, and just like that, I was out of a job. No warning, no emotion, just a five-minute HR meeting.

I sat at the desk in the Airbnb staring at my decommissioned work laptop for about an hour. I literally couldn't move. I had just been working on a big project for the company, and within minutes, it meant absolutely nothing.

Eventually, I got up. I still had a move to make, and I knew I needed to make it. Not necessarily because I wanted to, but because there was nowhere else for me to go.

On January 14, I flew to Phoenix. I had ordered a bed online. There was furniture to assemble and an apartment to make into a home.

I had lived on my own before, but this time, I was still reeling from a family crisis, had just lost my job, and was starting over in a city where I knew absolutely no one. Nothing was going according to plan.

I was scared, and I didn't know how things would work out. There was a whole life to rebuild, and the next piece of it was mine to figure out.

With so much changing, I needed to hold on to the things that still felt like me. Dropping everything I used to do would have felt like disappearing.

I kept taking Japanese and Chinese lessons, even during the trip and from the Airbnb. I missed only one lesson, because I was on a flight.

I replaced running with jiu-jitsu. Running in Arizona heat seemed like a death sentence. I had done jiu-jitsu before, and now there was a gym five minutes from my apartment, so I went back.

On Wednesdays, I met with former coworkers to study data science. We kept learning together, and they stayed with me and supported me through the job search.

In March, I started therapy. I was lonely and needed someone to help me process everything that had happened.

Those commitments gave my weeks some shape. There were familiar things to return to and people to see while I learned how to live here.

My job search started the day I was laid off. As I write this, it has been eight months.

There were introductory calls, technical interviews, and final rounds. Then a rejection, or silence. After enough of those, I started to believe I wasn't good enough. Work had been a big part of how I knew I was contributing, and losing it shook my confidence and my identity.

I was also dealing with the family crisis, homesickness, and the cost of starting over. I was questioning my religion. Several parts of my life felt uncertain at once.

Eventually, I began to feel like the search was gaining traction. I had opportunities at different stages, from an initial interview to a final round. I thought I might be close to having some security again.

Then, over the course of two days, every company I had been interviewing with rejected me. I was back to square one after finally feeling like I was figuring things out, and that destroyed almost all the fight I had left in me.

I was already under serious financial pressure and running on fumes. Having that hope disappear within two days put me in objectively the darkest place I've ever been.

I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I called 988 repeatedly and reached out to friends. Sometimes I needed someone to stay on the phone and talk with me so I could keep going.

In July, I reached out to a friend from jiu-jitsu who had told me to contact him if I ever needed anything.

I wasn't expecting much. I hoped there might be something I could work on that would help me develop my skills and interview better. I wanted to try anything that might help the job search in some way.

As we talked about his business, I started thinking about what I could build to help. Hearing what he wanted to accomplish got me excited. Within a day, he had a content studio he could use.

He was generous with introductions. Shortly afterward, one of them led to an auctioneer who needed a live auction platform. After seeing what I had built, he sent me a message:

The Sunday after all those simultaneous rejections, I felt like I needed to be around people just to stay safe. There was a church five minutes from my apartment, so I went.

People welcomed me that first day. Then they kept welcoming me.

Through small groups, lunches, and conversations, I began getting to know them. They offered help in different ways. Some connected me with companies. Some offered to listen to my story. Some people even offered to do Chipotle runs for me. It all meant so much during a time when I was doubting everything and especially doubting myself.

In Texas, I had felt like I needed to be perfect before anyone would keep me around. In Phoenix, in this unexpected new life, I was learning that I could be myself, make mistakes, and still be welcome.

Support came from other places, too. People from jiu-jitsu showed up for me. My therapist went out of her way to help. The people at 988 sat with me on the phone and listened. I rebuilt relationships with family, and those became another source of support.

There is a small thing I notice all the time now that might seem insignificant, but it blows my mind every day. In Texas, a text conversation from two or three days earlier could still be at the top of my messages. Now, if someone texted me two days ago, I always need to scroll to find it. A year ago, I never thought I'd have this many people in my life. And now, it's just normal.

Back in Texas, I had all the stability I could ever want and very little connection. I felt like I needed to be the fittest, smartest, most charismatic person in the room just for anyone to even begin to like me. Now, my stability is gone, but I have more people in my life than I've ever had before. And they keep accepting me even when I have nothing to give them.

As I'm writing this page, I'm sitting in that church on September 10, 2026, reflecting on everything that's happened over the course of this year. The ups, the many downs, the pain, the rebuild, and everything in between.

I'm still very much in the middle of a story being written. I'm still scared sometimes, and I don't know exactly what comes next.

But I do know that I'm the author of this story. When the family crisis happened, I had choices. I could have lashed out. I could have given up. I could have lost all hope and abandoned my values. When I lost my job, I had choices. When I kept getting rejected, I could have given up and stopped trying to better myself. When I was deeply depressed, I certainly had choices.

But I chose to keep moving forward. I chose to continue writing this story in a way that I could be proud of today. And that's the core idea behind Author29: