Five days ago, I became that guy. The one who quit a high paying job in January 2009, a month that will be looked back on in history as the time right before the shit really hit the fan. I quit my job in Houston, where I was living rent free, and moved to Austin, where I enter as an unemployed drifter who is trying to start all over, from scratch.

That guy is either an idiot or a genius; brave or simply scared of things besides the normal fears someone gets when they're nearing the big quarter century mark.

I don't play poker or bet on sports, but I still love to gamble.

The last time I made an impulsive decision to move somewhere, I was in Serbia, and I was committing the next year of my life to a start up NGO in Tanzania -- an extremely elaborate way of hitting the snooze button just one more time. I didn't know where Tanzania was exactly, nor did I know the girl who was hiring me. But I knew the dude I was going with, my best friend, and I knew what we'd be doing, chilling in Africa. That was enough for me. My dad was not happy with this logic: "You need to think first," he said, before making such crazy decisions. So imagine my delight when I found out the school we'd be working at was called Fikiria Kwanza Academy, "Think First" Academy in Swahili. There were several times when I thought about the irony of that situation, and thought that maybe, just maybe, The Bob had been right. I had a bad relationship with my boss, I felt overwhelmed in a foreign land with people I just couldn't understand, and I was not getting paid for any of it. I had not fikiria'd kwanza, and I was being made to understand why that was a bad decision.

And then, things worked out, just like they almost always do. Africa changed the way I view everything: humanity, right and wrong, life, death, the world, and trying to picture who I would be today without that experience makes me shudder with fear at what might have been, and happiness at what is.

"Every single decision I've ever made that scared the hell out of me," I said to a friend the day I packed my car and left Houston, "has been the right one." I was terrified to leave my home, even though I knew I had to. The fear was even greater than what gripped me as I boarded my flight to Europe, or to Africa, as crazy as that sounds. There's just so much more uncertainty this time around. That's how I knew I was doing the right thing.

Times will probably get tough here. I will be working jobs less than what might be expected of someone with a degree from UVa. I will be struggling to make ends meet for a while, as I'm writing, reading, and trying to get back in shape for the first time in a long time. And I'll be continuing to search for the words to the questions I feel trying to burst out from within my soul, questions paired with answers that can't be explained with words.

"Though my days are filled with sorrow," Bob Marley once said, "I see there a bright tomorrow."

Seen.

Hunter went back to Tanzania last Monday, and I saw it as a sign: it was time for me to leave, too. I had been "thinking about" moving to so many places for so many months -- ever since I got home from Africa, really -- and I wasn't doing anything about it. The job I had while living in my old room was a blessing, as was the opportunity to spend some much needed time with my family, but when Hunter left, I realized it was time. If you don't catch yourself, you can think about something for ten years before you wake up. And ten years is a long time.

I am that guy. That guy who is smiling right now.