Somewhere in Austin

Intentionality, new construction, and writing your own story.

Felicia is talking to the sales rep about lot premiums and setback requirements. I’m nodding at the right moments, but I’m not really here.

I’m standing in a model home in a suburb north of Austin, and my mind has gone somewhere else entirely. That thing that happens when your body stays in the conversation but the rest of you drifts off, chasing a thread you didn’t know you were holding.

She’s asking about drainage grades now. Or maybe it’s HOA fees. I should be paying attention. This matters. But I’m stuck on something I can’t quite name yet.

Why does this feel so important?

It’s just a house. Just dirt and a floor plan and decisions about where the windows go. People do this every day. It shouldn’t feel like it means something bigger than that.

But it does. And I’m standing here trying to figure out why.

Greetings from Austin!

There’s a version of life where things just happen to you.

You end up in a city because that’s where the job was. You stay because leaving is often complicated. You look up one day and realize you never really chose any of it. It just sort of accumulated around you, decision by decision, until it became, well, your life.

I lived that way for a long time. Following the current instead of steering the ship. Saying yes to whatever showed up because it was easier than asking what I actually wanted.

And it worked, mostly. I’ve built a successful career. I’ve had good years. But there has always been this low hum underneath everything. This sense that I was living inside something that wasn’t quite mine.

I think that’s why the house matters.

Not the house itself. But what it represents. The chance to choose first. To start with nothing and build exactly what fits.

Sign the contract with yourself. Write it down.

I guess I’ve never fully trusted the things I inherited.

That sounds dramatic, but I don’t mean it that way. I just mean that somewhere along the line I learned that the only things I can really count on are the ones I built myself.

The job I walked into that was already broken? I had to take it apart and rebuild it before it ever felt like mine. The city I landed in because the opportunity was there? I spent years adjusting to it instead of asking if it was right. The version of myself I was handed by my twenties? I had to tear that down too. Piece by piece. Rebuild it all from what was left.

Maybe that’s why new construction makes so much sense to me right now. No previous owner’s decisions hiding in the walls. No shortcuts I’ll discover later. No wondering why they did it that way or wishing they hadn’t.

You start with dirt and a plan. And every choice from there is yours.

We thought the mural was cool. Found out later it’s sort of a big deal.

The sales rep is talking about timelines now. Six months to completion. Something about supply chain delays and permit windows. Felicia is nodding, doing the math in her head. She’s good at this part. The details. The logistics.

I’m still somewhere else.

I’m thinking about Bridgeton. The small town in North Carolina we’ve been living in while she finishes her time in the Navy. Four hundred people. A post office. A gas station. The kind of place where everything is always quiet. Too quiet.

We’ve been there a few years now. It’s fine. I don’t necessarily have anything bad to say about it.

But it never felt like our place. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe I needed to live somewhere that didn’t fit to finally understand what does.

I like being around builders. People with ideas. People trying to make something better than what they found. That energy does something for me I didn’t fully understand until I was living without it. It keeps you honest. Makes it harder to drift.

Bridgeton was clarifying in that way. It taught us what we want by showing us what we don’t.

Old Glory flying high over the Texas Capitol.

I’m still standing in this model home. Felicia has moved on to questions about upgrades. The countertops. The flooring. The difference between the standard package and the premium one.

And I’m thinking about Dakota.

She’s one. She won’t remember Bridgeton. Won’t remember this tiny little farmhouse we’ve been living in, or the long drives to the grocery store, or the way the town goes dark early and stays that way. Wherever we land will be her first real memory of home.

The streets she rides her bike on. The backyard she plays in. The sky she looks up at when she’s trying to figure out the world.

That’s certainly not lost on me. Felicia and I talk about it all the time. We’re not just picking a house. We’re choosing the backdrop for her entire childhood.

I didn’t get this right the first time. When my oldest, Payton, was born, I was in a different season. Less present. Less intentional. I was there, but I wasn’t always there. More caught up in the current than steering anything.

I look back on those early years and I’m grateful for them. But I also know I missed things I can’t get back.

With Dakota, I have a second chance. Not to be perfect. I gave up on that a while ago. But to be deliberate and intentional. To pick up the pen and write the story instead of letting it write itself around me.

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.” -Dr. Seuss

The sales rep is wrapping up now. Handing us a folder. Talking about next steps and deposit timelines. Felicia is already asking follow-up questions, already three moves ahead.

I’m finally coming back into the room.

And it hits me, standing there, that the most important part of building something isn’t really the thing itself.

It’s choosing where to put it.

The ground. The foundation. The city. The life you’re building it inside of. I think most people skip that part. They build wherever they land and just hope it works out.

But for us, we’re not going to skip that part.

In between all the house hunting and exploring, I still made room for Me Time. This pic is from a morning along Shoal Creek, a few miles from where we were staying.

I don’t know if Austin is the answer yet. We’re still sitting with it. Still figuring out what it means to leave everything familiar behind and start fresh somewhere we’ve only known for a week.

But something clicked there. I felt it. And now we just have to decide if we trust it.

And what I know for sure is that we’re not going to end up somewhere by accident. We’re going to choose. We’re going to look at a map and point to a spot and say that’s where we’re building.

A home. A life. A childhood for a little girl who deserves parents who were paying attention.

That’s the plan, anyway.

And for the first time in a long time, it actually feels like our plan.