Aurora Is Where I’m From. Minnesota Is Where I Became Me.

Where I’m From

I had a strange realization while walking through my new neighborhood recently.

I’ve lived in Minnesota for almost as long as I lived in Aurora, Illinois, where I grew up.

That stopped me for a second.

I was born in 1985 and lived in Aurora until around 2004. I spent the next few years in Wisconsin before moving to Minnesota in 2008.

And somehow, here we are.

Almost eighteen years later.

I’m 41 years old, and Minnesota has been home for nearly half my life.

That’s weird to say out loud.

Because if someone asks me where I’m from, the answer is still Aurora.

That’s where I grew up.

That’s where I went to elementary school, middle school and high school. That’s where some of my oldest friends are from. Those are the people who knew me before careers, marriages, kids, mortgages, YouTube, photography and everything else adulthood eventually brought with it.

They knew a completely different version of me.

And honestly, it wasn’t always the best version.

But it wasn’t all bad either.

I was incredibly social back then. I bounced between different cliques and groups of friends. I was big into theatre and choir. I participated in activities. I was involved. I was out doing things.

And on the weekends, I was almost never home.

There was always somewhere to go. Someone’s house. A party. Or sometimes just a bunch of us hanging out in the parking lot of 7-Eleven because apparently that was a perfectly reasonable way to spend a Friday night when you were a teenager.

I threw some pretty legendary house parties too.

The kind where basketball hoops somehow ended up being dunked on and destroyed. Where a group of guys might end up standing in a circle beatboxing and rapping—usually with the help of things none of us probably needed to be consuming.

It was chaotic.

It was stupid.

And honestly, some of it was a lot of fun.

I was a kid.

I was involved in life. I had friends. I had different groups of people around me. I was constantly doing something.

And yeah, there was another side to it too.

I hung around people who probably weren’t always the best influences. I made plenty of stupid decisions. Sometimes I got in trouble with the law and had my fair share of things I consumed that I shouldn’t have.

I don’t say any of that with judgment toward anyone I grew up with or toward the place itself.

And I don’t look back at that version of myself with shame either.

It was just where I was in life.

I was growing up.

I just didn’t know yet who I was growing into.But somewhere along the way, I left.

First Wisconsin.

Then Minnesota.

And I never really went back.

There’s something strange about leaving the place where you grew up.

Life doesn’t stop there just because you leave.

Your friends keep living, and unfortunately some pass away. Some get married, some have kids. They buy houses. Their kids grow up together. New friendships form. Old friendships change.

Their lives keep moving forward.

But so does yours.

Just somewhere else.

I still have friends in Aurora. There are a handful of people I can go back and see, and there’s something incredibly comfortable about being around people who have known me for that long.

There’s history there that you simply can’t recreate.

They remember things I’ve forgotten.

They knew me before I became the person I am today.

But here’s the strange part.

When I go back to Aurora now, it doesn’t really feel like home anymore.

It feels familiar.

But that’s different.

Where I Became Me

Meanwhile, Minnesota feels more like home, but sometimes I wonder if it is.

This is where almost my entire adult life happened.

This is where I built my career.

This is where I got married…and divorced.

This is where I became a dad.

This is where Bennett and Hudson were born and where I’ve watched them grow up.

This is where I bought homes, lost relationships, started over and rebuilt.

And Minnesota is where something else happened that I hadn’t really thought about until recently.

This is where I became creative.

I wasn’t doing any of this when I lived in Aurora.

I wasn’t writing.

I wasn’t making training videos.

I wasn’t taking photography seriously.

There was no Learn with Joel.

There was no YouTube channel.

There was no Behind the Lens.

All of that happened here.

Almost everything I think of today as me was discovered or built after I moved to Minnesota.

Sometimes I Still Feel Like the New Guy

And yet…

Sometimes I still feel like the new guy.

That’s the part I’ve been trying to understand.

I’ll meet someone here who grew up in Minnesota, and they’ll have this entire network around them.

Friends from elementary school.

Friends from high school.

College friends.

Friends whose kids now know each other.

People they’ve known for twenty or thirty years.

There’s a foundation underneath those relationships that I simply don’t have here.

Most of my friendships in Minnesota came through different chapters of my adult life.

Some came from work.

Then the job changed.

Some came through marriage.

Then the marriage ended.

Some came through relationships, neighborhoods, kids or whatever season of life I happened to be in at the time.

And when those seasons ended, sometimes the friendships went with them.

For a long time, I think I looked at that as though something was wrong.

Like maybe I was supposed to have more friends.

Maybe my circle was supposed to be bigger.

Maybe after living somewhere for almost eighteen years, I was supposed to have this collection of people around me who had been there through all of it.

But life doesn’t always work that way.

And maybe those friendships weren’t failures just because they didn’t last forever.

Some people were there for exactly the chapter when I needed them.

Some taught me things.

Some made me laugh.

Some traveled with me.

Some watched my kids grow.

Some helped me through incredibly difficult seasons.

And hopefully, somewhere along the way, I gave something back to them too.

Maybe I made them laugh when they needed it. Maybe I showed up during one of their difficult seasons. Maybe something I said, did or shared left a small mark on their life, just like they left one on mine.

I’d like to think that’s how friendship works. We become part of each other’s stories, even when we aren’t there for the entire thing.

That doesn’t erase what those friendships were.

It just means the chapter ended.

Being Alone Isn’t the Same as Being Lonely

I’m starting to become more comfortable with that.

And maybe even more importantly, I’m becoming more comfortable with myself.

There’s a difference between being alone and being lonely.

I can be alone.

Actually, I’ve learned that I’m pretty good at it.

That doesn’t mean I never get lonely.

I do.

There are absolutely nights when I wish I had someone nearby to call. Times when I see people surrounded by lifelong friends and wonder what that would feel like. Moments when I wish some of the people who knew me twenty or thirty years ago lived twenty minutes away instead of hundreds of miles away.

I don’t want to pretend those feelings don’t exist.

They do.

But I also don’t think having a smaller circle means my life is somehow incomplete.

I have my boys.

I have a home I’m incredibly grateful for.

I have photography.

I have writing.

I have Learn with Joel.

I have ideas and places I still want to see and things I still want to create.

And I have my faith.

The People Who Remember

And I have my family.

That’s something I don’t want to overlook in all of this.

I’m incredibly close with my parents and my three older brothers. I talk to my mom almost every day.

Maybe someone reads that and thinks I’m a mama’s boy.

That’s fine.

The way I look at it, my parents aren’t getting any younger.

There’s something pretty incredible about knowing there’s someone I can call almost any day, for absolutely no reason at all, and know they’ll pick up the phone.

I don’t want to take that for granted.

Because someday, I won’t be able to make that call.

I don’t particularly like thinking about that.

But maybe that’s exactly why I should.

Family gives me something that I sometimes find myself wishing I had more of here: people who have known me for almost my entire life.

My brothers remember the kid I was.

My parents remember every version.

There’s no introduction necessary. No explaining the backstory. No wondering whether the friendship will survive the next chapter.

They’re just there.

And I’m incredibly grateful for that.

But I also know not everyone has that.

Some people don’t have parents they can call.

Some people aren’t close with their siblings.

Some have lost them.

Some have built families that have nothing to do with blood at all.

And maybe that’s another reason those lifelong friendships matter so much.

When you’ve known someone for twenty or thirty years, eventually they become something more than a friend.

They become family.

Maybe that’s part of what I’m noticing when I look at people here who still have those childhood friendships around them.

It isn’t simply that they have more friends than I do.

They have people nearby who remember.

People who were there.

People who have watched the chapters unfold.

I’m fortunate that I still have that connection with my family, even from hundreds of miles away.

And maybe part of getting older is realizing that instead of focusing so much on who isn’t there, I want to appreciate the people who still are.

Make the call.

Answer the phone.

Stay connected.

Not because any of us know how much time we have left with the people we love.

But because we don’t.

At 41, Relationships Feel Different

Maybe that’s becoming one of the biggest differences in how I look at relationships now.

I don’t need to constantly search for someone to fill an empty space in my life.

I’d rather trust that the right people will enter my life when they’re supposed to.

Friends.

Relationships.

People I haven’t even met yet.

Maybe some will stay for the rest of my life.

Maybe some will only be here for a season.

I don’t know.

And for once, I’m becoming okay with not knowing.

I’d rather have people who complement the life I’m already building than feel like I need someone else to complete it.

At 41, that feels different.

Because making friends at 41 isn’t like making friends at 14.

Nobody puts thirty adults in the same classroom every morning and says, “Okay, figure out who you like.”

Everyone already has a life.

Jobs.

Kids.

Relationships.

Schedules.

Responsibilities.

And usually, their own circle of people.

So when you meet someone new—whether it’s a friendship, a relationship or just someone you happen to connect with—you’re walking into a life that already has history.

And they’re walking into yours.

I’m realizing I don’t need to be embarrassed by what mine looks like.

I didn’t grow up here.

I don’t have thirty years of Minnesota friendships waiting down the street.

But I do have almost eighteen years of life here.

That counts for something.

Actually, it counts for a lot.

The Life I Built Here

Minnesota isn’t some temporary place I moved to anymore.

It’s where I became the adult version of myself.

It’s where I discovered things about myself that I’m not sure I ever would have discovered had I stayed where I grew up.

There’s a part of Good Will Hunting that has always resonated with me.

Not because I think I’m Will Hunting or some undiscovered genius who needed to escape his hometown.

Definitely not.

But I understand the idea of leaving an environment because somewhere inside you, you know there might be something else waiting for you in a different place than where you were born.

You don’t necessarily know what it is yet.

You just know you need to go.

Looking back now, I wonder sometimes who I would have become if I had stayed in Aurora.

Would I have discovered photography?

Would I have started writing?

Would Learn with Joel exist?

Would I have ever picked up a camera and realized how much I loved telling stories?

Would I have become the dad I am today?

There’s obviously no way to know.

And I don’t need to know.

Because this is the life I built.

Here.

Which brings me back to walking around my neighborhood.

I’ve talked a lot lately about rebuilding.

A new house.

A new studio.

A new routine with my boys.

Dating again.

Meeting new people.

Trying to figure out what I want the next chapter of my life to look like.

Maybe part of rebuilding is accepting that I’m never going to have the same kind of roots here that someone who grew up here has.

I can’t manufacture thirty years of history.

And I don’t know exactly what building new roots at 41 is supposed to look like.

Maybe that’s okay too.

Maybe I don’t need to have the answer yet.

Maybe I just keep living.

Keep creating.

Keep being a dad.

Keep walking through the neighborhood.

Keep meeting people.

Keep trusting God.

And let whatever is supposed to grow from this season grow.

Because maybe roots aren’t only something you inherit from the place where you grew up.

Maybe they’re something that quietly grow underneath you while you’re busy living your life.

Still Writing

Aurora will always be where I’m from.

It holds my childhood.

It holds old friends, old memories and versions of myself that only exist there now.

But Minnesota?

Minnesota is where I became me.

It’s where I became a father.

A creator.

A photographer.

A teacher.

A storyteller.

And, especially lately, someone who is learning how to start over.

Again.

Maybe that’s why this realization hit me so hard.

Very soon, I’ll have lived in Minnesota longer than I ever lived in the place I automatically called home for so many years.

And maybe I don’t have to decide which one is really home.

Maybe they’re allowed to mean different things.

Aurora is where my story started.

Minnesota is where I learned how to write the rest of it.

And right now, I’m still writing.

I don’t know exactly where the story goes from here.

But maybe someone reading this doesn’t either.

And maybe there’s something comforting in knowing we’re both still figuring it out.