My second weekend with the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange in Owensboro was one of the most impactful weekends of my life. Like many people, I’ve felt a deep tension between staying in Kentucky or leaving. I’ve always loved Kentucky with my whole heart, and am privileged to have almost never had any resentment toward it. But there’s always a romantic urge to move to some place bigger and more bustling. I vividly remember visiting Chicago when I was 14 and being completely awed, and I’ve spent every year since I turned 18 saying “this will be the year I leave.”

But I’ve known deep down that Kentucky is where I’m meant to be, and at many, many times I’ve resented that conviction. Again, I love this state, but knowing I have a strong future here has felt like a constraint. This weekend in Owensboro, I got to hear from so many people who are staying in their communities, fighting every day to make them better despite knowing how easy it would be to go. In a small group conversation, someone mentioned they lived in Oregon for a short time and gave words to feelings I’ve had for what feels like ages: “Living in Oregon was so easy because I didn’t feel accountable to it, and I feel deeply accountable to Kentucky.”

The life I’ve imagined in Chicago or Philly or Pittsburgh or wherever is a fun life, but it isn’t a meaningful one. I can often see my future in Kentucky and Lexington so very clearly, and it’s a challenging and frustrating future – but it’s also enriching, impactful, and rewarding, and I know that working with so many others who feel accountable to this magnificent Commonwealth is the most meaningful thing I can do with my life right now. And it helps that Kentuckians are hell of a lot of fun.

I may well move someday – I’m still really young, anything can happen. But I feel such a relief from growing how I see my sense of accountability to Kentucky into a prideful calling rather than a trapping fate, already sealed. And I owe a deep, deep thanks to everyone in my RUX family, and for all the role models I met in Owensboro, for helping me begin to end an intense internal struggle I’ve felt for such a long time. I’m so blessed to know that I’m exactly where I need to be right now.