One year ago this month I posted “What I Learned From the Road” as a tribute to all that had come and gone for me in the prior nine months of transition and growth. This past year has also been a time for tremendous change and opportunity to learn.

I moved frequently between Phoenix, Colorado, Idaho, and Seattle. I completed more than two dozen short films and shot a sci-fi based on short stories I had written more than twenty years prior. I ventured to Hawaii to help a friend work on his house and witness the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun. I walked across fields of flowing lava and filmed one of the most spectacular events I have ever witnessed–the unfolding beauty of new earth given form.

When the intoxicating sulfur and tremendous heat moved me to run but at the same time begged me to remain in order that I would be consumed, I was more alive then than at most any other time in my life.

I sold my house and lived for six weeks on a remote ranch in Colorado. I ran through the mountains without concern for trails, every day swam naked in the pond, and fell to sleep to the howl of the coyotes and bugle of the elk.

In September I moved to East Jerusalem where I rebuilt a website and produced short documentary and educational films. When the rockets came down on both Israel and Palestine, I wept for the pain of knowing people were dying not far from where I stood. In those hours, I found comfort in the hot tea and warm embrace of a Muslim shop keeper who didn’t judge those who hurt others, rather, he simply prayed they find peace.

I moved to Holland for full-time work but found myself again in motion when my job was abruptly terminated. I recovered in the warm embrace of family friends in Germany. Just two weeks later I was robbed while switching trains in Paris and arrived to Barcelona with but the clothes on my back, cell phone, some cash, and my camera bag. This year has repeatedly confronted me with the challenge of finding grounding in ungrounding times.

I was for the first time in my adult life fully accepted for all that I am without request that I change, only to be asked to let go of the expectation for that love, in the end. I am reminded that nothing truly beautiful remains the same for long.

Sometimes I desire nothing more than a normal life. Sometimes I cherish experiencing this world in a way that is impossible if I were to remain still. From this place of constant transition, I again offer what I have learned from the road.

Trust in who I know I am.
Always challenge myself to improve, but do not second guess my motivation.

I am a whole person even when I lose everything.
For as vulnerable as I may feel when I lose my material possessions, by happenstance or through direct confrontation—for as empty as I may be when I lose love, time has a way of rebuilding, of reminding what we yet retain.

Emotions are a filter to reality.
Despair and fear are but chemical responses designed to keep us from making the same mistakes over and over again. Joy is not a destination but also a temporary, passing filter to the same situation. In the sometimes nonsensical manner in which we have evolved, the signatures that flood our synaptic pathways also cause us to fall into patterns of behavior which are self-defeating.

The power of saying nothing is often greater than explanation.
Be comfortable in my own decisions and the path I create every day. I do not need to explain my actions in every situation.

Recognize the patterns of history then move ahead to an improved future.
Learn from what I have done in the past, from what those around me have done too. There are good patterns to copy and those which we should avoid. Only through looking back can we move ahead with opportunity to improve.

Don’t be attached to outcome.
Recognize what I did well and what I could have done better. Learn from my mistakes. Above all, believe I did the best I could, in the moment, given what I had to work with.

Last year a friend asked “What would you do if you had all the money in the world?” My answer came to me quickly, “I would do exactly what I am doing now. I would not change a thing no matter how much money I was given.” I am seeking a place on this planet (or the next) in which my skills and experience and passion find opportunity to serve others while at the same time encouraging me to be my best.

No amount of money can purchase a sense of direction. No bank account balance can provide true satisfaction. No amount of love from anyone can cause me to love myself. I have all that I need, right here, right now.

Maybe now is the time to do nothing. Maybe now is the time to do everything at once. Maybe now, finally, is the time to just move step by step in order that I am living in the moment and not afraid of what unfolds next. The world is open to me when I let go of fear.

I participated in the Nike University Run tonight.

It was an exciting, crazy, wild run of more than two hundred amateur and professional runners through the old and new city streets. We raced through traffic, pedestrians, bicycles, and through narrow alleys lined with tables, chairs, street performers and salesmen.

Each runner had to reach five places shown (roughly) on a map before the final destination in order to be allowed into the bar where Nike gave each participant a shirt, water, and hot dogs, and played dance music.

Each location for the card punch also presented a challenge, physical or mental. The first was a line of U.S. style football players in full gear. Each runner had to line up and rush through. I got hit in the nose (unintentionally) and was instantly bleeding. As I ran past restaurants I grabbed napkins and then deposited them in the next trash can. Between restaurants the sleeves of my polar fleece became soaked. I kept bleeding. I kept running. It was just too much fun to stop.

As we moved from the open streets to the closed, narrow corridors off Las Ramblas, we picked up the pace and moved with greater agility. Arms over our heads to avoid knocking down children, ducking beneath restaurant patron umbrellas, leaping over handrails and intersection barriers. There is something compelling about running in the close proximity of many runners and even more moving objects (shoppers with too many bags, kids in strollers, small dogs) for the sense of motion is accelerated and the pleasure in movement amplified. My energy never waned, as though I were pressed along by those to my rear and pulled by those to my front.

My favorite part was the look on the faces of those we ran past, their heads spinning as packs of runners ran in one direction, then realizing they missed a turn, spun on their heels and shot back past the unwary spectator-participants sometimes more than a few times.

My debit card is expired. My credit card does not work in all but a few places in this country. I have only the cash remaining from what I borrowed from my former employer Bas. I am wearing borrowed jeans and jacket, riding a borrowed bicycle, and living in a borrowed camper. My water lines are frozen. I awake each morning to the sounds of animals at the local zoo next door. I ran out of toilet paper a week ago, borrowing from any rest room I can find, wrapping it around my hand and stuffing into my pockets to make it another day.

I question what skills I have that make me employable and as I walk through the old city corridors, my black hoodie pulled to the sides of my face and across my forehead, gloved fingers deep in borrowed pockets. Alone in an alley, I struggle to locate the train station which I believe is on the other side of an adjacent building.

This is how it happens. This is how people fall that one last step.

I walked along the tracks, the only place in this country even remotely dirty. The well dressed people stood on the other side of the steel lines, at the end of the station, staring. My head was bowed as I moved through industrial shadows, pulling on doors in attempt to find my way into the back of the station and out of the cold.

I remember a time when I was the CEO of a supercomputing company, VPs at IBM and lead engineers at Lockheed Martin called upon my team to solve their problems. If only they could see me now, my pockets stuffed with toilet paper, my hands numb from the cold, my stomach empty until I can again boil a packet of Chinese noodles in water I carry back to my camper each day.

Was that me? Did I run that company? Did I stand in front of engineers at NASA, confident we could help process images from Spirit and Opportunity?

I am not that person now. I have lost that edge, the confidence, that ego which says “I can” no matter the challenge. I walked further, my mind wandering to how I might borrow cash from a stranger for a train ticket to Germany or nab an apple from a grocer without being caught—anything to avoid borrowing more money from the man who fired me two days ago. He already sees me as so small, incapable, and weak.

I can do it. I can rise again. But where do I start?

I returned to my camper, feeling safe inside despite the bitter cold. In the comfort of tat tiny, temporary, mobile home I was reminded of the relative wealth I do have and the good fortune to have family and friends who would help me if I could not find my way home again.

Homelessness is a psychological state more than a physical one. I was, for that week, thinking much like the homeless people I have met in so many cities, across many countries. I wanted to shout at passing strangers and urinate on public property. As a nameless, faceless, jobless nobody it didn’t matter any more—I had nothing to prove and no one to prove it to. I was, even if but for a few days, no longer one of them.

I tried to picture myself standing in front of a VP for a job interview, and in that image I could not make eye contact. I could not see myself without this over-sized jacket, pockets stuffed with toilet paper, fingers numb from the cold. I was not able to see myself succeed. That is what it truly means to be homeless. It’s not about the physical ownership of a building, but the inability to see oneself as anything but alone, in the alley, angry at the world, while those who have everything stare from the other side of the tracks, wondering who or what I am.

In a spontaneous moment of desire to be with family, I decided to follow my father back to the U.S. after his two weeks stay with me here in East Jerusalem. I packed a single carry-on bag and left my camera gear behind. The flight back to the U.S. was without issue. But in return, I was told the plane was full and I had to check my bag at the bottom of the ramp, just before boarding the plane. There was not a lot of time to think, and my hands can carry only so many items. I boarded with a book and the pairs of climbing and running shoes I had slung over my shoulder.

I arrived to Tel Aviv … but my bag did not. After five days of calling Delta, morning and night, yesterday an account manager declared my bag officially lost. They have twenty one days to locate it before we begin what I can only assume will be an arduous process of negotiation. I can only hope that as my bag was not intended to be checked, the value of its contents more than $4300, I will be given some consideration.

In the process of working through this ordeal, I discovered a highly broken system in which no one is held accountable and what’s worse, there is little anyone can do when I am told over and over again that internal to Delta, both phone and email are prohibited—only their internal messaging system is used for lost & found. Each time I called the conversation started the same way, “Mr. Staats. We are doing everything we can to locate your suitcase.”

To which I would respond, “It’s not a suitcase. It is a professional photographer’s backpack.”

“Oh? Well, the system says only ‘black bag’.”

“What? In Tel Aviv I completed a full report. Did that not get entered into the system?”

“Is says only ‘black bag’ Mr. Staats.”

“Unbelievable. I called yesterday and gave the entire description.”

“I am sorry Mr. Staats, but there is no data in your file other than ‘black bag’.”

This happened three days in a row, for a total of a half dozen calls. Each time I gave the full description. Each time the data was not entered despite that person’s promise. Once, the conversation went something like this.

I was nearly shouting, “What?! I just spoke to an account manager this morning. She said she entered the bag description and contents. Again. What exactly is happening on that end? Do you just say you are entering data but not doing anything?”

“Mr. Staats. Sometimes, when people speak too quickly, or say too much, it is difficult for us to enter all they provide.”

“I answered the questions given to me. No more. No less. I described the contents.”

“We need only three or four unique items. What you have given to me is too much.”

“Uh, ok. So you are saying that if someone gives too much information, nothing is entered at all?”

“Mr. Staats, I am just saying it says only ‘black bag’.”

I attempted to clarify, but she interrupted me time and time again. I sensed this could go downhill quickly, and if I heard my name used in that horribly controlling tone again, I was going to scream.

“How many black bags do you believe are in your warehouse at JFK?”

“Thousands sir.”

“Right. So five days into this, the process of searching for my bag has not yet begun.”

But this is where it got really strange.

“Sir. We have had the tag number from the start. We have been searching for the tag.”

To which I responded, “And what if the tag fell off?”

“Oh. We have a very sophisticated destroyed tag location system.”

This was starting to feel like a bad dream or an episode from “The Twilight Zone.” My head was starting to spin, the quagmire taking hold and squeezing my brain. I took a deep breath, “A what?”

“A destroyed tag location system,” she repeated.

“That makes no sense. How can you locate a tag if it is destroyed? If there is no tag, there is nothing to locate!”

“It’s very sophisticated.” I had nothing to say. She continued, “Sir, we find thousands of bags every year. In fact, we just found one today.”

This implied they also lost thousands of bags every year. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry.

I said, “So. Let me get this straight. My bag is listed only as black. It may or may not have a tag. The tag may be destroyed. But your sophisticated destroyed tag location system will find both the tag and my bag?”

“Yes Mr. Staats, that is correct.”

I could think only that Delta should be employed to search for missing socks in laundromats, or for missing children around the world.

She concluded, as they always do, “Thank you for choosing Delta. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

How, exactly, does one respond?