Memphis, 1982. I lived there just a few months before my family moved to Atlanta, so I don't remember much of it. The state shows up again later in this story.

I grew up in the North Atlanta suburbs and had a great life. We lived in a contemporary house surrounded by trees, and my most vivid memory is learning to ride my bike by cannoning down a giant hill.

When I was in kindergarten we moved to Wheaton, Illinois, a planned move we knew would last eighteen months. It was awesome. Snow on the ground nine months a year, Cubs games, hot summers, doors nobody locked, and endless bike rides down the Prairie Path. A nice, idyllic Midwestern interlude.

We came back after the year and a half, and Georgia is where I spent most of my childhood. My mom was a teacher. My dad worked for Quaker Oats, then a software company. It was a pretty awesome time and place to be a kid: the Braves' early-nineties run, the 1996 Olympics, and a lot of University of Georgia games, where I fell in love with the Dawgs.

Atlanta also had an awesome music scene and an awesome radio station, and somewhere in there I learned to play guitar, something I've held on to my entire life. Atlanta has a special place in my heart.

Before my sophomore year of high school, my family moved to Nashville, and I finished high school at Brentwood Academy. It was a great reset at a formative time, and Nashville is the place I most call "home".

Went to college in West Texas, met the woman who would become my wife. Moved to Dallas after graduating, got married, had 4 kids, and, since 2014, have helped nonprofits optimize their marketing to accelerate fundraising growth. It's a good life, one I don't deserve but for which I'm grateful.