Moving to Portland

This is an outline of things I’ve discerned about Portland and my own life that compel me to move there.

Portland, an adventure

My theme for 2025 is to choose the adventure. Moving to Portland carries both intrigue and a challenge that make it worthwhile for me to embark on.

Portland breaks many of the familiar waypoints that I’ve built the foundation of my Los Angeles life upon; gone are the intersections I’ve driven through hundreds of times and the comfort-food restaurants I visit after flying into LAX.

But rote comfort is traded for naive eyes. In moving, I will see options and opportunities previously hidden in plain sight that now compel me to try things off my beaten path. New venues for recreation introduce new ways to rest and delight. New community introduces people with completely different life experiences. New seasons introduce a fuller picture of what life is like on Earth. The wonder of newness sparks growth that I would have missed out on by comfortably replaying tried and true paths. I hope Portland will expand my empathy for those who are not like me.

Portland has its unique challenges: seasonal depression from limited sunlight and plentiful rainclouds, the loneliness of being unknown, xenophobia for being an underrepresented minority, lifestyle constraints from less liquidity, persecution for being a Christian in an atheist city, discomfort while loving people who are experiencing homelessness or opioid addictions. But I look forward to tackling these challenges with the hope that by going through them, I will procure new wisdom that cannot be understood from afar. I look forward to living new challenges that will produre my own testimonies of growth that I would have only read about in books, while in Los Angeles.

The adventure of Portland brings new challenges, breeding new wisdom, resulting in new joy.

Make it small, like a Portlander

Each city attracts and influences people in a unique way. In Portland, I’ve observed a worldview where success is found in making it small. This counteracts the environments I have been heavily influenced by over the past life block – living for comfort or recognition in Los Angeles and hyper-scaling everything as a startup tech employee.

While reflecting on the shutdown of Treasure, I realized my success criteria of gaining 1000 investors was derived from a desire for recognition and a belief that Treasure was only impactful if it scaled. These core values inhibited my ability to run the organization for the sake of loving others. The recognition I desired matched the ethos of “making it” in Los Angeles; all the doctrine I’ve been internalizing from YC articles, startup CEOs, and Tech-Twitter influenced my value-tied-to-scale worldview. Treasure exemplifies how environmental forces have influenced what I create; I have adopted the belief that making it BIG is the only thing worthy of my focus.

In Portland, I’m hoping to learn from a culture that aims to make it small. I want to fix my gaze on my local community and loving the people around me – less focused on the masses and less focused on myself. Of course, I know that there are common human temptations, and some form of my LA struggles will follow me to Portland. However, locales have mostly unique energies that breed localized virtue and vices. My hope is that by being immersed in Portland for an extended time, I will learn an alternate way of seeing the world – making it small like a Portlander.

Ministering to Portlanders with Portlanders

On our trip to Kyoto, Stephanie and I observed people fully focused on enjoying what they do; mastering their craft not for recognition of others but simply to spend the most amount of time doing what makes them feel alive. We observed people that were self-aware enough to know when they felt most alive and confident enough to not care what others thought of them (caveat – much of this is based on assumptions from an afternoon spent people-watching at a local park, so I may be projecting). Something about seeing these people triggered a coniction to minister to people as introspective as these.

Portland is a very different city than Kyoto, but I have observed a similar self-aware confidence that drives people to do their own thing, disregarding what others may think. You can see it in the types of stores that open across the city; these businesses have no business being open nor sustainable, but they exist because their owners are so passionate about what they create or sell. These people are in search of their true selves – living in such a way that makes them feel most alive. This itch is what I want to minister to, and Portland seems to be a place filled with this itch.

I recognize that God is doing something unique in Portland right now. Scholars and pastors that I look up to are based in Portland – BibleProject and Bridgetown church. I want to be fully present for what God is doing here and learn to do ministry from people who are using their unique gifts to reach the city they’ve been placed in. It seems like generic ministry does not work in Portland, and I want to partner with churches and organizations that have this mentality.

Favorable conditions

The move to Portland is risky for even more challenges than mentioned above. However, the life stage Stephanie and I are in is timely to take on risk: we do not have children; my job situation is fluid; and we do not have any assets that keep us tied to LA. I perceive moving to Portland as a two-way door decision; the consequences of this move are not permanent. We can always move back to Los Angeles, since we have a family home base there. This classification lowers the gravity of the decision, and encourages discovery (even if it is risky). Each life block that passes will only add more challenges to moving, so now is as good as a time as any to make the move.