For the last few months, I am working on one of my greatest projects yet. It is a project with many intangible parts, leading to a tangible conclusion. However, this project will become more visible in my open source contributions, my global event presence, and where I call home. In short, I will officially and legally relocate my life to Germany 🇩🇪 by the end of this year. This post is to help me mark the moment by sharing some personal context and vulnerability about one of the biggest changes in my life so far.
To help me organize my thoughts, this post will be organized in the following sections:
Why am I moving to Germany? 🔗
The single, most-important driving factor is family relocation. In a previous blog post, I highlighted that I became a married man in November 2025. There is a long story before and a long story after that point, particularly about passports, politics, and piles of paperwork. A concise way of describing it is that the heart wants what it wants, and we all must make choices about what matters most to us.
Consequentially, my wife currently lives and works in Germany. In the beginning, we explored many options for family reunification in the United States. However, we quickly realized that the American immigration system is currently an ambiguous black box with unknown timelines and a constantly changing legal environment. Once this became clear, I vowed to my wife that I would find a viable pathway toward mutual legal residence status for us both.
Earlier this year, I began working with my employer, Red Hat, to relocate to Germany. Thanks to my supportive manager and department, I have been steadily navigating several major milestones to make this into a reality. I already signed an offer letter to join Red Hat Gmbh, the registered German legal entity of Red Hat. As the relocation process continued, I began to reimagine my role and career based from Germany. There are exciting professional opportunities ahead, which I detail in the next section.
Nevertheless, the process is still ongoing. But at last, it is approaching the final stages. I have quickly discovered how much work is involved with moving your life from one nation-state to another nation-state. Legally, anyways. Beyond my own life, I am also closing out my mother’s estate. When I am not clocked into work, my hands remain pretty full.
Perhaps one of the greatest delights as I move into this next chapter is the opportunity to finally build a more stable, rooted life. The circumstances of my life have denied me this opportunity for the last few years. I am ready to play the Uno reverse card!
My contributions & event presence 🔗
Beyond my personal motivations for the relocation, it also presents new opportunities for me in my career at Red Hat. Once I make the move to Germany, it will change both my capacity for open source and the geographic center of my business travel. Realistically, this will have two constraints on my presence.
First, my capacity for open source will reduce as I intend to reclaim long-needed work-life balance. To be fair, some of this is accumulating over a long time, and some of this is newly introduced. The long-time accumulating work-life balance issues come from the deterioration of routine and personal boundaries. The change I intend to take is to lean into the German working culture for when work begins and when work ends. This may not always be possible, but I aspire towards this ideal. A standard working day from 9 AM to 6 PM feels like a needed structure as I get into my next chapter in Germany. So, it will take time to discover what works, but the act of writing it here on my blog will help drive personal accountability!
Second, the geographic center of my business travel will shift to Europe. Europe is a fascinating place to be for open source policy right now. Germany also comes up often as a country which either uses or funds a significant amount of Free Software. Naturally, there will be several new-to-me events as I shift further into my new role at Red Hat. Therefore, my business travel will prioritize travel within Europe. I will pop up much less often around United States FOSS and Linux events.
So, in summary, I look forward to logging off at 18:00 Central Europe or 12 PM US Eastern, and learning what community events are in my new European neighborhood.
Making the small adjustments 🔗
Most of this post detailed the large adjustments coming up in my life. But there are also several small adjustments I am making too. Some of them are willing, and others are begrudgingly.
For one, my Duolingo language-learning streak continues now, but in German. After several years of avoiding learning German, I now recognize the immense utility and practicality of German language mastery. Duolingo is not a serious language mastery tool, but I am looking to take my German studying to the next level soon. Additionally, I am reconfiguring my personal finances as I quickly learn which banks and financial institutions will or will not service an American citizen living overseas. Some weeks, it feels like I am spending an unhealthy amount of time chasing phone calls and following up on cold email threads. These are just some of the relatively smaller adjustments I am already making in preparation of the big one later this year.
Nevertheless, there is an adjustment I am eagerly anticipating. I am ready to live in a society which believes in a nationally-accessible rail network. I want to live in a society where public transit and trains are realities, not utopian dreams. While I know some will disagree with what I am about to say, it does not matter to me. Rail travel thrills me. I am looking forward to becoming a regular traveler on the Deutsche Bahn and wider Railteam networks!
I have not written a personal update on my blog in some time, so the time felt right.
This relocation "project" is a huge part of what I am working toward right now.
I will share more about the relocation process as I move through it in the germany tag on my blog.