A few months ago, I packed up the life I’d spent decades building in California and moved with my husband to Mérida, Mexico.

“Why would you do that?” My former boss asked me that question over and over again after I told him I was leaving California for Mexico.

There are a hundred reasons: love, family, immigration, grief, exhaustion, curiosity. Each one is true. None of them is sufficient on its own.

I’ve spent most of my adult life wondering how people build meaningful lives together. I’ve explored that question through journalism, research, intentional community, renewable energy, and hundreds of conversations around kitchen tables. Lately, though, I’ve become less interested in answers than in questions worth living.

That’s what Dostiyan Days is.

“Dostiyan” is a word I picked up when I lived in India in 1997. It means friendship, but not the casual kind. It’s the kind that survives distance, disagreement, and time. The kind that quietly becomes part of who you are.

This isn’t a travel blog, though Mexico will certainly find its way into these pages. It’s not a political blog, though politics shapes all of our lives. It’s not a memoir, though I’ll occasionally borrow stories from my own.

It’s simply a place to pay attention—to beauty, to uncertainty, to the people and ideas that help us remain human in a bewildering world.

If you’re curious too, you’re in good company. I think we’ll have plenty to talk about.