The Tech Out of Dodge

Daily writing prompt

Are you patriotic? What does being patriotic mean to you?

Patriotism is a complicated word for me.
Not because I don’t care about my country — I do — but because caring this much has become a kind of full‑body fatigue. I’m patriotic in the way someone is patriotic after they’ve read the fine print, lived through the consequences, and realized that loving a place doesn’t mean pretending it’s healthy.

I love America the way you love a house you grew up in that now has black mold.
You don’t stop caring.
You don’t stop wanting it to be livable.
But you also don’t keep breathing it in.

So yes, I’m patriotic.
But my patriotism is not the fireworks‑and‑anthem variety.
It’s the kind that says:
“I need a breather before this place poisons me.”

And that’s why I’m trying to get out — not forever, but long enough to remember what it feels like to inhale without bracing.

I’m doing it the way people like me do: through tech.
Through the back door of a multinational.
Through the quiet, strategic path of “get your foot in the door, then apply overseas.”
Amsterdam, Helsinki, Dublin — places where the air feels less weaponized, where the social contract hasn’t been shredded into confetti.

I don’t want to abandon America.
I want to step outside of it long enough to see it clearly again.

Because patriotism, to me, isn’t about staying no matter what.
It’s about refusing to let your country shrink your sense of possibility.
It’s about believing that stepping away can be an act of loyalty — the kind that says, “I want to come back better than I left.”

Abroad may not be forever.
It may just be a chapter.
But I need that chapter.
I need to know what it feels like to live in a place where the national mood isn’t a constant emergency alert.

Patriotism, for me, is the willingness to tell the truth about the place you love.
It’s the courage to say, “I expect more from you than this.”
It’s the clarity to step back before resentment calcifies into something irreversible.

If anything, that’s the most American thing I can do:
to believe this country can be better,
to refuse to lie about what it is,
and to give myself enough distance to keep loving it at all.

Scored by Copilot. Conducted by Leslie Lanagan.