Leaving Kansas: A Memoir of Work, Faith, and the Long Way HomeWhat happens when the life you built no longer fits the person you've become?After decades of success in sales and management, John Bohnenkamp finds himself burned out, restless, and quietly unraveling. The numbers still work. The career still pays. But something essential is gone. What follows is not a midlife crisis, but a reckoning.Leaving Kansas is a raw, darkly funny, and deeply human memoir about listening to the voice you've spent years ignoring. It traces a path from corporate boardrooms to seminary classrooms, from certainty to collapse, and ultimately into the back of an ambulance, where real life arrives without polish or permission.As an Emergency Medical Technician, Bohnenkamp encounters humanity at its most exposed: addiction, mental illness, poverty, aging, and grief. He learns quickly that EMS isn't about heroics or sirens, but about showing up when systems fail and people don't know where else to turn. Between gallows humor and hard-earned wisdom, he explores what it means to serve others without losing yourself in the process.Woven throughout is a persistent spiritual thread, not tidy or preachy, but honest and unresolved. Faith here isn't a slogan. It's a struggle. A conversation. A long road walked with doubt, anger, grace, and the occasional moment of clarity that changes everything.This memoir is for readers who: Feel trapped in work that no longer feeds themQuestion the stories they've been told about success and callingWant an unfiltered look at Emergency Medical Services from the insideBelieve faith is something wrestled with, not inheritedKnow that sometimes the bravest move is admitting you're lostLeaving Kansas isn't about finding easy answers. It's about learning when it's time to leave the familiar road behind, even when you don't yet know where the next one leads.There's still no place like home.But first, you have to decide what home really means.