I woke up and decided that my life was going to be different. I didn’t know at the time what that meant. What I did know is that at 12 years old I needed to be the opposite of everything that I grew up expected to be. It’s easy to think about going in a different direction it’s much more difficult to take the first steps down that path. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t consider this. Change sits between action and inaction. I believe in the moments of contemplation are where everything changes.

I can say it until I’m blue in the face, but I should be dead or in jail. There is not a lot of in-between when you come from nothing. For a few of us, we are lucky enough to navigate the treacherous waters in our makeshift vessels. Following in the footsteps left by those before us is inherent. It’s our responsibility to decide if those footsteps are heading in the same direction that we want to go.

Sitting half past dead reflecting on how I feel is real. I thought that I was searching for something for most of my life. What I found was me.

Look, I get it. It’s cliche´. Everyone is seeking self, this might be true but have you ever really taken the steps. I pretended to be who I was for 28 years. It took a moment of clarity for me to realize that I was a lie.

That moment came one evening as I sat in the bathroom staring at myself in the mirror. I felt dismantled at that moment. I couldn’t lie anymore. I couldn’t cheat anymore. I couldn’t continue to lose myself in the hurricane that was my life. I couldn’t contain the tears.

I couldn’t take who I was anymore. I couldn’t handle the truth that I was exactly everything that I didn’t want to be. I was in the spiral, and it was in that moment that I made a decision. I would not be that person and no matter the amount of work it would take I would not secede until I found myself; the real me.

I think about my life in a series of discombobulated mini-series:

1- Family: Growing up the Mormon son of a drug addict mother, her hyper-abusive husband, a father I never met, a grandmother who was racist, and an environment that is predicated on failure I learned one thing: I could not count on anyone but myself. I would come to find in time this was not the case and the people around me are the very reason that I am even writing this. You don’t get to choose your family, but sometimes the universe brings you the people that you need to become your family.

2- Drugs: The first time I got high I was 12. It was the summer after my grandmother adopted me (which is an insane story in itself). I had recently become friends with a neighborhood boy whose life was very much like mine. We bonded over getting high, skipping school, and breaking into houses. You know.. Kids stuff. I would be intoxicated in some shape or form every day for the next 18 years.

I found that by stepping into the sobriety in for the sake of better understanding myself would be the best thing I could do. When I am sober, there is no filter between who I am and the things that have happened to me. During this time I learned to cry. Life can be fucking hard.

3- Getting out: I just wanted out. Out of my family, my hood, my school, my everything. It all felt like an illusion, and it never changed into something real. I knew that I just needed to make it out of high school. I barely graduated and unfortunately not on time. I was too busy working and selling drugs, getting high, having sex with my girlfriend, and being on the career path at Hollywood Video to care about school.

The problem with making it out is that getting out doesn’t fix what’s happening internally.

4-Money: I wanted money for that I wanted parents who loved me. I thought that money would solve all of my problems. Just like Biggie said “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems.” Shit went from bad to worse. I became a full-blown workaholic, and I was spending thousands of dollars a month on alcoholic and weed. I had the best car, clothes, apartment, and lifestyle. I was fucking miserable.

Money only exacerbated my misery. I didn’t do the work yet, and I was stuck somewhere between a thriving young professional and crippled drug addict. Despite how I grew up these were the darkest years of my life.

5-Breakdown: I think the culture of drinking and doing drugs in America is asinine. Realizing I had a problem with drugs and alcohol wasn’t about not being able to function or be a productive member of society. It was that I was always sedated and never felt present in the world. I understood chasing dragons a little bit more every time I blacked out instead of dealing with the fires that were being set all around me.

I was in the midst of a panic attack three years ago when it finally hit me; my body was in DEFCON 5. It was at this moment that it eventually all became clear. I needed real help. I wasn’t self-medicating for any other reason than I was afraid of the people that I was and I had disassociated to the point that nothing felt real anymore.

6-Leaving Indiana: I felt my world crashing down around me. My businesses were both growing but nothing else as. I was in what looked like from the outside a healthy relationship, and I had a fantastic group of supportive friends that had become adopted family. I was miserable. All of the lying, cheating, booze, girls, and drugs had finally caught up with me. It’s not that I was surprised by being an addict (my diagnosis) it was the shock that what I needed was the help that was the hardest.

I promised myself that I would leave Indiana by the time I was 30. I can’t quite explain it, but it was one of those things that I just knew just like I knew that I had to go to Portland. I did all the things that I needed to there. I buried myself in self-care. It was through men’s group therapy, 1-on-1 therapy, and every kind of care modality that you can think of that allowed me for the first time to become the real me.

All of the cars, clothes, money, success, friends, drugs, booze, girls, and adventures pale in comparison to the feeling of looking at myself in the mirror and feeling like a human being. Being there was the what allowed me to be here.

7- Mindset: There is something to be said for permitting myself to follow my dreams. I dreamed of finding myself in the world since I was a child. It felt like reaching for the brass ring. Every time I came close, I would self-sabotage. Thinking about moving towards what you want is so much easier than doing it.

Through the work, I have found happiness, humility, self-compassion, love, and vulnerability. The work isn’t done. It may never be, but when I think about the person that I am right now in this moment I am happy, and I love myself. Instead of building walls I create space to exist in the world, and I move towards my wants, needs, and interests.

Happiness exists for me.

NOW….What does all of this have to do with sharing my travels through blogging and vlogging? Great question; everything!

You can’t build a house without a foundation. There are a million travel blogs, and many of them talk about how grandiose and unusual their travels on $20 a day in Thailand are or how they quit their job to travel the world, but I think there is a layer missing. None of us get to where we are without going through extensive trials and tribulations. Everyone is suffering in some way. That’s not necessarily in the scoop of trauma, but we all have pain and loss and grief. It’s not all Rainbow Mountains, diving off cliffs in Bali, and doing spicy ramen challenges in Tokyo, Japan. Life is fucking hard.

Life is also amazing. It can be anything that you want it to be if you change your mindset, decide to do the work, and give yourself the space to move towards the things that you need. There are no excuses for not moving towards what will make you happy. We aren’t promised tomorrow. If you want to know how to be a digital nomad or how to have your Eat, Pray, Love thing or where to find the top 10 places you want to visit before you die those exist, and you can read them everywhere. I want to live those things, don’t you?

I want to keep it real. I refuse to mislead anyone.

Life is not like a travel blog. Life is life.

Perhaps Anthony Bourdain said it best: “Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts. It even breaks your heart, but that’s okay. The journey changes you. It should change you. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”