Don't worry, I hate reading too
We've all seen it.
Guy gets a girlfriend and suddenly he's holding a camera 24/7 and is her personal photographer.
Beach photos with 🍑, “candid” walking-away photos that required four attempts because the light wasn’t right on the third one, and everyone is staring at you, waiting for the best time to walk by.
Three months later, those same photos are on Bumble.
I’ve been that guy.
Except I had a photography degree. About $100k+ worth of one. Which means I was doing the exact same thing as every other boyfriend, but with significantly more student debt and a stronger opinion about the angle.
I was so good at it, I built the kind of trust where a 30-minute shoot turned into 30 seconds without a second thought or double-checking my work.
No @. No credit. Just vibes.
And I don’t blame any girlfriend for that. That’s the ecosystem. I just eventually realized I had accumulated thousands of photos of someone else’s life and talent, and approximately zero of my own.
So, I retired as an Instagram Boyfriend.
Hung up the phone. Pointed it at myself. And became exactly the kind of guy I used to make fun of, except now I’m the one in the shot.
Welcome to the cringe phase.
Around the same time, I left a company I’d helped build for 12 years, with a handshake and a lesson in how these things tend to go.
I took a two-week vacation to clear my head after a terrible 2024. Leaving my identity as a leader at the only company I’d ever really known, the end of a long relationship as an “Instagram Boyfriend,” and my grandma dying to top it all off.
The hippie white girls would call it “the year the snake was shedding.”
Maybe those astrology girls are onto something.
Looking back, those three things had quietly become the whole architecture of who I was. The muscle memory hit first. Waking up and reaching for Slack before my eyes fully focused. Running through the project list in my head before coffee. Thinking of something funny and immediately wanting to call her. And then remembering, that none of those things existed anymore.
The identity didn’t disappear dramatically.
It just... stopped having anywhere to go.
Which left the only question worth sitting with:
Was any of it actually mine in the first place?
That two week vacation never ended.
Turns out my savings went further traveling the world than sitting in California sending out resumes just for their AI to tell me I was overqualified. Which is a very specific kind of humiliation I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
Except maybe the AI, when it’s not helping me write this blog post or build this website.
Don’t get it twisted though. This is my voice, my opinions, and my vision. I just need help with my grammar as someone who has a rural Pennsylvania reading and writing education.
Now I work remotely as a product, marketing, and GTM consultant, which has allowed me to continue to fund the travel. The travel funds the perspective, and I do this in my free time to prove you don’t have to quit your career to “find yourself.” 🤮
I’m not a luxury traveler. I’m not hostel-dorm backpacking either, except when it’s peak summer in Croatia and prices are completely unreasonable.
I call it the mid-tier dream.
$25 to $45 a night accommodation when I can find it. Cheaper than rent in California and much of the USA without a roommate. Spend on experiences. Cut everything else. Reopen Amazon Prime only when absolutely necessary and with great shame, usually the second I step back onto U.S. soil.
I’m doing this in my mid-30s. When everyone said it was too late, which is a weird thing to say to someone who is still alive.
And honestly, I don’t think I could’ve done it in my 20s. Those kids haven’t seen a sober sunset in their lives.
But don’t get me wrong, I can still rage with people of all ages. You’d also be shocked to find how many other people are out there doing the exact same thing, at the exact same age, from all around the world.
According to Ways2Well, my biological age is now 20. It’s down 7 years since I started traveling full-time, allegedly.
Referral link for 10% off, because apparently even my existential crisis has an affiliate program now.
So yes, while mid-30s could be considered “too old,” it turns out I’m getting younger by traveling.
Nobody is more surprised than me.
This is also where my food recs come from: healthy, but not too healthy. I want to feel good, stay fit, and not turn every meal into a TED Talk.
But I still refuse to try Balut.
I’m all for culture, but I’m more of a visual learner when it comes to “weird” food. If that’s even a thing.
I grew up in rural Western Pennsylvania convinced there had to be more. So I moved to California at 21 years old, where it somehow became unrealistic to start the “next step” after doing “everything right” into my 30s.
Turns out there is more.
You just have to leave long enough to find it.
This site isn’t necessarily anti-anything.
But it is anti-autopilot.
It’s for people who are tired of saying “later.” Tired of upgrading things that don’t upgrade them. Tired of living inside a loop that feels prewritten.
The Matrix? 👀
I want to give you real mid-tier travel advice and show what’s actually possible outside the rat race. Most of us get a week off a year and can barely afford to use it.
But we’re also the first generation in human history that can literally go almost anywhere on earth, and the only thing standing between you and that is usually mindset, fear, money, logistics, work, family expectations, outdated life scripts, and a few mild panic attacks while booking one-way flights.
So yeah.
Mindset.
Time is the only thing money can’t buy.
Unless you’re already dying.
Anyways, welcome to my echo chamber.