Author of the series
Lessons Learned From The Path Less Traveled™
What are you supposed to do when the life you have no longer fits the life you want? I don’t know. But I can tell you what I did — and what I learned from it.
Where I am & what I’m doing
Right now: back home, working on the books
We’re back in Southern California, where we live out of a van when we’re not on the trail. I’ve been living nomadically since 2010, before “vanlife” had a hashtag: first in a 4Runner, then a Honda Element, then a minivan, and finally a full-size van in 2023. I’m working on my book series, Lessons Learned From The Path Less Traveled™. It started as the sequel to my first book and grew into a six-book manuscript, so it’s slow, careful work, and I set it aside each Adventure Season to come back to it with fresh eyes.
2023 is also the year I adopted Koti, a rescue, and we started our adventures together. For a few months each year, we leave to hike mountains and wilderness. Usually that means Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado, and in 2026 we added Idaho. We call it Adventure Season, and it runs anywhere from three to six months. The next one starts in early summer 2027, and until then I keep posting videos from our adventures every day, so there’s always something new to watch below.
Videos
Follow along on YouTube, TikTok & Instagram
Adventures with Koti & Zero…
Hiking adventures with my dog, Koti, filmed during Adventure Season.
Lessons Learned…
Over 500 videos on daily life lessons.
More projects
A webcomic & a documentary
Zero Talking
Humor & awkward moments, based on weird thoughts & real-life experiences. Over 1,000 single-panel comics, all free to read.
From The Path Less Traveled
A documentary and podcast project about resilience, hope, and the lessons people learn on hard paths. I started it in 2019 and it’s paused for now, but I’m open to restarting it, so if it sounds like something you’d want to see or be part of, take a look.
The short version
Leaving the path I was on
You’ve probably heard stories about people who — despite being comfortable in life — were brave enough to abandon the path they were on to seek something else. I’d heard about those people. I just never thought I’d actually become one of them. Until that one day I looked my fears in the face, took a leap of faith, and did.
See, despite being engrained in comfort — or perhaps because of it — I’d begun to feel like a robot just going through the motions of life. I could project forward from the path I was on and I realized that, somewhere along the way, I’d started to live someone else’s version of the ideal life, not mine.
So I took a calculated risk by bucking the status quo and disrupting the life I had in order to bring my life back in line with what I truly wanted — knowing full well it wouldn’t be easy or comfortable.
And thus began an intentional & unconventional journey beyond my comfort zone — a journey that would not only turn into the most challenging experience of my life, it would become the most rewarding as well.
As I faced challenges and overcame them, I became an experiential learner — someone who accumulates knowledge through direct experiences and from reflecting deeply upon those experiences.
I began sharing the lessons I was learning from my new life in 2010 — and 8 years later, I published my first book: Lessons Learned from The Path Less Traveled™ Volume 1.
In late 2021 I stopped posting regularly to my blog due to content harvesting bots stealing my work and sharing it on social media platforms without attribution. I have, however, continued to write lessons and will be publishing them in one or more future volumes of work.
My story…
What are you supposed to do when you realize the life you have no longer fits the life you want?
I don’t know.
Because what works best for one person doesn’t necessarily work best for another. I can, however, tell you what I did — and what I learned from it.
I overhauled my life. I quit my job, terminated my lease, and sold everything that wouldn’t fit in my car. And this was only the beginning. A short time later, I began a multi-faceted project incorporating five of the things I was most passionate about pursuing at the time: writing, photography, travel, adventure, and connecting with people in a meaningful way.
This project — which would become known as ZDXP — would lead me to become the protagonist in a real-life choose-your-own-adventure where the internet would tell me where to go and what to do when I got there. I spent nearly 2 years criss-crossing the United States on an epic road trip covering over 60,000 miles.
It was supposed to be fun — and some of it was — but it was also far more challenging than I ever expected in ways that I could never have anticipated. It changed my life, my relationships, and my view of the world. In short, it changed everything.
When my cross country travels finally came to an end, my journey along the path less traveled continued. And it did so in ways I didn’t expect. Because, when it comes down to it, life is a journey. And when you take the path less traveled, you are far less likely to know what you’ll get than you will by following the footsteps of others. But one thing you can almost be certain of, the challenges you face beyond your comfort zone will trigger personal growth beyond anything a person typically experiences living in the confines of comfort.
Ever since embarking on a journey along the path less traveled in 2010, I’ve been using real-life experiences as a foundation for learning and then sharing what I learn with others.