The origin story
The Deep End
I · Orlando · September 2017
“Go to your fucking flight.”
There’s a woman in front of me. I’m sweating from the morning run in Orlando’s mid-September heat. I just asked a total stranger whether I should get on a plane. “Hey random person… I have a flight to Colombia in two hours, and I’m really scared. Should I go?”
She looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “What are you doing? Go to your fucking flight. Why are you here!?”
I was supposed to fly out the day before, but my family had called me up and scared me out of it, telling me how dangerous it was… Plus there’s the little detail that I just dropped out of college and I was completely broke. But Hurricane Irma delayed that flight by one day and bought me one more morning to rethink my decision… and the morning brought me her.
So I go. The last $40 in my account goes to the Uber. No return ticket… just a voucher… and I’m standing in line at the desk, on the phone, trying to find out if they’ll even let me on the plane.
I’m winging it. All of it.
II · Two weeks later · Cali, Colombia
The owner of the hostel shoves me.
He pulls back his fist and holds it there, fuming, and I can tell he wants to put it through my face. “You’re going to have a place to sleep tonight,” he says through gritted teeth. “In a Colombian jail. Because I own this barrio. And you are done.”
I’d been trading my skills for a bed because I had no money… and he liked his power a little too much. So I told him no. You’re not going to boss me around. I’m leaving… and I’m not giving you the work I’ve done because you didn’t hold up your end of the bargain.
Now you’re up to speed.
I go upstairs for my bags, come back down, and my laptop… my whole business, my whole life… is sitting on his lap. He’s trying to get in to get the flyers I made for his salsa night coming up. He stares at me for a long moment. Then he holds it out. As he handed that laptop back, I watched him and saw the exact moment he decided not to snap it in half.
Broke, far from home, nothing going to plan.
And still: mine. Every day of it mine.
III · A couple months later · Riga, Latvia
She nuzzles her head on my shoulder.
Her warmth settles against my heart. We’re in a little Airbnb in Riga, Latvia… on her dime, because I’m still completely broke, still on the far edge of my comfort zone, still throwing everything I have at making it work.
But she loves me. And for that moment, everything else falls away.
Nobody was coming to save me, and I had stopped waiting. The kid who’d spent his whole childhood being told what was wrong with him was gone. But he left me something:
the hunger to live my own fucking life
IV · Nine years later · Austin, golden hour
There’s clay under my fingernails and a camera in my hand.
I spend my days making things with my hands, filming the adventure, surrounded by people building lives they actually love.
The two years of sleeping on streets and hostel floors, the dozen businesses that failed, the one that made me $10k every month and flew me around the world but cost me my soul because it wasn’t aligned… all of it was the deep end teaching me to swim.
I’m so grateful I took the leap. Because if there’s one thing I learned in this life: life is not meant to be just survived.
Life is meant to be lived.
Mentoring
Everyone has a thing. Including you.
I’m here to be a nodal point for the new earth to anchor in: a world where people live from the inside out, plugged into their thing, emanating. When everybody is emanating their light and tapped into their mission, we have heaven on earth. That is a life worth living, and that is a world worth creating.
I live my thing out loud. The life is the proof. And Alivement is where I meet the people who want that for their own lives.
Meet me in AlivementAlivement is my dharma: helping the world build lives where they’re Aligned and Alive.
I’ll meet you there.
