The journey
1968 – Today
Scottish immigrant father. Young mother. Father died. Business partner stole everything. Welfare. The projects. Survival.
Mom remarried. Air Force life. New homes, new schools, new friends — again and again. Constant change became the norm.
Finished high school. Started college. Dayton, Ohio — eight years in one place. Met my best friend — still one today. Joined the Army National Guard. First real taste of freedom.
A major relationship ended. Time for a reset. Left Ohio, landed in Phoenix. Finished college, bartended, wandered. Met a fire chief on a plane. I've told that story as destiny and as luck. Probably neither.
Became a firefighter/paramedic — 23 years in the field. Saved lives. Saw death. Adrenaline, trauma, and the weight of it all. Began my teaching journey. Trained hundreds of the next generation of paramedics.
Started a media company on my days off. Tech, training, emergency response — innovation and impact. A startup pulled me in — storytelling, marketing, speed. Then: trauma, 100+ hour workweeks, mental/physical crash. Had to rewrite the script.
Bali, Nepal. Trekking, NGOs, realignment. Met people everywhere working out who they were becoming. Then the pandemic — firefighter/paramedic on the front lines. Sickness, death, exhaustion. A brutal reminder: life is short.
Retired. Lived on a boat. Wandered. Six months a year — nowhere and everywhere. Europe, Asia — conversations that changed me. Moved continents. Somewhere in there, the questions started to feel like the work.
Built the set. Launched the podcast. The rest? Let's find out together.