I remember the day when I first started listening to Tim Ferris's 4 Hour Workweek. The year was 2006 and I was living in Florida in a friend's rented home. After listening to the audiobook for 15 minutes I had a such a strong feeling that this book was about to change my life that I paused it, asked my girlfriend at the time to jump in the car with me, and drove to Miami just so I could use the 3.5 hour drive to really tune into what the book was saying.
That book really planted some powerful seeds in me and caused me to optimize my life decisions based on how I was spending my time. A few months later I decided to go all in on affiliate marketing and creating web sites for passive income. 6 months later my business partner and I found an affiliate program that skyrocketed my income. I went from making ~$1,500 per month to ~$75,000 per month.
Over the following several years I was able to make a regular healthy six figure income only working several hours per week, which freed up almost all of my time. So I traveled.
In 2010 I decided to get rid of all my belongings, hop in a car, and travel the country. I ended up spending the next 7 years hopping all over the world, connecting to amazing people from all walks of life and all corners of the earth. (Here's a picture of a dinner I attended with Richard Branson ;)
One year I tracked my miles and found out I flew 485,000 miles (that's equivalent of 10x around the world - in just one year!)
Here are some photos of my travels during those years:
I lived in Thailand, hopped all over the Caribbean, spent lots of nights in Las Vegas, Miami, NYC, Montreal, Playa del Carmen, Austin, LA, SF - toured Europe, the Hawaiian islands.
I had enough adventures over the years to fill several lives, but after doing that for many years, something in me started to grow tired even of that whirlwind life.
I was in a float tank two years ago and during my two hour waking dream I heard the message to go ahead and sell my business. I ended up selling the business for much less than it was worth and spent that money on more travel.
I depleted all my funds and even went into debt. I wanted to see and experience life from the opposite side of the spectrum.
Since then, I've slept in the sand in Venice Beach. I've had massive breakdowns. Have been homeless. Have lost almost all the social capital I had built up over the years. Have been to some of the lowest lows imaginable as a human being.
I'm starting to rebuild from less than zero. It's been a tough trip. But I hope it's giving me perspective I never would have had had I stayed on the side of the 1%.
I became an artist. I spent time in ceremony with Ayahuasca and San Pedro to help guide me moving forward. Here are some of my paintings that came out of my experiences with sacred plants:
You can see more at https://osiris.codes/
Lately I've been spending a lot of time researching cryptocurrencies. I haven't been this excited about something since I built my first website in 1998. I believe this technology, Bitcoin, Steemit, Waves, etc. are just the beginning of massive technological waves about to sweep through our lives.
I hope to connect with some interesting people here in Steemit, share my experiences, help out any way I can, and have fun on this great new platform. Follow me and send me a message if you want to connect, or leave a question below. To all our success here in SteemitWorld! <3