With as much detail and precision as possible, describe your ideal lifestyle.
This is what I asked myself to do back in 2009, when I first allowed myself to think about a world beyond my business, beyond LA, beyond the goals I’d been chasing my entire adult life.
And this was a necessary ask, because at that moment I didn’t really know what my ideal lifestyle was. I knew there was travel involved, and I knew that I didn’t want to maintain the breakneck professional pace I’d been keeping for the preceding few years. But beyond that? Much fuzziness. Vagueness. A lot of “not this” and not much “this.”
Which is a problem if you’re hoping to actually move toward something, rather than just moving away from something else. It’s useful to know where you don’t want to be, what you don’t want to be doing with your time, but unless you want to chance ending up somewhere equally non-ideal, or perhaps even someplace worse, it’s prudent to at least determine in which direction you should be walking. And the more accurately you can calibrate your compass, the more specific you get, the more direct your path to your intended destination will be.
It’s this thought process that resulted in me getting rid of almost everything I owned, scaling down my business to something I could run from my laptop, and beginning to travel full-time. Which turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life.
I found myself making this same internal request for clarity not long ago.
I’ve enjoyed this most recent, more geographically tethered juncture of my journey, but I’m also ready for what comes next.
Unfortunately, aside from “something different than what I’ve been doing these last two years,” I hadn’t figured out what my next step should be with any specificity.
So I took a couple of days to just dream.
To imagine what life might look like if I could have all the things I wanted. To envision the specifics of that dream, even if they didn’t seem like elements I would be able to cram together into one, cohesive, lifestyle.
Then I got to work making the resultant, cobbled-together vision a tangible reality.
I wanted to travel, but also to continue to enjoy some of the benefits of having a home base I’ve come to love these past two years. I wanted to have my guitar and keyboard, my cooking vessels and an oven in which to put them, a consistent bed and a really cozy duvet.
I wanted to maintain my beloved workout routine and eating habits, and to continue producing my podcast each week. And I wanted to be able to keep improving upon these models, while also elevating a few of my professional pursuits to the next level. I wanted to ensure I could make positive lifestyle adjustments alongside positive career adjustments.
I also very much wanted to get back out into the world, to meet up with folks who read and listen to my work, and who might be interested in some of the things I’m keen to share and talk about.
And I was determined to make all of this happen without resorting to a lifestyle model I’ve tried before.
I knew, for instance, that I could probably set up a home base somewhere and spend half my time there, half on the road, living out of my carry-on bag. But I’ve done both of those things before, explored those lifestyle models, and I felt like predicating my next steps on reliable knowns, rather than venturing into the unknown, would make me more comfortable but would also stymie my growth.
My current plan, to tour North America in a motorhome, performing a speaking tour along the way, took a surprisingly long while to bubble up as a possibility, despite all the time I spent letting these next-step preferences percolate.
The combination of moving to a new location every two weeks, exploring the area, giving a few talks, meeting some new people, and then moving on, makes perfect sense to me in retrospect. But even with all the pieces there, having imagined a life with all of these elements somehow yoked together, I still needed to spend some time with them. I needed to get a sense of the scope of the thing before I could amalgamate them into something meaningful, and before I could plan out something that might actually emulsify, rather than remaining a jumble of disparate ingredients.
Realizing when something needs to change, and allowing yourself to consciously acknowledge that fact, is important.
Taking your first step toward accomplishing the goal you set as your new ideal situation is also critical.
But don’t neglect that middle step of envisioning what could be—of shuffling all the pieces around, sorting them out, getting a sense of how they could work, so you can be more certain that what you’re putting together is something you truly, passionately want to make a reality.
I’m going on tour soon, and listed below are the main cities I’ll be visiting.
I’ll have some of the venues booked and tickets available for sale in the coming weeks, and alongside that main tour, I’ll also be performing at house shows, both in these cities and at other locations between them.
The dates indicate when I’ll be in each area, exploring and performing, so that should provide a rough idea of when events will be held until I have firm dates and locations locked in.
Please let me know if you want to help out in some way in one of these cities, including if you’re keen to host a house show somewhere along my travel route (or if you want to learn more about what that entails).
• St. Louis / Sept 1-Sept 14
• Chicago / Sept 15-Sep 30
• Detroit / Oct 1-Oct 14
• Toronto / Oct 15-Oct 31
• New York City / Nov 1-Nov 14
• Washington DC / Nov 15-Nov 30
• Atlanta / Dec 1-Dec 14
• Jacksonville / Dec 15-Dec 31
• New Orleans / Jan 1-Jan 14
• Austin / Jan 15-Jan 31
• Dallas / Feb 1-Feb 14
• Phoenix / Feb 15-Feb 28
• Los Angeles / Mar 1-Mar 14
• San Francisco / Mar 15-Mar 31
• Salt Lake City / Apr 1-Apr 14
• Portland / Apr 15-Apr 30
• Seattle / May 1-May 14
• Vancouver / May 15-May 31
• Edmonton / Jun 1-Jun 14
• Fargo / Jun 15-Jun 30
• Minneapolis / Jul 1-Jul 14
• Des Moines / Jul 15-Jul 31
• Denver / Aug 1-Aug 14
• Albuquerque / Aug 15-Aug 31
More details can be found at BecomingTour.com.
I could not be more excited about this.
A huge thanks to everyone who’s been reading and listening to my work—I can’t wait to share more stories and ideas, and meet more of you in person :)