Nine years. Then nothing.
I spent nine years in ministry — starting as a junior in college, then full-time after graduation. I built Phi Slam from a 250-person non-alcoholic dance party on the University of Georgia campus into a grassroots movement with 3,000 people coming to events. It became a 501(c)3. I hired staff. I gave everything I had to it.
And somewhere along the way, without noticing it happening, I burned out completely.
Burnout sounds manageable until you're actually in it. There are stages. Worn out means you come back from a vacation refreshed. Burned out means you never want to do it again. But there's a third one nobody talks about: loss of identity. That's when the things you used to enjoy don't work anymore. When you have to literally write lists of things you enjoy because you genuinely can't remember. When the person you were before doesn't quite fit anymore.
That's where I was at 29.
Phi Slam · Athens, GA · 3,000 people
"I had to write lists of things I enjoyed because I genuinely couldn't remember anymore."
The summers I tried to rest didn't help. A Holy Land trip with a pastor who had no compassion for someone who needed care. Alaska with a bad IT band. A family vacation that ended with an IRS letter revoking our 501(c)3. And then the hardest one — realizing I'd accidentally burned out my best friend by putting him in the same environment that had broken me.
I entered the summer of 2012 emptier than I'd ever been. But I had a trip planned. And I went anyway.
7,985 miles. 40 days.
A convertible I didn't book.
I'd spent the previous semester sitting alone in a quiet campus building, spending hours researching. Not working. Not producing. Just looking at photos on Nat Geo, reading strangers' blogs, using the National Park app. It was the first thing in years that had felt like genuine rest. I probably put in 100 hours planning the trip.
When I showed up at the rental car counter in LA, they didn't have the economy car I'd booked. "All we have left is a convertible," they said. I told them they'd guaranteed my price. They said no problem. I drove 7,985 miles with the top down almost the entire way. Eleven national parks. Nine states.
My brother joined for a leg through the Pacific Northwest and up into Canada. My childhood best friend flew in for the desert stretch through Utah and the Grand Canyon. Both legs were some of the best days of the trip — but so were the solo stretches. There's something about being alone in a landscape that big that forces a kind of honesty you can avoid everywhere else.
Was there one moment where everything clicked? Not really. It was more gradual than that. Consecutive days of doing exactly what I wanted with nobody else's agenda. For the first time in years I was actually able to enjoy something — fully, completely, without turning it into something productive.
By the time I got back to LA, I wasn't fixed. But something had cracked open. The life I'd been living didn't fit anymore. And I knew — though I couldn't have said it yet — that the West was where I needed to be.
Peyto Lake, Banff · Summer 2012 · with my brother
"It ruined me, in the best possible way. I've been chasing that feeling ever since."
Off the map.
Eight months in New Zealand.
In 2014, I finally got out of ministry. New phone number. Different hemisphere. I moved to New Zealand with almost no plan and no expectations, which turned out to be exactly right.
It was the best time of my life. Not because anything dramatic happened — actually the opposite. I simplified. I relaxed. I rediscovered golf, my childhood obsession. I explored the South Island like it was my job, which in a way it was. I hiked. I breathed. I started remembering who I'd been before I got so lost.
New Zealand is what restored me. The West Circle trip cracked me open. New Zealand put me back together. Jackson Hole is where I landed when I figured out what I actually wanted my life to look like.
Lake Wakatipu · Glenorchy, New Zealand · 2014
The long way back.
Coming back from New Zealand wasn't easy. I tried Denver — five months, no job, no traction. I moved back to Atlanta and in with my parents for the first time since high school. I was 31. Over a three-month stretch: one of my ministry guys died. My parents told me they were getting a divorce. My dad was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
I was selling residential real estate, hated it, but loved the relationships I built along the way. My best financial year. None of the metrics added up to anything that mattered.
Then one Sunday in church, a question surfaced that I'd never asked myself quite that way before: if I couldn't fail, what would I do? The answer came in that same moment — not gradually, not after deliberation. Move out west. I didn't know what job I'd get. I didn't know what it would look like. I just knew the West had changed me in 2012 and that's where my next chapter was.
Three weeks later, I packed everything I owned into my two-door Jeep Wrangler and drove west.
Grand Teton National Park · Jackson Hole
"If I couldn't fail, what would I do? The answer came in the same moment."
Seven years in Jackson and I'm still not over it. I manage a property, get outside and explore the mountains 3–4 days a week, have a great community and church, and travel internationally a couple times a year. I've visited 39 countries and 44 U.S. states. I've got a few more to go. I'm not in a hurry.