So here goes. A little background on myself first. I hate writing. So much that I probably haven’t written anything significant since I was forced to in high school (my university engineering curriculum at Michigan spared me from needing to string together non-numerical sentences). So why am I doing this? Good question. I haven’t quite figured that one out yet, but it’s something along the lines of “I want to get better at organizing the whirlwind of thoughts and ideas I have about how to improve the minds of myself and others.”

But before we get into that in future posts, it will probably help for some of you to have some context on me as a human, and what my current life situation looks like.

Inevitable questions arise in conversation when you mention you just left your cushy tech job with three fresh cooked meals a day and regular massages in order to wander incomeless and homeless around several third world countries for several months with the goal to come back and start a business with no obvious route to financial success. One of these questions is: uh, why?

To answer that, let’s rewind back to childhood for a brief moment. When I was a young lad prowling the suburban streets of Connecticut, there was one activity that I always took relish in. Hopping fences. Whenever the frisbee caught a rogue updraft and was lofted into the neighbor’s yard, you could count on me to swiftly volunteer to retrieve it. Some primeval itch was scratched deep inside me every time I worked out a way to cross over a barrier intended to keep people out.

Which brings me to one of the oldest proverbs I’ve ever heard: “the grass is always greener on the other side.” Similar phrases arose independently in various cultures, and everyone understands the gist of not envying the situations of others, because if you put their shoes on for a bit, you might look back over to the previous side and miss what you used to have.

Now while I’m all about not unnecessarily comparing yourself to other people, I think the rest it stands for is bullshit. How are you supposed to know that the grass isn’t greener on the other side unless you vault the fence and roll around in it for a bit? You can always hop back, and even if you do, your mental database containing a map of yard plots to grass color has one more entry that it wouldn’t have otherwise.

That was a roundabout way for me to say that I’m taking this somewhat unconventional turn in life because there are a few fences with some unknown grass colors on the other side that I’ve been meaning to check out. While I’ve been peeking through the slats for a number of years now, I haven’t bothered to make the climb because of a fairly simple reason: comfort.

When everything is going your way in life, it’s pretty tempting to become complacent. I’ve always been a big believer in what most people call “expanding your comfort zone.” The only example I need to prove this is the fact that I spent several months sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor of my childhood bedroom an arm’s length away from a perfectly functional mattress because I didn’t want to get used to being too comfortable at night (fun fact #2: to this day I prefer sleeping in a hammock strung wall-to-wall right next to my full sized bed).

But isn’t the point of life to make more money to buy more things to make you more comfortable? A surprising percentage of the American middle class certainly thinks so whether or not they’d be able to admit it.

Now don’t get me wrong. Despite my Seneca-esc disdain of sustained physical comfort, I’ve been caught in the rat race my entire life (my New England upbringing made sure of it). But I actually don’t think there’s anything wrong with the activities themselves that comprise the rat race. What I believe could use improvement is A) greater awareness that the rat race exists and can be problematic, and B) a more widespread understanding that there are other ways to live life.

So now the true reason for the shifting of my sails should be clear. My last few years frollicking through the kaleidoscopic streets of San Francisco have had an effect on my thinking. I’ve made good progress for myself on Part A mentioned above, and now it’s time to personally explore Part B. I’ve gone from a salmon-colored pant wearing hockey player to a meditating, Chaco sandal wearing, surfer in a relatively short period. And in the process, I’ve been looking through the slats into the yard next door trying to get a glimpse of what it might look like to actually turn a newfound passion into what I spend the majority of my waking hours doing.

That’s it. That’s why I’m going to attempt a transition from leading teams of engineers building software for the US Special Operations Forces to creating a community-based retreat center in the woods somewhere. That’s why I’ll be giving up starting each day with wild hen eggs cooked to perfection to eat alms and bland porridge for weeks at a time in a jungle-encased monastery. Because I found out that I really enjoy teaching people to better understand their minds, so I’m going to take a crack at turning it into my life.

To be clear, I’m not claiming that this radical sounding shift is the best possible decision for me, or that everyone should try turning their life upside down from time to time. All I’m saying is that I believe one fulfilling way to live life is to be curious about the color of grass. It’s likely not the only way, but it’s been working for me up until now, so let’s see how far I can take it. I may not actually like the color of the grass where I’m headed, but rather than searching for a picture of it on the internet or taking someone else’s word for it, at the very least I’ll know what it looks like for myself.