Good Life Project - Jedidiah Jenkins: Living a Life of Intention and Adventure.

Episode Date: October 30, 2017

Jedidiah Jenkins is a storyteller, adventurer and powerful advocate for intentional living.Leaving behind his training in law to tap a lifelong gift for storytelling and a deep heart of service, Jedidiah joined the team at Invisible Children. They would eventually launch the KONY 2012 campaign, producing a video that went massively viral with more than 100-million views in the first week. This both shined the light on a nation in dire need, but also brought on a fierce backlash that led to a lot of pain and self-exploration.As he neared his 30th birthday, Jedidiah started feeling called to commit to a powerful personal quest. So, he made the frightening decision to leave a job he loved to pursue an untested dream: bicycling to Patagonia and writing a book about it. From the cartels of Mexico, to the mega-churches of the US, to the Amazon in Bolivia, he has seen some crazy things.In this week's episode, we explore his epic journey, and the adventures still yet to come.Rockstar Sponsors:RXBAR Kids is a snack bar made with high-quality, real ingredients designed specifically for kids. It contains 7 grams of protein and has zero added sugar and no gluten, soy or dairy. Find at Target stores OR for 25% off your first order, visit RXBAR.com/goodlife.Are you hiring? Do you know where to post your job to find the best candidates? Unlike other job sites, ZipRecruiter doesn’t depend on candidates finding you; it finds them. And right now, GLP listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for FREE, That’s right. FREE! Just go to ZipRecruiter.com/good.Audible has the best audiobook performances, the largest library, and the most exclusive content. Learn more, start your 30-day trial and get your first Audible book free, go to Audible.com/goodlife. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you are going to prioritize money over your day-to-day sanity, even for a season, you're playing with fire because that thing inside you that needs release coils up and then makes you angry inside and then you have all this money so you start buying more things to satiate that requires maintenance and so you are slipping down into a sand trap. Today's guest is Jedediah Jenkins. So he started out life in Nashville, ended up somehow going to film school and studying writing, well actually going to school and studying film and writing, and then made this really interesting turn to head into law, and then went into the world of nonprofits, where he became part of one of the biggest sort of viral movements on the internet that made a massive splash and then also turned dark really quickly. From there,

he then mounted a bicycle adventure that took him from Portland all the way down to the southern end of South America. Does that sound like a lot for a guy who's in his mid-30s? Well, it's a lot for anybody. And in today's conversation, we dive into all of these different stops along the way, why he made those stops, what were the motivation behind it, what he discovered and how each one of these different things changed him. Really excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot.

Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10,

available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. When you're listening to something, you could be kissing your boyfriend for the first time you could be seeing hawaii for the first time you could be driving down the road on your way to your grandmother's funeral and hearing a song so you're consuming art in the context of doing something else and so that art is then layered on top of that emotion and so then for the rest of your life when you hear that song, that Bon Iver song, you're going to be like, oh my gosh,

and you're going to feel that again. And that's pretty unique to music. And so for me, when I listen to podcasts and I learn, it's often when I'm driving around LA or driving somewhere. And so I'll learn something new. And if I think about the intersection of Fairfax and Third, it'll bring back the housing crisis of 2008. Because that's where I learned it, and my brain freezes everything that I'm around into that spot. It's very interesting. Yeah, no, it totally makes sense to me because I anchor so much audio to moments of life. And if I hear like a song on the radio or Spotify, it's like, yeah, it will, in the blink of an eye, it brings me right back there. And yeah, because it's sort of this semi, it's like

passive and not entirely passive. It is different than any other form of media because you can be doing something else. So we kind of just jumped right in. I'm feeling you and I could, let's kind of like get a bit of a meta lens because you've, you have this really interesting sort of like series of journeys and seasons and what you're doing. You know, as we sit here today, we're hanging out, we're on a couch in a little bungalow in Encinitas, living in LA. You grew up in Nashville, which

I've never been actually. I'm going for my first time in just a couple months. It's amazing. Good memories from there? Oh my gosh, yes. Grew up on a farm. It's just the best big city, small town. And it's built on the arts and music and country music. So there's just like a gritty, cheesy, rhinestone-y history there, which like helps the city not take itself too seriously. I love it. It's becoming a real foodie town now also, isn't it? Like big time from what I hear. Oh yeah. Amazing restaurants, amazing coffee, amazing cocktails,

which is my three favorite things. All together forever. It's like putting in blender and hit spin. Did you split when you went to college? Yeah. I left Nashville for college at USC, University of Southern California. Studied English and minored in cinema. Yeah. How come? What was the motivation behind those two things? I mean, all through high school, all through middle school, my dream was to be a movie director. Like my idol was James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, that world, Robert Zemeckis, my idols. And then I got there and I took some film production classes freshman year and I hated it. And that was so eye-opening to me because I had just like everyone back in Nashville was like,

Chad's going to go off and be the next Steven Spielberg. We're so excited. And then I just suddenly get there and I'm like, Oh, this is not what I thought it was. I thought being a director was so creative and free, but it's actually a lot of people management and like running a company of 200 people, you know, like, and I was like, that is, and being very like knowing technical things and i was just

like that is that was when i had to go through the hard excavation of oh i misplaced my goal i thought i wanted this thing but i was wrong i like was aiming at the wrong target so what is the thing in my spirit that wanted to be a director like what's the deeper thing deeper thing? Yeah, like, what was it that you thought you would be doing that made you want to do it? And so then, like, through the whole, I mean, that took years to figure out, but it was ultimately, oh, I actually always just wanted to be a storyteller.

So that's when I discovered I wanted to be a writer. But years later, I was just like, oh, shoot, I don't know what I'm going to be now. And that confusion led me to law school. Right, you make this really interesting left turn. like, oh shoot, I don't know what I'm going to be now. And that confusion led me to law school. Right. You make this really interesting left turn. Well, because I was so creative, right-brained, and I was like, I have zero skills. I can write a poem really well or whatever, but I can't. And I just remember being like, wow, what if I trained my right and left brain? I could become employable and

pretty powerful in terms of what I have the ability to do, like build a skill set and a toolbox. So I was like, my dad's really pushing me to go to law school because he sees me as an unemployed writer forever, and maybe I should. Yeah. Which is interesting also, because your dad did not exactly live the traditional mainstream trajectory. So it's interesting that he would have that aspiration for you. Well, you know, I think he also saw a lot of success because my dad's a writer. So is my mom. And a lot of success in the arts is luck, is talent and luck. And so he knew I had the talent, but as a parent, they both were like, you can't control luck. So you need a backup plan. And both of my parents to this day are really supported through real estate. They

made some money from the books they wrote in the 70s and 80s and then that money went away and if they hadn't invested in like land you know like a farm and a few rental houses then they would be broke right completely broke right now and so they see in their older age of just like the arts are beautiful and they like we were very very lucky. We were on the cover of National Geographic. We sold a lot of books, but then we were, we had our 15 minutes of fame and then it kind of floated away. And if we hadn't made prudent business decisions, we wouldn't have been able to support our family. So I can see how they have a complex relationship with risk. So they're like, yes, go do, live, whatever.

But we would love for you to have a plan B, which is also counterintuitive to the American idea of risk it all, burn everything, run into the woods, and believe in it 100% you're going to get it, which is the very romantic story that we hear all these success stories. But obviously, you don't hear the failure stories. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's selection bias there. It's like everyone wants to interview the people that have like the one percent of, you know, one tenth of one percent of the people that have somehow as outliers made it to this

place and use them as the examples of what's possible. Right. But we all have an aunt and uncle or a cousin who's just like, Billy is a loser. Like he should have got a job and he's over there just trying to be a singer and he's terrible. But it's a really tough thing though, right? And I've had this conversation a lot recently

with different people. I'm a big believer in the possibility of blended careers also in that, there's the aspiration, if you're one of those people where you can take the thing that lights you know, there's the aspiration. If you're one of those people where you can take the thing that lights you up and you can make enough money to be very comfortable and feel good. Awesome. That's great. You know, but like you were saying the idea of having a, you know, like a work a day mainstream job where it's okay, it's not horrible,

but it's not awesome, but it like totally covers you and gives you plenty of time at five to nine and on the weekends to go and do your, like your mad art, your passion work, all this stuff. I think it's completely legitimate path, which is really, I think a lot of people just really look at that and say, that's not okay. Well, I totally agree with you. And I think that's a huge problem, especially with millennials is that we were raised on follow your passion, love every day, wake up, let birds dress you and leave the house and just love life every day. And it's like, that's great. And I mean, I feel like I love life every day, but that's also a perspective. I do a lot of boring things and I do a lot of hard things. And I'm a writer,

that's my dream job. But sometimes when your dream job where you becomes your vocation, then it's actually the very thing that you love becomes the thing that shackles you down and you start to hate the thing that you always loved. There's a bit of a romance when you have a nine to five or nine to six, and then you have a passion project on the side that doesn't make you money that, you know, you do it just because you, you love it. Right. And it doesn't have to make you money. So so that's a very treacherous road to walk. And that's something I tell people where they're like, I just want to quit my job and go do my thing. And I'm like, you should do, I mean, that's amazing, especially if you have a good idea, and especially if you're good at something like that. But also know that the thing you love

becomes, it's like marrying the person you're having a crush on. It's like, you're going to find out that they have a lot of problems. And so are you ready to marry them? Because it's actually really romantic when they're just the beautiful person across the hallway. Yeah. You know, it's really funny. There's, as you're saying this, I'm thinking, I think it was Helen Fisher is one of the sort of like big researchers in love. She said, you have three marriages. Like you marry once for romance, you marry, you know, second time for family, and you marry a third time for companionship. I wonder if it's that, if there's like a similar narrative arc with passionate work,

or with like supposedly passionate work. Absolutely. I think you're really onto something. And that just rings true the moment you say it, because you start with this absolute infatuation with a thing, and then you start to build the thing maybe. And it becomes like a family and it's those like early startup days where you're doing something and everything's scary and you can't afford it and you're trying or whatever, then it gets stale and HR comes in and someone's annoyed that like someone said, you know, something and it becomes like, oh, this is so tedious. And then you have to reinvent it again. It's just like a marriage, really. There's also a thing called the four m's have you heard this of an organization or of it's the four m's and it starts with this is gendered but it doesn't have to be

it starts with a man becomes a movement then becomes a machine then becomes a monument that's like the cycle of like any big idea so it like starts with steve jobs then becomes oh it's cool to have an apple like oh all artists have macs how oh you gotta have an iphone then it becomes a machine which we're in right now which is just ruling the world and then it becomes a monument and it goes away and it's like wow remember that thing that like was such a big deal so and it's so interesting when you're in when you're in something and you recognize the stage you're in, or you're like, okay, we're a machine. How do we like teeter between machine and movement so that we feel fresh? We don't get too big because obviously we

all, our economy idolizes growth at all costs, growth, growth, growth, growth, growth, growth, which is like necessarily becomes a machine, necessarily loses the human touch, loses dynamism. And the interestingness of relational engagement in a business, it becomes like 10,000 employees and you can't really know each other, blah, blah, blah. It's just so interesting to see. Yeah, it is. And it's funny because you'll contrast like these massive companies that have gone to tens of thousands of employees and then companies like patagonia you know where fundamentally like avanchin art shows up he's like we're going to build a company where basically like if anyone wants to vanish and go on surf safari go like you know climbing in south america for six months the company is built to support that and

and it has a profoundly different culture and yet is massively successful as well. So you wonder, does it have to follow that arc or can it be really intentional? Well, I have a few friends who work there and they're really intentional. And it is a tension because they are trying to grow, but they're trying to keep their DNA. They're trying to be more sustainable than any other company. They're trying to do all these things. And so just like a marriage, when you're trying to keep the romance alive, but you're also trying to be safe because like romance is longing and wanting, and then love is safety and home. This is like what Esther Perel talks about all the time. But it's that idea of, well, how do you have both? Like the person you want and the person you have.

And that's like, businesses are like that too. How do we want to be doing something exciting, but then also have the security of a 401k and an HR department and a blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And then you see companies like Google where they have their 20% time or they create skunk works within the organization

to try and recapture that sense of possibility and novelty. You end up going to law school and graduating law school, practicing for a short amount of time before then discovering, and tell me if I'm getting the sequence wrong, I guess it was friends of yours that started this thing called Invisible People. Invisible Children. Yeah, Invisible Children, sorry. And so it was, my friends documented the abduction of child soldiers in northern Uganda and South Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo. And they made a documentary about it, and then it became a non-profit that was raising money to build schools for these kids that were in the war zone, and then also advocating in the state side for government help to capture these rebels and arrest them. And I was in law school, I was like, wow, I'm really afraid of working

in an environment that is soul crushing. Because I did that for a minute in law school and I was like, oh no, is this... it's one thing to work at a job where you feel productive and you work hard and you make good money, but you also have time to pursue other interests and have a social life and engage with like being a human. It's different when you sign up for a job that actually owns your every waking hour and they pay for it. You make a lot of money, but that is a very dangerous wager. Because if you think, if you are going to prioritize money over your day-to-day sanity, even for a season, you're playing with fire because that thing inside you that needs release coils up and then makes you angry inside

and then you have all this money so you start buying more things to satiate that requires maintenance and so you are slipping down into a sand trap and so i felt that and i was like no i would rather be poor and work at this charity and be their lawyer and like barely pay my loans off over the next 50 years, but be happy and like travel and go to Uganda and these things. And the most, so I said, I'm working with you guys. And the moment I did, I was like so fulfilled. I was so happy. I was poor. I mean, I had my bills paid. I could live, I could afford a pint of IPA. You know, I was fine. But I was so happy.

Oh, my gosh. And just doing creative and important work with people that were smart and ambitious and risky and full of heart was just so incredible. So that was like my 20s, working there. I mean, five years of my 20s. Yeah. But that didn't stay, you started as a lawyer, but pretty quickly you transitioned. That wasn't how you ended up really sort of spending your time there. I started as a lawyer and then that was when I, I mean, I studied creative writing in undergrad. And then in law school, you write a lot and you like defend positions and write memos and things. And so at Invisible Children, they would call me into like creative meetings.

They're like, oh, we're working on this documentary. We're trying to summarize this issue about like complacency or being like global citizens and what it means to live in the world that's connected now where we're all on Facebook and we can talk to each other and we can see what's happening on the other side of the world instantly. And they're like, Jed, how would you say it? And then I'd be like, well, I'd explain it this way. And they'd be like, that's it. Write that down. And that just happened so many times that they're like ultimately they called me in after working there only a year and a half and they're like jed you are fine as a lawyer but you're better at writing and articulating things so we need you to come into the art department and work with our storytelling that's just like what you're good at we can't hire because we can't find it but you we

can hire another lawyer so would you be willing to step away from that and do this? And that was a moment I was like, wow, I invested so much time, so much money into law school. And you also start to build a certain, even though it was very early, you start to build an identity around that. Yes. And I was like, am I going to, quote unquote, throw this away for this other thing that feels so good? Like when they said, you're a writer, I was like, I am? And the moment they said that, that landed on me like prophecy.

I was like, that feels so true. And so then I kind of had to do the psychological rearranging of understanding everything that you do is leading you up to the next door you walk through. Everything, every horrible moment, every happy moment, every expensive moment. And I was like, what if being trained as a lawyer taught me how to articulate myself in a way that communicates with a reader. That's what lawyers do. What if being a lawyer taught me how to think critically and how to see both sides? Because you think about my writing now, my perspective is actually a sober, positive look at the world of understanding both sides of everything and understanding the other side of every coin that's like my favorite thing

is when you have hillary's america and trump's america and i i walk around being like i don't believe in evil so i think everyone's shouting at each other like we're missing something and i'm obsessed with peeling back the layers of the onion to know what's the deeper why, what are your foundational moral truths that you're leaning on that the people can't see? Because we're all good people. We might be confused and there might be ramifications of our beliefs that hurt others, but we're just trying to do what's right, most of us. And I love that. And it's funny, if I hadn't gone to law school and studied that, I don't know if I would see the world that way. And so even though I moved away from being a traditional lawyer, I'm like, wow, the career I'm in now, the thing I love most, maybe going to law school was the exact thing that led me there.

Which is so interesting to me. So full disclosure, former lawyer also. I've practiced for about five years. And one of my favorite things to do when I left was not have to actually write like a lawyer, but I also felt it was incredibly valuable to have the training and the practice behind me to understand all the things you were just sharing. But I don't think most people would make the association of like that training was one of the critical things that allowed you to sort of see the good in everyone,

because it's almost like, I think the assumption would be, well, it kind of, you know, trains you to see, you know, how to analyze the weaknesses in everybody else and attack them. But I do agree. I think it's just, it's a set of analytical tools and experiences that you can bring to any experience. And full disclosure, I am like a chemically imbalanced optimist. I see everything as beautiful. So like, I walk up and I see a knife and I'm like, oh my gosh, I could slice butter with this, with bread. I could like carve art out of wood where someone else would be like, I could kill hundreds of people with this. This is perfect. So we're looking at the same thing. Right. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous

generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him.

We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. So how often do you think about your socks? Well, if you're like I used to be, probably not much. But I recently discovered socks that completely changed the way I'll think about socks forever. They're called Bombas. Now, I've never been a forever. They're called Bombas. Now,

I've never been a sock person until I discovered Bombas. They're so incredibly comfortable that I literally started wearing shoes more just so I had an excuse to wear my Bombas socks. I wear them to work out. I wear them on stage. I wear them around town, even just hanging out, watching TV. And every pair comes with a built-in blister tab, innovative, flexible arch support, stay up technology, and a seamless toe. And this is really cool. For every Bombas purchase you make, Bombas donates a pair to someone in need.

So buy one pair or four at bombas.com slash goodlife today and get 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash good life for 20% off. Bombas.com slash good life. Okay, so then how do you square that lens? Because when you're at Invisible Children, you're doing incredibly powerful work. And at the same time, this is, a lot of people may not know the organization, but a lot of people know the thing that kind of

blew them into the public's awareness, Kony 2012, this massive viral video, which positions one person as essentially the heart of evil. How do you work in this context and sort of get behind that message with your wiring? Well, that was philosophically hard for me. I wrote that movie with my friend Danica. So we wrote that in there. And it was kind of a combination of understanding the emotional trigger of most people is a bad guy. Every classic story has a villain like now in modern cinema villains are more complex but in classic disney movies all the way whatever it's villains and and so i was like it's very emotionally true that this man is if there is a villain on earth it's him now if we want to talk what was his psychological trauma as a child?

Is he mentally damaged where he does, he's a sociopath and can't experience empathy. And therefore, does he actually believe he's the Messiah and he's saving, like sacrificing lives is important. I mean, just like ISIL or what, I mean, there's, but the power of belief is an incredible thing, especially when you believe what you're doing is important. So telling the story of Joseph Coney as a true villain was philosophically complex for me. And we got pushback from some of our mentors and just being like, this is, this is going to damage people because it makes them believe there's evil in

the world. And that's philosophically lazy and you know real empathy would look and see and that was just the kind of thing where it's like well we're not advocating to kill him we want to arrest him like the loving thing to do is to arrest him and put him on trial and like stop him from doing like not believing that there's evil in the world doesn't necessarily mean i don't believe that there are that bad things happen that hurt and cause pain and suffering of course hello of course and we want to mitigate and stop that so if someone is out there kidnapping people we should stop them from doing that with every thing we have in our arsenal. And I'm sure that we evolved to believe in evil because it helps simplify the emotion of how we feel about someone hurting us.

But I don't actually think they're being puppeted by some spirit of darkness. I just think they're damaged and their brain sees the world differently. and we should stop them from doing that. In the same way that if a stick gets caught in your bike spoke, and you can't, and it doesn't work, the stick isn't evil, it's just not helpful, and it needs to be removed. And so you remove it. You don't have to hate the stick even.

You can be like, here little stick, you go over here now, you're in the wrong place, and you're doing something that's detrimental to the functioning of the system. So we need to stop that. That's like how, I mean, that's a whole nother philosophical conversation. But so that was something I learned through chasing Joseph Kony for five years. And for those just sort of to give that context also, so, you know, like something like a hundred million views in a week or something like that, I'm sure so much after that. But for those who may not have seen it, just we're talking about essentially- A rebel leader that in the 80s rose to power trying to overthrow the government of Uganda. He actually had a legitimate rebellion, and then they turned on him. He became hyper-spiritual,

believing that he was sent by God and the voice of God. And when his army defected from him, he figured out that if I abduct eight, nine, ten-year-old children from their homes, they are programmable because they're so young. So if I have them kill their brother or sister, they become so traumatized and so fearful they'll do anything I say. So he built an army of child soldiers moving from place to place, hiding in the jungles of Congo and Central African Republic, just continuing his rampage until he can build an army big enough to overthrow his rightful region. So he's just truly a monster in terms of what he does and what he has done. And when we were looking at the issue

of, I mean, this was a personal story to my friends. They saw this with their own eyes. But then as we were building a campaign around it here in the US, we were like, international justice, international intervention is complex and messy. We all know this to be true when we look at the history of the United States. But as the world becomes more of one cohesive unit where we feel each other's pain and we see, and Africa doesn't seem so far away, maybe let's start with the most obvious thing, and then we can work back as things get more complicated. So how about we stop this guy from abducting children and causing them to murder their parents? Like that's maybe something we can all agree on. And that was kind of the crux of making Coney 2012. And it was so, it was a huge conversation and it had so many supporters.

And then when anything becomes that public, it has people criticizing it and thinking it's too simplistic and wrongheaded. And it's promoting military intervention, which newsflash, it was. Like, hi, that's what we wanted, was the military to go in and save these kids, as we would want the police to go in and break into a house that was like held hostage and so yeah it was it was very complex it was hard on all of us but it's important yeah because because that i remember it was like there were two waves with that you know one was

wow this is an incredible phenomenon and like shining a light on this terrible thing and then it was like it flipped in the blink of an eye it felt like from the i can't imagine i mean this is from me who like no idea you existed back then like looking at it from the outside in seeing how it flipped and all of a sudden public opinion is like wow powerful get behind it too who are these guys are they scammers are they like you know like who's really behind this like what's their real agenda and trying to like find the people who are behind it and go into their backgrounds and take them down. Can we find any dirt on them? of the company like went straight up biblically tolstoy level insane running through the streets naked in a straight jacket tied to a thing for a week in like intensive care over like the the mental break for months over having feeling like the whole world was trying to take him down destroy

his marriage call him a liar when he'd spent a decade of his life almost getting a divorce because he's so dedicated to this cause that his wife is like, we have two kids. You can't work all the time. And he's like, I'm trying to end a war. And she's like, me too, but we have a family. And so imagine sacrificing so much to try to end this war, and you're practically living only on cereal and bologna because you're just trying to do it. And then you suddenly see, oh my gosh, the whole world's talking about this thing. Finally, I've given a decade of my life in sweat, blood, and tears. And then all of a sudden, they turn on you and say, you're a scammer.

Imagine that. And it actually broke his brain. I thought forever, but thank God he was back and right as rain. But still like six months later, that's a long time. I thought I'd lost my friend. What's going through as you're navigating that window of time? What's going on in your head, in your heart? It was very hard. It was very sad. But I, as an optimist, I also, you know, in a car, when it has a governor in the engine and it can't go over 90, like if you're going too fast, it'll rev down. My brain has that. I can't get worked up. I'm not capable of it, really. As soon as my heart starts to race,. As soon as my heart starts to race

and as soon as my brain starts to race, something happens and I chill out. And I just think clearly. And I don't know, this is not something I learned. I can't teach anybody how to do it. I don't even know if it's good. But I was built for crisis. And so I become very philosophical and

very analytical and very big picture when things get crazy. I'm like, you know, in the scope of human history, we're going to be okay. We still, you know, we're doing something important. Every pendulum swings, you know, all these things. And so i became a source of calm i think with it for invisible children in that season and i would like give a lot of speeches and talks to our interns and staff because they were like crying all the time as understandably that's just the truth and that's part of like my writing is very sober in that sense. I just like love thinking about the phenomenon and magic of being alive and how unlikely that is and how insane. And like that big picture thinking is insulating from panic and anxiety, at least in my life.

It's an amazing skill to have, but it sounds like it's not so much a skill. It's part of your DNA, which is unusual and extraordinary. Your move after that was really interesting. You decided, okay, so from there, I'm going to take a year and a half and travel from Portland down to the bottom of South America by bike. Mostly by bike. Sometimes I had to hitchhike and bus when my bike was being not friendly. What was the thing that triggered that? Well, what triggered it was like a confluence of things in my life. One, loving Invisible Children, loving the work I was doing there, but also being a millennial and being raised on have no regrets and do the thing you love. And I was like,

especially doing writing for invisible children. I was like, I really, really, really want to write a book. Like I want to be a writer. I want to be Henry Miller. I want to be Donald Miller. I want to be John Steinbeck. That's actually my dream. This, this job is awesome, but I felt like I'm not married. I don't have a mortgage. I don't have all these things that cost money and therefore limit my ability to do something risky. And so I was like, I'll never be younger and less attached than I am right now. And so, and I was 27 at the time, and I'd been working at Invisible Children three years. And I was like, I'm going to be 30 in three years. There's something about 27 where you feel the slide into 30. And then all of a sudden you're like, that is no shit. An adult, like your twenties or 30 is an adult.

So I can't like not know what's going on when I'm, I mean, that's the fear and the thought. So I was like, okay, I'm just going to be really intentional. And you know what? I love my job. I'm good at this job. And I'm going to take a year. I'm going to take two years off. I'm going to bike across South America and I'm going to write a memoir about it. And you know what? If it's bad, it'll be a cool story for my grandkids and I'll go back to my job and I'll, and I won't have regrets. I'll be like, you know what? If it's bad, it'll be a cool story for my grandkids and I'll go back to my job and I won't have regrets. I'll be like, you know what? Grandpa tried that and he wrote a book and it's okay, but the story's cool. You should read it. That's like, that sounds great. So I was like, I'm going to do that. It's pretty low risk. I mean, it felt low risk and sense of, I don't have to risk anyone else. And the bigger risk is not doing it and

turning 75 and being regretful that I didn't try that thing. And what if, and I'm living now, four years later, I guess I left when I was 30, but I made this decision at 27. So seven years later, I'm fully living, paying my bills as a writer in the very thing in the dream that I had, and I risked it, and it worked. So I was like, wow, I'm so glad I did that. Why? You could have chosen any number of, quote, big adventures. Why that? I said when I turn 30, I'm going to go on a big adventure. And I didn't,

it was kind of a blank in my mind. And I was working at Invisible Children in Uganda, leading some donors on a trip to see our programs. And we had hired a new guy named Andrew Morgan. And he was like the new employee. And everyone's like, oh my gosh, you got to meet Andrew. He's so cool. I go there. I meet him. And he's like, oh yeah, I just finished biking from New Jersey to Buenos Aires.

And the moment he said it, I go, you did what? And he's like, it's the best trip of my life. I did it by myself. It took me a year and a half. I followed dry season. The speed of a bike is you can stop at any moment and look around the winds in your hair. It's faster than walking, but you're not in the bubble of a car camp anywhere. And as he was talking, I was like, this is it. This is exactly what I want to do. Exactly. And so that was the moment I heard him tell me that. I was like, there it is.

And then I was like, I was originally going to start in Alaska and go all the way from Alaska to Patagonia. But then I realized with weather and timing, I would have to bike faster than I wanted to, or I would have to take a full two years because you have to be in Alaska during its summer and Patagonia during their summer. So I was like, well, no, maybe if I start lower. And then I thought, oh, my parents walked across America and finished their walk in Florence, Oregon. I'll start in Florence where they finished. I'll start. And it'll be like a legacy thing.

So you're picking up where your parents left off. And so, but what's so funny is that I actually, the going on this big adventure to write about it, I promise you, and believe me when I say this, I thought I had this whole original idea. I was like, this is such a good idea. And then my dad's like, yeah, that's exactly what your mother and I did. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm copying them exactly. But it's like, that's like the power of persuasion is that my parents were such great parents and they never told us kids that we had to do anything. They just supported what we were interested in. I mean, not that, I mean, we had rules and we had to like

go to piano practice and whatever, do good in school, but they never projected their dreams on us. They just wanted us to fulfill our own. And so by doing that, I saw that the life that they had lived, traveling, exploring, being curious about the world, being open to new ideas, that really, I looked at them and I was like, I respect that and I want to be that way. Whereas if they had told me I had to be that way, I probably would have rebelled against it. So it's funny. They like tricked me into being like them. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him.

Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, The day that you leave, like the moment that this turns from a three-year seed that's been germinating to the day that you wake up and the moment you, like, you saddle up your bike, you've got your packs, you've got everything, your feet are on the pedals and you're about to leave. What's that moment like? You know, it's like, I mean, it's very similar to the first day of college where there's so many unknowns.

It's exciting. You're like, what new friends am I going to make? Are my classes going to be hard? Like, wow, campus is so big. It's like that feeling of I've talked about this for years. I mean, before I went on the bike trip, I had been openly talking about it for almost three years, telling all my friends.

So by the time it came, I was like ready to get on that bike. I'd been like enough talk. I need to do this thing. As opposed to like making a decision to up and go like a week later where you might have panic and doubt. I was so invested in this thing. I didn't have doubt. I had fears of discomfort and fears of getting hurt and fears of just my body not being up to it because I'd been so busy dealing with Kony 2012 up to this point that I hadn't trained at all. I hadn't like ridden a bike in years. And so I was like, well, here goes nothing. So it was, I was slightly fearful, but I was just mostly excited. I was like, it's happening.

You speak something into existence. You tell your friends you're going to do it. You dream about it. You talk about it. And then it happens. That was a huge lesson for me of whenever I want to do something big that's scary, you have to talk about it. If you do it in private, if you can't tell your community about it because you're embarrassed,

it's not going to happen because it'll get hard and it'll get confusing. And then you'll be like, well, thank God I didn't tell anybody about that or else I'd be embarrassed right now. But if you push your chips in, then your community holds you to it. And what you find is your community supports you. And the things that would have been hard doing it alone, now you have a whole community of people helping you do it. And what I love about what you did also with it is you started with your own private small

community and then you decided to essentially live journal the entire adventure choosing Instagram as sort of like the place where you would do a blend of like stunning photography and deep thoughts. And so you start to build this massive public community that's building along with you and going on the adventure with you and talking with them along the way and sharing with them. And it's almost like, you know, this, you left a world behind, but now like you're building this massive world to come along with you. Yeah, that was really, really interesting. It turned the trip, instead of journaling, it was more like journalism, but like memoir journalism in the sense where when you experience

something new, but you know, you're writing back to readers at home, then it gives you a lens of like studying a thing and trying to translate it to the people back home. Like when you write a postcard to your girlfriend or your mom and you, you say like, wow, this is what Mexico city's like, because she's at home,

not looking at it. So you like try to, and so what's so interesting is even when things got hard or confusing or triumphant, because I was distilling it into a message for people who didn't know me and weren't there, it actually made it much more survivable because I was looking at it with like a, the lens of observation where, you know, like you think like war photographers are fearless there because there's like the, when you have a camera over your eye and you're running into a battlefield, you kind of forget that you're on the battlefield and being shot at. And on the bike trip, when I could have been scared,

camping in the middle of the woods in Columbia or wherever, I wasn't because I was like, oh, this is going to be such a good story. And sort of when you feel your life as a story to tell, it doesn't feel so personal. It feels like it belongs to everybody else as well. And so you don't hang on to it so tightly almost. Which can be really powerful. And at the same time, did you ever feel like there were moments where because of that dynamic,

you were more the observer and reporter than the participant? I mean, it's almost like certain bands now are actually banning mobile devices. People are missing the opportunity. They don't care if the videos get out or whatever. They just want people to be fully present and there to experience and not record and share it. Well, and I didn't take a ton of photos. I wasn't a photographer. My recording, I mean, writing is different than photography because you have to distill a thing you experienced into words. And the thing I was

reporting was my experience. So you can't not participate and then report your participation. It doesn't make sense. And so it added a flavor to the experiencing of everything just knowing that i was a storyteller and wow i'm so uncomfortable right now wow i'm so hot wow it's raining on me and i can't get out of the rain and now my hammock is full of water and i'm absolutely miserable and i could just be miserable, but I could also think, at least I get to write about this. There's something that'll come out of it. Yes. It's not meaningless. Yeah. Tell me about a moment that brought you to your knees during that trip. Well, there was discomfort in the Andes of just being like rained and snowed on

and sleeted on and freezing and having altitude headaches and altitude sickness and just wanting to quit. But the real anxiety was in Baja in Mexico, where I had just left California, left all my friends. Biking down the coast of California was like a greatest hits tour of all my favorite people. Staying with them. They're so excited. Oh my gosh, you're really doing it finally. And then all of a sudden, boom, I'm in Baja, Mexico. There is not a tree in sight. It is just God forsaken desert. No humans, almost no stores. Towns are so far apart. I don't speak Spanish. It's October, 2013. And I'm so lonely. I'm with my friend, Philip, thank God, who's an angel. And I'm thinking, whoa, I'm not going to see my friends for so long. I'm miserable. I'm not good at biking. I don't know if I have enough water to make it to the

next town. And it's October, 2013. And one year from now, it'll be October, 2014. And I'll still be on this damn bicycle. Cause I don't finish until December. So like thinking about that thought a year from now, I'll still be trapped on this trip was horrifying. And so I was like, as I biked all day, running through every scenario of like, okay, maybe I can like fake tearing my ACL or like somehow injure myself to where I can't do it. But that'll get me out of it in like a respectable way. I was like fully on the, like, how do I get out of here mode? And then what's so amazing is my parents having walked across America, like how many people have parents who can identify with that moment?

And I'm like, dad, I want to quit. And all my friends are like living this wonderful life in LA and San Diego. And they're going to forget about me. And I'm out here in the desert and this sucks. And he was like, Jed, your body still thinks it's at home. It hasn't adjusted to life on the road. It still has expectations of, of life renting an apartment. So it takes a minute for you to overcome those expectations and the road will become home. It will become very normal and you won't be uncomfortable. I promise you that. And I was like, okay, okay. And he goes, and FYI, your friends haven't forgotten about you. They're doing the same shit. They always do. And guess what? They're jealous of you. They want to be out on an adventure. You're jealous of them. They're jealous of you. So you better live that adventure because they want to be living it. Lots of people do.

So don't wish you were somewhere else. And he goes, I walked across America for five years. When I got back to Connecticut, my friends were still sitting on the porch smoking weed, like I had never left. And they were like, were like wow dude you're already back and he was like and i met your mother and we walked for thousands of miles together and our lives are changed and we're on the cover of national geographic and they're still sitting on the porch smoking weed so he's like don't for one second think you're making a mistake and that was like so helpful yeah and unusual and unusual like who has a mom or a dad who can say that to them right i mean And that was like so helpful. Yeah. And unusual. And unusual. Like who has a mom or a dad who can say that to them?

Right. I mean, and to be able to say that to them from their own personal experience of like having been like they have lived how you're feeling in that moment, which probably also made you believe it, you know, in a way where if they were just telling you like it's all going to be better or, you know. Right. If my parents had been in traditional jobs, I mean, to have their support and something like that is extraordinary. But if they had said, you'll be fine, I might've been tempted to not believe them. I might've been tempted to say, you don't get it. You don't know

how hard this is. But I couldn't say that. They had it worse. I had an iPhone. I had podcasts to listen to in the desert. I could get on Wi-Fi in a cafe and call them on FaceTime. When my parents walked across America, they would talk to their families maybe once a week from a payphone. No one knew where they were. There was no way to know. They had paper maps. They were walking. They would walk down the wrong road. Once you habituated to the fact like this is happening, I'm in, and you start to get further into it. Did the thing that kept you going over time change? Yes and no. The thing that kept me going at first was just pride and curiosity and excitement of just like, I'm not quitting. This sucks. I'm not quitting. This sucks. But then there were certain things where I learned, like Andrew Morgan told me, that's the guy who I, who inspired my whole trip, who told me in Uganda about bicycling. He said, Jed, if you ever want to hitchhike or take a bus, if you ever want to fly home for Christmas, do it. He said, if you think you have to be some religious zealot that never does, it's like, this is your trip, no one else's.

This is your adventure. Do exactly what you want to do because you're not living anyone else's life and you'll grow bitter towards them if you try to prove something. Because he was like, I'm looking at you and I know you're not going to win the Tour de France. You're not an athlete. So you're not going to break a record here. And you're not the first person to do this. So don't try to break a record. Try to live a life you're proud of. Try to be curious and discover the world on your terms. And that was so liberating because there were times where it was too dangerous to bicycle across Mexico City, so we're going to take a bus across it. There were times where my friends were flying into Panama to meet me, and I had busted a bike, and I couldn't bike to them in time and they had spent

all this money to come meet me. So I had to bust to catch up to them, things like that, where if I had been more religious, it would have been a different experience. And so I ended up having, and then I would spend, I was like, I'm just going to stay in Bogota for two weeks. I'm going to stay in Salta, Argentina for three weeks, live with this family, and go to vacation with them, this family that I just met, and become part of their family. Because I can. And it was the best thing. So once I acclimated to, I was over my pride, and I knew that this was my life. I'm going to live this trip as I want. And I'm going to camp.

I'm going to, sometimes I'm going to stay in a hotel. I'm going to put my bike in the lobby and I'm going to stay in a hotel and have a glass of wine because I live, I slept in a ditch and under a bridge for the last three weeks. And that was so, it gave me the stamina to be a human and actually engage with the people who lived there and like, enjoy myself. Yeah. I mean, it lets you sort of like,

take the, it lets you see the tangents that are worth taking. And that lesson, I think is very transposable in life. In the think of, in the thought of, your marriage doesn't have to be like every other marriage you get to, you get to choose your job. Doesn't have to be like, just because people say, when you're a lawyer, you do this, this, this, this, and this, just because when people say, when you start a business, you have to do this, you have to hire a PR company. You have to go that you have to get a website just like this. And you're like, this is my business. I'm only going to do social media. And instead of charging this, I'm going to charge this because I think it's worth it. And you get to decide. And I think that's so liberating to like, understand that expectations are a framework to get you started, but then you get to decide what's next.

And that's what I did with my trip, and it made it the best thing ever. Yeah. Where did you end? I ended the bicycle trip in El Chalten, which is Mount Fitzroy. But I finished my whole trip in Torres del Paine, the park, hiking with my mom and two friends. Which is like, I mean, Patagonia is huge. It was absolutely incredible.

The hiking trip with my mom, she hiked like 12 miles with me up this mountain, and it was very difficult, and I was so inspired, and she's 67 at the time. And that is the end of my book. Like, my book about this bike trip like that moment was so revelatory to me just like with my mom and just you know my whole life and my relationship with my mom has been tumultuous and amazing so it was just the most incredible way to end the trip and and torres del paine i don't know if anyone listening has seen what it looks like, but I encourage you to Google it. It is the most dramatic mountains you have ever seen, the strangest shapes.

I always say it looks like God was in a hurry and using really big tools and just throwing things together. They're not smooth. There's nothing. It's like chaos, And it's so cool. And to hike around there with my family and friends, my mom and two friends, was just the perfect ending. And then I finished December 22nd. I finished on my 32nd birthday. December 19th was that hike.

We flew home the 22nd. Flew home to my family. And Christmas in Tennessee, a tender Tennessee Christmas. It was like, lovely. When you finally made it back to LA, was your dad's prophecy right? Yes. My friends, they were like, you're already done. I feel like you just left. And I'm like, I have lived a thousand lives since I saw you last. I can't believe it. And that was also my theory of like, I really wanted to go on this trip because I was like, I feel myself getting older. I want to do something that shakes me awake. That is unusual because I wanted to feel surprised by life again, like you are when a kid. And that's why time moves

so slowly because I felt my life slipping to where like, oh no, I blink and how am I already 30? I blink. And the experiment worked like that year and a half felt like, honestly, a decade. And then I came back and my friends were like, I haven't even unpacked from moving into my new apartment yet. And I was like, what? Did it change the way that you related to them at all? Or they related to you? No, because I had seen a lot of things and I had changed internally, but I didn't even know how I changed. The outer side of me was very similar. I mean, I have a very defined personality. I've been intense agnosticism. I went through all these different seasons, but I was still always the same Jed. I just might've like had different conversations, but I was the same person. So even living on a bicycle by myself in Patagonia, sleeping on a riverbed, I would like go to the fruit stand the next day and be the same person. I just was like a lot going on in my head.

But so, no, I didn't relate differently. And I surround myself with people who are travelers and who are curious explorers. So it's not like I came home to a bunch of hometown people who have never left and they don't understand me. my friends, my community understands me. And they are similar in that sense. So I came home to kindred spirits. And that's part of why I don't feel alone in this world. And a lot of people with wandering hearts and wanderlust do, because they're like, everyone around me is so content and I'm not. But I live in a community of people who are very curious about life and about living it to the fullest and this then basically opened the door for you to really embrace the writer's life more

fully upon arriving home and it gave you you know a lot of source material so you start working on a book and I start working on a book and you know and I think it's going to be a novel at first based on my trip because I wanted really to have a lot of license to say whatever I wanted. And I didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings. But then over time and through the advice of my agent and ultimately my editors, they were like, Jed, your voice is so unique to you. People want you to say it. They don't want a character. They actually, because of your Instagram and your writing and the way that you're public with your thoughts.

Yeah. They're connected to you as a person. Not just a story. And so you'll be losing something if you don't tell the truth. I remember feeling so afraid to tell the truth about anything to some degree. Afraid of what? Afraid of my mom believes that being homosexual is sinful and might lead to live a life in hell and will definitely lead to AIDS. She believes that. And to talk about that openly is kind of throwing her under the bus to a lot of people. Whereas she's the greatest mom ever, and I'm obsessed with her.

But that's just the truth of what she believes to some degree. And so when I lay that bare in public, all of a sudden I'm putting her and our private relationship in a place where people have opinions about her. That's not fair. Well, maybe it is fair because it just is true, but you know, that's scary. And so the, the, the road I've had to navigate stepping into that space, especially writing my book, which is very honest and very open is that I actually felt a lot of Liberty reading

this thing about Jack Kerouac. It was the intro to one of his books and it said, Jack Kerouac writes about a lot of kooky characters. I believe it was his book, big sir. And the literary professor, whoever was writing the intro said, Jack Kerouac writes about a lot of kooky characters,

a lot of morally ambiguous or morally questionable people. But they said, Jack Kerouac writes about a lot of kooky characters, a lot of morally ambiguous or morally questionable people. But they said, but you'll notice he never has a mean thing to say about anybody. He just liked everybody, even if they were like crazy people. You felt a loving look from his voice. And I was like, I'm like that. I like everybody. I love my mother. I think she's hilarious, super smart, super convicted, loves God, so strong in her convictions and so loving. I'm like, just because we have a different perspective about things doesn't mean that she's bad. She just has a perspective that's different than mine. And so I was like, I'm just going to paint her the way I see her, which is this amazing woman who deserves love. And we just disagree on some things. And that's caused me pain in my life, but not at the expense of my love of her. I've always known she loved me first and foremost. And I felt that even in her cautions and fears and challenges of me and her beliefs and things that I believe are manifestly untrue. I think especially in the world we live

in now, being able to hold love for someone and knowledge that they believe something very different than you is being lost. And that is something to be cultivated. And so I am hoping that my book does that. Yeah. No, I think that's if holding that duality, if we can figure that out even a little bit now, I think it's powerful and needed in this moment in our history.

This feels like a good place to sort of come full circle. So as we hang out here in our little cottage in Encinitas, California, with the planes buzzing by and various other things. So the name of this is Good Life Project. So if I offer that phrase out to you, to live a good life, what comes up? I love that question because it offers itself to broad answers. And I love the thought of, because I think so much of these good life conversations are like, oh, you need to follow your passion. You need to quit your day job and go to blah, blah, blah. And it's like we were saying earlier, I think the ingredients to living a good life are enriching community, productive work, maybe that's it, and play. And that maybe goes into enriching community, but like having a community of people, whether it's

your family, hopefully it's more than your family, it's and friends, where you respect them, you respect their ideas, you respect the way they live their life. They respect you. You're sharpening each other. You're talking about things that matter. You're having fun together. You're exploring the world together. Like that is so key to a good life and then productive work. And what I mean by that is doing something where you feel that what you do makes a difference. That could mean being a barista. And you know that like your regulars come in and when you know their order before they get there and they give you that smile of feeling known in their community. And you're like, I make a community. You know, when people think about, I love living in this town, they

know that because I am their barista. And I know that his name is Jim and he wants a whatever, a tall white every morning. And that's so cool. And so if you feel a sense of belonging and a sense of purpose, however that manifests, that is such a good life. And I think that's why there's a lot of people in jobs where they're paper shufflers or they're doing things in a huge machine where they can't feel the product of their hands. You know, we want to shape something with our hands and then hold it and say, I made this. We want to have projects where we make something and then we see the thing that's made. And when you work in an environment where you can't see the thing you're making, I think you psychologically lose something. And so you're like, what am I even doing here?

And that's where finding ways to feel productive in your work, I think is so important. I don't know what that is because I'm just literally living my one and only life trying to do whatever I'm doing every day. But that's what I've observed. The people who feel like they are productive and positive are happy. And I've seen people who are very productive, very successful, and they sacrifice community and play for success, and they are miserable. and they are killing it in their job. They look amazing on social media. They are traveling the world. They look so amazing. And then they say, I'm so lonely. I have no one to talk to. Everyone thinks I'm out here having fun. So no one texts me. I never get invited to anything because they think I'm not in town.

And so I sit at home alone most of the time, crafting my next Instagram post. And I'm like, oh no, you need to change that. And you first need to be honest with people. That's my long-winded answer. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If the stories and ideas in any way moved you, I would so appreciate if you would take just a few extra seconds for two quick things.

One, if it's touched you in some way, if there's some idea or moment in the story or in the conversation that you really feel like you would share with somebody else, that it would make a difference in somebody else's lives, Take a moment and whatever app you're using, just share this episode with somebody who you think it'll make a difference for. Email it if that's the easiest thing, whatever is easiest for you. And then of course, if you're compelled, subscribe so that you can stay a part of this continuing experience. My greatest hope with this podcast is not just to produce moments and share stories and ideas that impact one person listening, but to let it create a conversation, to let it serve as a catalyst for the elevation of all of us together collectively, because that's how we rise. When stories and ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change happens. And I would love to invite you to participate

on that level. Thank you so much as always for your intention, for your attention, for your heart. And I wish you only the best. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.