Welcome to Worldly Warrior! My name is David and in the spring of 2017 I decided to leave my stable and well-paying desk job in oil & gas. It wasn’t an easy decision. At the ripening age of 35, how could I possibly leave a career that gave me a high standard of living in one of the most abundant countries in the world? My car, my condo, my clothes and all of the things I’ve collected over the years that helped define who I was and what I valued. Yet…there was the problem in itself. I started to realize that all of these things didn’t define me – they were mostly distractions from what made me an authentic and interesting person. Even worse, all of those things were intrinsically linked to a career that kept me away from the things that really mattered. I needed to swap out my shitty barometer for success with one that measured more than my bank account.

So I booked a one-way ticket to Mongolia, organized a 3 month Muay Thai training camp in Thailand, picked up a year’s worth of antimalarial meds for my nascent plans to travel through South East Asia and packed my bags. Most people thought I was crazy for leaving a career in the middle of an economic downturn, but what good is money if you’re miserable 10 hours out of each day? I know – I could just buy more things to make myself feel better! Or, I could break from that paradigm and spend that green on something that I truly value and love, focus on living a healthy life, and just maybe grow as a person through experiencing new cultures and pushing myself beyond my comfort zone.  I wasn’t getting any younger, and it was way past time that I started living with a little bit of intention rather than just getting pushed along the path of least resistance.

This is my collection of travel stories that exist to entertain, and hopefully make you laugh and smile. Maybe it can even encourage those of you sitting at your desks reading this to reconsider your options and remind you that adventures are just a few clicks, a backpack and a half-assed plan away.

Click here if you want to read more about my journey from the cubicle to the road.