Things I’d Tell My 19-Year-Old Self After Seven Years Working And Wanderlusting
By: David Liebowitz
Tags: Advice, Journaling, Autobiography, Wanderlust, Life

I remember when I was 19-years-old I saw a TED Talk whose topic was about personal growth in your 20s. The main premise of the talk was that in your 20s you expect to change, just not the rate at which you expect because it’s a lot faster than you could ever imagine. It’s the reason why people decide to get rid of tattoos in their late 20s that they got earlier in their decade or they change who they decide to surround themselves with. Your 20s are a unique time where you are old enough to know when to change and young enough to go through with them in a meaningful way.

Trying to anticipate how you would grow in your 20s is similar to The World’s Fair trying to make predictions of what the future would look like. The “what you think you would become” and “what you became” divergence is vastly different.

It’s crazy to look back at my mindset when I was 20. I was beginning to figure out who I was, take a stride in my step, and figure out what I think I wanted in life. Being young allows you to have the greatest flexibility and my priority like any young millennial was to travel.

When I was 19, I went to Brazil for the first time and it changed my life. Brazil ultimately showed me a world that could be. People with hearts as open as their arms before they go to embrace you. It was magical and deeply altered my perspective on the world and where I wanted my life to head.

I made I promise to myself and implanted an idea in my head that would be a part of my identity for years. I said to myself you will come back to Brazil and you will stay for a long period of time, completely immerse yourself with no attachments and no worries.

So, I came back from Brazil, and I started to live my life but with that idea always in my head, always idolizing the time I had in that country. I would finish my junior and senior years of college and graduate from the University of Massachusetts. Four months later I found myself taking a one-way ticket across the country from North Jersey to work at an exciting new startup called Everipedia in the one and only city of Los Angeles, California. I grinded for years there doing whatever needed to be done and even through the toughest of times I knew my coworkers were by my side to lift me up when I needed them.

The first year in LA was the hardest. New job. New city. I was just trying to get accumulated with myself and my surroundings. Hell, I was living in a situation of what could be considered to be a crossover of The Facebook Movie and Fight Club, sleeping on a bunkbed and thinking to myself “well, this is my life now, better get used to it.” I didn’t know where we were heading, but I knew deep down in my heart that the destination would be worth it. The second-year I started to hit my stride more. For the first time, I began to meet more people in LA and make new friends outside of work. I discovered the awesome electronic music scene LA had to offer, and the startup I worked for made the news for having the raise it was always destined to have to build a blockchain encyclopedia and knowledge ecosystem

My third year in LA had to have been my favorite. Living with two of my best friends in Santa Monica a short walk away from the beach. I remember walking out the door every morning to walk to work and pinch myself because it felt like I was dreaming, walking down the palm tree-lined streets like they were out of a postcard. Santa Monica, California. It’s one of the most iconic places on earth where people all over the world come to witness the pier that they have seen in movies and it was in my backyard. It was in my third year that I really started taking more responsibility at work and my social life was blossoming, for what it felt like for the first time in my life I become truly comfortable with my identity and who I was.

Not too shabby

Yet, with so many positives going on in my life, I always had Brazil in the back of my head. Even as I established myself and dug my roots further in the city that I started to really enjoy my time in, that “what if I just dropped it all and moved there” was still in the back of my head. Why couldn’t I just work remotely in paradise? I even said to myself before I moved to LA in 2016 “work 4 years here, establish your career, then go” and that idea was burned into my head like I was in Inception and Leonardo DiCaprio hacked my mind and spun his totem in the deepest part of my unconscious. I wouldn’t acknowledge it fully then, but this idea would go on and drastically affect many relationships in my life. I would never fully commit to relationships because in the back of my head I knew I would be leaving, why would I commit?

It really started to hit me after my third year when both my roommates moved out of our apartment and I was scrambling to find new ones. I realized how transient life could be and that nothing lasts forever. Being a guy in his 20s, time is precious. Do I just want to be going through the same old routine and the same city when there is a whole world out there to explore? In my 4th year in LA, I focused on building on the momentum that was pushing me through the past three. Everything was going great and then… COVID hit.

Saying COVID changed everything is a severe understatement. Never before in our lifetimes has a single event affected every aspect of our lives for an extended period of time and we are still in the middle of it over a year later! It was during these three months in my life where the wheels were in motion for me to move out of LA; A breakup with someone I cared about deeply, a lease that was set to expire, and remote work becoming an accepted norm. It was time to pursue the adventure I have been craving since I moved out to LA back in 2016. I knew I couldn’t exactly go to Brazil right away but the next thing was to drive cross-country which was another bucket-list dream of mine.

So, in May I decided to fully send it and began to decouple myself from the city which I grew to love. It felt surreal throwing everything out, giving stuff away, and selling everything I could before my lease expired in June. It didn’t really start to hit me that I was leaving until I cleaned out my entire apartment and all that remained was a mattress in my living room. I remember the night before I left smiling ear to ear dancing around to Kid Cudi’s Pursuit of Happiness blasting through my speakers in my empty apartment because my vision actually came to fruition. I was about the embark on the journey that I envisioned all those years ago.

Now for this journey, I really didn’t have much planned, all I knew was that I was going to live in Idaho for a month and I was going to end up in Brazil at the end of it. That’s it. June 26th came and with my car packed to the brim, me and two friends set off for Coeur d’Alene to live on our coworker’s chicken farm.

“Just me and my hen… just me and my hen…”

Over the next 108 days, I would proceed in driving all around America stopping in 17 different locations for different periods of time. I hiked the beautiful mountains that overlooked the Salt Lake Valley in Utah, climbed the red rocks that painted Sedona’s ancient ocean floor, bolted it across the endless plains that made up this magnificent country, and even got to stop by the great American cities of St. Louis, Fort Wayne, D.C., and Boston.

With all the sites I saw, what truly made my journey was the people, both old friends and new ones, that I met across the way. I can look back with nothing but amazing memories that I can carry with me for the rest of my life. And even during all of this traveling, I really broke through a glass ceiling at work and was getting partnerships that were not thought possible. I’ll never forget having to pull over in the cornfields of Illinois at a random gas station to hot spot my laptop in order to get some emails done.

I felt incredible and through all this madness, I was able to move the last piece of my journey in place and booked my long-term stay in Brazil. My dream was finally coming true. I remember coming home in October feeling on top of the world. Also, after traveling for so long, it was nice to take a step back and spend time with friends, family, and my parents’ new pup, Tesla. The month before I left for Brazil, I laid low with some friends in Key West, and then from there I took a one-way flight to the place I’ve imagined being for the past +6 years.

Tesla causing trouble

I was in Brazil for two months and although I enjoyed my time there, it felt different than how I felt all those years ago when I arrived for the first time. It wasn’t that the country has changed, but I had. When I first arrived, I was a student halfway through college and when I arrived again, I basically decided to step off the escalator of a fast-growing career. It was a much-needed gut-check though, “do I really want to be doing what I’m doing?” and “are you happy with your life.” I came to the conclusion and the answer was yes, I knew who I was because I was carving myself into the person I wanted to be for the past several years while in LA. I am 26-years-old, it didn’t realize how much I have grown. Brazil is a beautiful country and it will always have a place in my heart but I realized maybe all those years not being there I may have developed an unrealistic escapism fantasy from my normal life which isn’t healthy for anyone. Halfway through my time in Brazil, I knew what I needed to do for myself.

Things happened in my life which made me cut my trip home from Brazil early, specifically, I had to be by my family’s side during an emergency when they needed me most. I ended up staying back in New Jersey for two months, regrouping myself as I get ready for the next stage of my life. I got a new job and it was time for me to grow up and decide to settle in order to build my life. March 27th came and I hit the road again, trying out new cities like new pairs of shoes until I decide what place I want to tie the knot with. In a month alone, I’ve hit North Carolina, Orlando Miami, San Juan, Pensacola, won some roulette at the shoreline casinos in Biloxi, hit Bourbon Street in New Orleans, and now I’m writing this in my Airbnb in Austin.

I haven’t truly had a home base in 10 months and all I can say is I’m tired. I’m thankful for this journey but I feel like I’ve learned all the lessons I need to and I’m just had enough of the road. I’m ready to set my spot, wherever that may be, and start building my life. Will that be Austin, the city I am now, Los Angeles, the city that I’ll always have love for, or be another guy in crypto to move to Puerto Rico. The decision will be made very soon!

Not going to lie, this recent leg of being on the road alone mainly has been the toughest. I realized I pretty much dismantled many of the support structures I had in life when I lived in LA. A steady location, a steady work environment, steady groups of friends. I am also in the process of figuring out my priorities and my “post-wanderlust” identity and that whole thing feels like trying to build a functional airplane while you are falling out of the sky. I definitely am setting out to be more organized and be more accountable to myself, make noticeable advancements in my career, and have a positive work-life balance and not let one extreme become too extreme.

One motivation that has guided me in life since I was 19 though is there is nothing out here more fulfilling to me than inspiring people around me and letting them know in return how they inspired me. Whether it was starting blogs in college, throwing shows in LA, or even this journey I went on now, the only thing that really keeps me going, even through all the bullshit, is seeing people take positive action from my action and vice versa. This all comes full-circle from one of the first blog posts I ever wrote titled “What It Means To Travel Alone” and even years after writing it friends told me how it inspired them to embark on solo journeys themselves. Writing and sharing my experiences, whether it’s a 10-day trip or 10-month adventure, is like opening the door for people showing that there is a way, there is a life that is possible, all you need is to walk through.

What I miss most about being in one spot is having consistently having good genuine people around. They keep you going through the hardest of times because adversity is a given in life, it's just a matter of when. And when the tough times do hit, you have that support system to keep you afloat. They say you are the five people you surround yourself with the most and you don’t understand how true that is until later in life. Wherever I settle, that’s definitely a top priority of mine.

For the first time in my life, I can proudly say I’m don’t want to “escape” anymore. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to stop having adventures, quite the opposite actually. But I would rather do it from a solid foundation than just wandering from place to place.

I don’t know where I’m gonna settle but wherever I end up, I’m going to do my best for myself and others around me.

I’ll also want to get a dog too. But I’ll worry about that once I sign the lease.