While scrolling through friends' Facebook posts today, I’ve come across all kinds, most chock full of smiling people in comfortable homes surrounded by supportive families - folks achieving the "American Dream" that everyone aspires to. Having just reached a milestone birthday, I can't help but look back at my own life and compare it to this seeming nirvana. As an adventure writer, there is nothing stable, lucrative or comfortable about my life.
I go from one extreme exploit to the next, taking risks by putting myself in uniquely challenging situations. Some call me a walking bucket list. Others say I’m lucky to be alive.
A podcast called "HeroFront" airing this week actually calls me "the world's most interesting person." That, of course, is a stretch. But it does make me stop and realize that the accumulation of three decades of out-there work has some meaning in the greater context.
My first-person stories have helped inspire millions of readers (or at least many tell me so) by allowing them to live out their own adventure fantasies vicariously, and safely. Then there's the folks I've been privileged enough to interview. Many have helped mold history.
Documenting that history helps preserve it once these icons pass on. Notables I’ve profiled include Neil Armstrong, Sir Edmund Hillary, Sir Roger Bannister, James Cameron, Don Walsh and Chuck Yeager. It’s been an interesting road.
After leaving my job in journalism and receiving an MBA from Columbia University in the .
