My Life Story: How I've Been Traveling the World, "Finding Myself" as a Social Entrepreneur Digital Nomad and witnessing the Blockchain fall into place as the solution for a digital society (Part 1)

Hey everyone. @jayurbzz here, I run a YouTube channel about traveling as a lifestyle and try to encourage you to live your life for you and nothing and no one else.

I’m going to tell you a story, abridged yet still long as hell, because I'm noticing a lot of interest in travel, technology, psychedelics, blockchain world-connectivity, kundalini, all over communities like this, and I think I’ve got something unique to share that combines all of this spiritual transhuman generation.

At 18 years old, I graduated high school excited to feel stimulated and creatively inspired in college. I met no one in the dorms who didn't want to just party all the time so I became a bodybuilder to fill the time: counting calories, working on my diet, going to the gym 2x per day, etc. It was cool but it made me pretty stressed out, in the end. I saw the study abroad office at my university one day and it turned out I only needed to study a language one semester to be able to leave for a whole year, so I signed up.

A year later, at 19 years old, I studied abroad in southern France for my second year of college (click here to read/download my blog from that year. I found out early on about cheap flights and Couchsurfing, and then towards the end of that academic year I was inspired to take a hitchhiking trip (from Marseille to Lyon, France). Making friends and experiencing some beautiful moments, my life was forever changed—I was learning how to see the expensive part of the world for very little money. And it was WAY COOLER than taking buses/trains, staying in hotels/hostels. It made the tourist attractions seem petty by comparison--this was real life, somehow. (Let's not forget that I also took my first two mushroom trips in the Netherlands during this year. I also started smoking a lot of marijuana. It might not be for everyone, but these two things profoundly impacted who I was during this year.)

I somehow finished university on time (4 years), but not without studying abroad for a semester in Mexico and taking a semester off to backpack through Costa Rica and Nicaragua. I volunteered (WWOOF) at an organic coffee farm in Costa Rica, and Nicaragua introduced me to true poverty for the first time. A young boy coming from the USA, I was confused at how things could ever, ever get so bad for anyone in the world. I had a lot to learn.

During those final two years of college, I worked full and part-time as a “production assistant” for a sound effects company managing its website, producing basic promo videos, and making graphics (I have been using a computer since I was 10). I felt disgusted with the modern American’s consumer lifestyle, and began my form of "intellectual" rebellion against it silently—dreadlocks, Howard Zinn, Zeitgeist, etc. During this time my mom also introduced me to yoga and I dated a few yogi type gals and learned a lot. It was becoming a lifestyle, a source of exercise I enjoyed a LOT more than lifting weights and even running. A few more mushroom trips were thrown in there during that time, always confirming my self-development and personal transformation in relation to society itself.

Despite being a self-proclaimed bohemian and DGAF student, I graduated university in 2010 with a BA in French Literature, a very good GPA, and a decent chunk of change in my bank account (thanks, tax returns). I returned to western Europe where I felt my heart still was. With my yogini girlfriend of the time, I hitchhiked around visiting old friends and writing a fantasy novel (I wanted to be a writer, at the time). I ended up traveling from western France all the way to Istanbul over land in 6 months, stopping off to volunteer at a hostel in Albania for two months along the way. (The novel's first draft is done, but I'm still working on it's second evolution).

I came back home to see my family and ended up moving to another part of my state (California) to work exchange while building up my portfolio as a freelancer. It didn’t really work out, and soon I cut off my dreads and dropped the last of my college savings to fly to Bangkok to become an English teacher. I also opened up a credit card...

With the help of an old friend from the study abroad days, I got settled in and found a job in no time. I lived in Bangkok and traveled around the region for 10 months. It was a decadent era. I found myself living in the same way that had disgusted me after witnessing true poverty—and now here I was again in a place where true poverty existed, living with alcohol, cigarettes, heavy foods, etc. It didn't feel right.

Almost 2 years had passed since graduating college, and I was ready to ‘settle in’ and sew some seeds so I could live somewhere. I was ready to expand on my writing and other artistic projects so I could earn some money doing what I loved, but it was hard to do that without a solid living space—it’s also hard to do that in a land full of easily-accessible vice such as Bangkok. Before calling it over, I rented a place in Chiang Mai for a month and with a lot of aderall, coffee and beer, I wrote a 200-page novel about my decadent, sexual, transformative year in Bangkok (I'm finally finding time to revise it's final draft now, like 4 years later).

That's the end of Part 1. Subsequent parts will be posted sooner or later, assuming there's a desire. Peace.