Kick in the Breeches is a blog, somewhere at the intersection of lifestyle design and travel, about how to grip life by the horns and live the life you want.

The vast majority of society rarely stops to think about where their life is headed, much less what they want their destination to be.  They go to college, get a job, marry, have kids, and retire.  There is nothing inherently wrong with those things, except for the fact that most people do them not because they have given considerable thought about the fact that it is what they want, but instead they do them because it is “what you do”, according to society.

Would you get on a plane that had no pilot, only an autopilot computer?  Probably not, right?  Well then, why would you run your life without yourself as a pilot, with society acting as one giant autopilot mechanism?

A friend of mine recently described me as “the least autopilot person I know”.  Given that our mutual friends include a blacksmith, a book binder and preservationist, a circus performer, a playwright, a filmmaker, and several other people pursuing their dreams, I felt that was a huge compliment.  I also felt it was accurate.

You see, I’ve been bucking trends since I was a little kid.  When, in middle school, the girls all started to hang out together at lunch and talk about tv shows and boys, I continued to spend my lunch time out on the field nearby, playing tag.  Why?  Because it’s what I wanted to do.  I could have sat with the other girls (in fact, I probably would have had a lot more friends if I had), but it would have been a lie; I would have been in constant denial about what I really wanted to be doing, who I really wanted to be.  I would be trading my authentic self  in exchange for friendship with people I didn’t even really care to be friends with in the first place.  That all seemed to me like a lot of effort with no reward, so I kept on doing what I wanted.  I’ve been doing what I want with my life ever since.

To me success is not about how much money you make. Its not about how many countries you visited. It’s not about how many friends you have. It’s not about how much stuff your house is full of.  To me success is really about happiness. The most successful person is the person who is completely happy with their life and that’s part of what I aim for this blog.

Things I believe in:

Quality over quantity.

Mindfulness.

Choosing the road less traveled.

I moved out of my family’s house and into my first solo apartment at age 17 and paid all my bills myself.  I have not lived with my parents for more than two months at a time ever since.

I used to be a professional sailor and have sailed across the Atlantic twice.

I flew from Houston, Texas to Fort Yukon, Alaska, north of the Arctic Circle in a small, four-seater single-engine plane, with my father.

I lived abroad on a small, rural island off the coast of South Korea for a year.

I’ve been to 14 countries.