Blowing it all up
to build a life that
doesn't require an
escape plan.

When I left the United States in March 2024, it wasn’t just to chase wanderlust or collect passport stamps while sipping pina coladas under pristine white cabanas. I left because the life I had built — financially, mentally, and emotionally — was no longer my own, and I needed distance from the trauma, noise and chaos that defined who I was to that point.

What began as Gorjess Wanderlust was an accountability experiment, a public reset focused on tackling debt, rebuilding my health, and stepping away from a version of success that looked impressive on paper but become drastically misaligned in reality.

Over the last two years, travel has served as my catalyst to reinvention rather than its defining story. Moving across countries created space for reflection without performance and growth without permission. Somewhere between visa runs, long stretches of solitude, and challenging everything I thought I knew about myself, this platform and its story evolved just like I did.

Midlife Sidequests reflects that shift. This is no longer about escape; it is about authorship. Travel remains the backdrop, but the real narrative is reinvention — the pivots, recalibrations, and uncomfortable clarity that come from consciously designing your life instead of existing on the default settings defined by a society that favor with mass mass compliance over individual awesomeness.

Moving forward, expect global misadventures, reinvention, uncomfortable growth, honest conversations, and the reminder that it’s never too late to blow it all up and start over.