A Letter to Me in my 20s
Dear Adam,
It’s not that you’re not important to me. In fact, you may be the most consequential version of me. You set in motion the chain of events that shaped the man I am now. But in many ways, I’ve tucked away the details of your time, focusing instead on building atop what you started. You were the first version of me truly aware of yourself, seeing the world with clearer eyes. You shed youthful naivety in favor of passion and curiosity for life outside the matrix. You made choices that gave us adventure, creativity, love, lasting friendships, amazing meals, and a global perspective. You were the origin of our purpose and meaning.
Your struggles were never in vain. To live this life, we had to endure pain, uncertainty, and years of wrestling with identity. You were the first to question, to seek, to take risks. A pioneer who never fully realized the scope of your impact. You left behind comfort to chase a unique existence. You faced fears by stepping into the unknown and worked hard even when hard work was against your nature.
In your teens, your identity was mostly shaped by others—family, friends, teachers—each with their own vision of “Adam.” You either rose to those expectations or ducked them, often in a weed-fueled haze. You were a master of escapism over responsibility. It was easier to block out the noise than accept yourself and take control of the narrative. That comes with maturity, and it wasn’t yet your time. The truth is that many people never have that awakening. What you accomplished in your 20s was rare and impressive.
In 1990, you turned 21. You stumbled through college and somehow found yourself bound for Europe. Studying abroad wasn’t just a change of scenery. It was your chance to reinvent yourself on your own terms. You landed in an art school program surrounded by people who shattered the Jersey Shore/frat-boy mold. You thrived in this new lens on the world, living in Rome during the first Gulf War, drawn to creatives who pulled at parts of you you didn’t yet know existed. You began journaling. You studied drawing and photography. You dove into language, history, anthropology, architecture. And, maybe most importantly, you started reading.
Books cracked the universe open even wider. Life in Europe was already expanding your mind, but literature was rocket fuel. You devoured Robbins, Vonnegut, the entire Beat canon. You ran a self-taught masterclass on African American literature—Baldwin to Hurston, Morrison to Wright. In just a few years, you built an unshakable belief in the value of being informed. The joy of discovering entire worlds through the written word remains one of the greatest gifts of my lifetime. And you learned early: the more we knew, the less we knew. That simple truth still fuels my endless curiosity.
The darkness of that era is harder to revisit. You came home with a truer sense of self but no map. No job, no plan, no clear path forward. The world wanted to shove you back into a box. Friends were starting grad school or climbing corporate ladders, and you felt nothing but revulsion toward those paths. That was your great existential crisis: how to survive without surrendering to the grind, but without disappearing off-grid entirely.
I remember pacing Pearl Street in Boulder, day after day, wondering if you should join a commune or busk for spare change. You listened to Jim Freedom on his soapbox preaching unconditional love and personal responsibility. He was the first to teach you that suffering came from your reactions, and that you could choose how to experience the world. You didn’t fully own that power then, but the seed was planted.
You took risks. You moved to Colorado with nothing. You stumbled into a travel job and thrived. Archaeology flirted with you for a while, until the travel gig turned serious and you became an early pioneer in Southeast Asia tourism. In 1993, wide-eyed at 24, you stepped onto the streets of Vietnam and spent the rest of the decade becoming a leading expert on the region. You spoke with authority about Thailand, Indonesia, Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Tibet. Rooms listened when you talked. You built deep relationships across the globe. You made decent money.
Your boldest leap was starting your own company. There was no “entrepreneur plan” in your past. Something inside you just broke free. Suddenly you were in the deep end with sharks, learning marketing, sales, accounting, operations, and HR on the fly. You built a solid business and, more importantly, a livelihood on your own terms. You found the balance between hedonism, hard work, and independence. Everything we are today stands on the foundation you built.
And that’s really why I’m writing. Because I’m grateful. Back then, gratitude wasn’t part of our wiring. You were too busy surviving, too focused on what was next. But you did it so well that I wouldn’t change a thing. Every up and down, every what-if, every cost—it all had purpose.
If I’m honest, this letter is as much for Judah as it is for you. He’s at the start of his own journey. He’s more creative, curious, confident, capable, and likable than I ever was. I can’t walk in his shoes, and he can’t walk in mine. But I’m hopeful and excited for where he’s headed. If he’s anything like us, he’s in for a wild and glorious ride.