Reflections. Over a month of them.

That’s what it takes to sort out 96 days full of incredible memories, special people and once in a lifetime experiences. There’s a lot to unpack and you encounter every emotion on the spectrum in doing so.

I’ll be completely honest, I can’t count how many times I sat down trying to articulate everything and thought to myself “Where do I even start?” I’ve filled up enough journal space to account for a year’s worth of living life in just three months. The wheels spin so fast that that it’s nearly impossible to get any traction. It reminds me of trying to get my old Nissan Maxima out of a foot of snow in Ohio by stepping on the gas pedal harder and harder. If you’ve ever driven in snow, you understand that accelerating will only bury you further.

Eventually you understand that all you need is a little 2×4 underneath the wheels to get a running start. Create some traction, it’s that simple.

You just write.

It’s important to understand that time moves differently in Hawaii, so there’s an extraordinary amount of data I’m still processing. 1 day in Hawaii really feels like 3 days. 3 days feels like a week. A week feels like a month.

And a month – well, it feels like just yesterday.

The Unique Experience That Can Never Be Replicated

When you travel to a new place by yourself, you’re typically alone the majority of the time. You have to find your own way as you go along and meet people organically in the wild. There’s so much beauty in that “alone-ness”. You’re able to take time to reflect and appreciate your journey, live with a sense of child-like curiosity going wherever the wind takes you, and observe the world carefully as it plays out in front of your eyes like a movie.

As you live life on the road, you will meet others along the way and form relationships as you would back home. Even so, real relationships don’t come overnight. True, authentic relationships often move at a snail’s pace. Think about it. You’re lucky to text a new acquaintance a couple times a week to check-in and make plans together once a month. Over time, you’re able to skip the surface level small talk, determine if your values and interests are in alignment, and truly get to know who they are as a person. At that point in time, you can finally add them to your top friends on MySpace. The difference on the road however, is that before you know it, it’s time for one or both of you to pick up your belongings and hit the road again.

This is the life of a nomad.

Selling my car in Arizona, booking a one-way flight to Hawaii and moving into a co-living facility with 25 others was an experience on a whole other level. I wouldn’t consider it “traveling alone”. I showed up to Hawaii with the intention to work hard, play hard, see the world and check everything I could off my bucket list. Well, so did 25 others. You instantly have a common bond with these people. Because you’re in such strong alignment on so many levels, relationships form within days and many escalate within just weeks.

Time moves differently here, remember?

Every weekday before the sun came up, I would wake up at 3am to the bright light of my laptop screen glaring into my eyes in a pitch-black bedroom to work my standard East Coast hours. I would walk out to the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee only to run into my “east-coast crew” doing the same thing. Stumbling around, eyes half-open, searching for caffeine, hoping to produce high quality work in the middle of the night, we had yet another instant connection. We were in this together.

You would cross paths with all of your roommates throughout the day, all of whom work different hours remotely. You’d socialize in between calls, work together in the common area when you felt like it, grab lunch if time permitted, and log-out of work when the recess bell rang.

Then, you would spend the rest of the day together.

With the time left from 11am, we would go out into the world and attack everything we could while there was still daylight – swimming, surfing, hiking, exercising, eating, talking, joking, reflecting and appreciating. There was an obvious sense of adventure within every person you’d meet at this place.

Another commonality.

You live with each other, you work together and you hangout afterwards together just to come home together. All I see in that sentence is “together“.

It goes without saying that you inevitably form lifelong connections with these special people in a way that simply cannot be re-created in the real world. It’s like growing up in a house with a number of siblings who are just like you. Except they’re complete strangers, and now we’re all adults.

At least we’d like to think we are.

These are people you quickly realize you are going to see elsewhere in the future. It’s not even a question, and you realize it as you’re living in that moment. After your time is up in Hawaii, you will either go back to where you came from beforehand or you will travel the world and cross paths with most of them again. You will text, call, FaceTime, and make future plans somewhere else in the world so that you can do more of the crazy shit that adults do.

Together.

There-In Lies The Beauty

In just 3 short months, I experienced more life than I have in 31 years.

I flew to each of the big 4 Hawaiian Islands, boarded a helicopter and took it over the beautiful waterfalls of Kauai with the doors off, raced along the Na Pali coast in a speed boat ripping in and out of the coast’s natural caves, drove the scenic Road to Hana in Maui (once in each direction, once in the bed of a pickup truck), partied on a boat with all of my roommates in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, snorkeled with Manta Rays at night, hiked a live volcano after dark to see the glowing red lava, watched the sunrise from the top of another volcano and watched the sunset on yet another volcano above the clouds.

All of these iconic experiences were incredibly special excursions planned together in Hawaii with the people I formed relationships with at the place I called both my home and my office.

The best memories, however, were the unplanned ones.

One of the two times I visited Maui, I travelled with a good friend that visited and stayed with me for two weeks. We showed up to this island with no plan – no rental car, no accommodations, no return flight and no idea what was going to happen. After landing in the early afternoon, you could find two goofballs on the side of the road laughing their asses off holding their thumbs up the entire walk from the airport into town trying to hitchhike a ride.

We ended up getting transportation and a place to sleep in the jungle from a friend of his that lives on the island. That weekend, my old college roommate who also lives on the island met up with us and we drove the road to Hana.

Oh, and we were in the bed of his pickup truck.

Along the way, we picked up a hitchhiker with her thumb up on the side of the road. We pulled over as this random stranger hopped right into the bed of the truck and led us to the most beautiful, secluded, black sand beach that none of us knew about. You can’t plan this kind of thing.

That’s what makes the story.

The time I visited the Big Island, I was with another friend who visited me and a group of three others. We booked a camp site at the cheapest place we could find near the volcano. That way, we could conveniently drive over to hike the live volcano at night, catch a glimpse of the flowing lava, and get home just in the nick of time before my friend had to login for work at 2am. As it turned out, the campsite was a nudist colony and the colony leader was very upset with us for our late arrival.

We pitched our tents (pun intended), hiked the volcano, returned at 2:30am and crawled into our tents to lay down and sleep on the bed of rocks underneath us during a torrential downpour. With no pillows, blankets or sleeping bags.

One by one, each of us snuck out of our tent and climbed into the rental car because we were cold, wet and tired of pointy rocks as our mattress. Before the night was over, all 5 of us were piled in our rental car like a homeless family.

That night, that’s essentially what we were.

The trip to Kauai was a special one. A group of 12 roommates shared one place with yet another friend who came to visit. This was the trip with a helicopter ride and a speed boat off the Na Pali coast. Two bucket list items. Even so, ask me what my favorite memory would have been and I wouldn’t hesitate to say it was the nights we all laid on the rooftop of our Airbnb looking up at the stars, talking about life, cracking jokes and laughing all night with each other. We were constantly smiling ear to ear. Or the other times – when we ordered $400 of pizza, when we squeezed 12 people in a hot tub passing around cigars, when every single one of our belongings got washed up by the ocean, or any single one of those car rides.

Those car rides were ridiculous.

On the drive to our boat tour, we took our friend’s phone (with consent of course) and messaged her Hinge matches with responses like “Hey, have you ever seen to catch a predator?” Furthermore, while determining our friend’s potential soulmate, we came across some intelligent pick-up lines like “I hope you like a guy with personality because I have multiple.” Or the guy who’s greatest strength is “I’m the sperm that won.” I can’t help but wonder how these guys are still single, I’d swipe right. In fact, we did.

Or the car ride on the way to the airbnb where we were singing and dancing like it was our last day alive, popping out of the top of the jeep, sticking our feet out of the window and teasing the van packed full with the 8 others behind us. We were a bunch of somewhat irresponsible kids who apparently shared a single brain cell when we were together.

We were one of the same.

The second trip to Maui we saw the sunrise from Pa Ka’oao, a volcano that stands 9,900 feet above sea level. It’s not easy to get a ticket to see the sunrise here. It took 8 of us to simultaneously login to our computers at 7am one morning, add a ticket to our cart and pray for success. Thankfully 1 of us got it. Our reward was a 2 hour drive around some windy roads with steep cliffs in pitch black darkness to the top of the mountain where it was freezing cold.

After making it to the top, three of us were jogging around the parking lot and dropping down to the asphalt doing push-ups to stay warm while the others hid in the car. When it came time to wait by the cliff for the sun to rise, all of us were huddled together shivering under a few blankets.

The cold literally brought us together, and I wouldn’t have it any other way as we watched the sun rise.

Bringing It Home

Then comes Oahu – the island where the majority of the biggest little moments came.

Right at home.

This is where we’d have some unforgettable nights celebrating either someone’s birthday or their last day with us in Hawaii, hitting the town hard, and coming home late only to keep the party going in the living room. This is where we’d order pizzas at 1:30am after a long night out with a 2 o’clock delivery time, only for the pizza to show up to the lobby at 2pm the next day. This is also where we’d hangout around the couch jamming on the guitar or ukulele and doing nothing but joking around, talking about life and enjoying each others’ company.

After each trip to a neighboring island with all of those special little moments, we would come back home with a significantly stronger bond. We knew we had a safe space around one another. Our walls would come down and we let each other in.

That kind of intimacy is what forms those strong, authentic relationships.

As described by a friend in a note left in a book of mine, “We’re all going through some shit and just trying to figure it out together.”

For all of you out there reading, I really want you to understand this – we’re all going through something, we’re not alone and we have each other.

Way Too Good At Goodbyes

Our home was a revolving door of digital nomads. As one left, another came in to replace the vacant room. Old friends would leave, but then new relationships were formed.

I can’t count the number of parties we threw to wish people goodbye – this one time, we planned a going away party for two and a birthday for three. The best part? We wanted to keep it a surprise. Good luck doing that with 20 other roommates and outside friends who need to show up in a particular place, on time, in the place where you all call home. Magically, somehow, it worked out to perfection.

These parties were the best way to celebrate the person leaving – it was a way to give back, show appreciation and reminisce on their time in Hawaii. Because no matter who this person was, they each brought something unique to the table that nobody else could. They made this experience one that was uniquely ours.

One that could not be replicated.

What Goes Around Comes Around

As new people came in, I found myself becoming the tour guide rather than the one asking for recommendations. I specifically remember sitting on the couch one evening with one of the new roommates who just moved in. With her laptop out, her fingers tapped on the keyboard as I told her of all of the best places to go visit. As each suggestion rolled off my tongue, I thought back to the special little moments experienced there. The can’t-miss hikes made for chasing waterfalls and getting rained on, the best beach for snorkeling on the west side where we got stranded one night, or the best karaoke bars to sing anything your heart desires from the Backstreet Boys to Kanye. All of the memories and emotions came rushing back.

Now, the roles were reversed.

At one point in time, I was used to throwing goodbye parties. Before I knew it, one was thrown for me. When I was used to writing a heartfelt message in a card, there were now a number of them written in one for me. When I was used to waving farewell then walking back to my room, I was the one getting in the Uber with all of my belongings heading to the airport.

Looking back on this incredible experience that at one time, felt like a year – now feels like just yesterday. These moments together are the ones I appreciate most.

All of the biggest “little” moments.