Even though we are living a life that is easily defined as aspirational – a life we deliberately designed to be fulfilling, freedom-rich, and low-stress – we don’t talk much about our journey. A key to our success has been: do more, talk less.

We learned that we’ve talked (and written!) too little.

Now, we’re changing that.

We’re excited to announce that we are currently putting the final touches on No Vacation Required, the book. After nearly two decades of living this unconventional life, we’re taking everything we’ve learned – all our professional expertise and lived experience – to create a guide to help other people build their own No Vacation Required lives. In addition to providing insights and the advice we wished we’d had access to when we started down this (at the time) very lightly trodden path. And, because our life has been something of a laboratory for the tools and concepts we’ll be providing, we’re sharing some details about our journey.

We’ve had interest over the years in our publishing a book. While we appreciate the faith in our story and work, it’s easier said than done! (Once, we were even approached about doing a TV show – can you imagine 🫠). But here we are now, 2024, in the final stretch of writing and gearing up to lean into shopping it. Its equal measures daunting and exhilarating. This is a new-ish process for us so, as we move forward, we’ll share what we learn with you and all our fellow writers here on Substack (and welcome any advice you have).

Anyway, here’s a peek at some of the reflecting we’ve been doing as we put together our story. We hope it shows that each of our origin stories contains, perhaps, some of the most share-worthy advice.

The first thing we noticed as we crested a small, lichen-covered ridge is that Lac Blanc – French for White Lake – is not white. It’s turquoise. Or some other pretty French word for blue-green. And it’s one of the most beautiful things we’ve ever seen.

We’d been in France for a few weeks, including a week touring the Champagne region and its many houses of bubbly. On this day – legs like aspic after days of hiking the mountains around Chamonix sans gondolas – we trekked 13 miles with 5,000 feet of elevation gain to make it to this picturesque alpine lake. That is to say, it took a lot of effort to get here.

Standing at the lake’s edge, marveling at Mont-Blanc and the western Alps towering in the distance, we added another “once-in-a-lifetime” moment to our timeline.

We’ve had a lot of those.

We’ve been to over 75 countries and all 7 continents. We’ve stayed in luxury hotels overlooking the world’s most iconic beaches, cities, and monuments. We’ve backpacked in remote wildernesses and hunkered down in off-the-grid jungle resorts. We’ve sipped Dom Perignon in first class “sky suites,” sailed past icebergs in Antarctica, and road-tripped across the US to see almost all of the National Parks.

We don’t talk about those experiences often. Not because we aren’t grateful or proud but because these experiences have always been secondary to what mattered most to us. The brag-able moments are positive outcomes stemming from a much greater and more important overarching achievement: creating a life we didn’t need a break from.

So this moment – 5,000+ feet on top of a mountain at this not-white lake – was more than another “once-in-a-lifetime” moment. This moment was the culmination of all the moments and, more importantly, a celebration of a life that enabled us to have these experiences.

You see, we traveled back to France to celebrate a milestone anniversary and nearly 2 decades of living a fully designed, values-aligned life. One where it was not uncommon for us to be on the road for several months out of the year or, on a random Thursday in September, find ourselves gazing across a resplendent alpine lake, marveling at how we got here.

It’s not the destination

We are avid runners, but that wasn’t always the case. Kent came into the relationship with a passion for running and a marathon under his belt. Caanan entered into the relationship with a passion for carbs, a desire to be more active, and a longing to spend more time with Kent. Running made good sense.

We started with short and slow runs. Before long, we were going longer and longer. One evening, confidently tipsy on the Space Room’s legendarily strong cocktails, we decided to run the Vancouver, BC marathon. The next day, heads now clear, we made a plan. After months of lung-busting training runs around (our then hometown of) Portland later, we could both go the distance. That felt great. What felt better was how connected we were after spending all those hours talking, dreaming, and working toward a shared goal. Running 26.2 miles was invigorating; our sense of togetherness was elating.

Fast forward several years. We were still runners. We’d moved to Seattle and, by all traditional measures of success, were crushing it. Our upwardly mobile lives came with many perks, but at a cost; we rarely got to spend time together. This lack of togetherness was nagging at us. We weren’t “winning” at what we most valued: our relationship. And it made the other successes we were experiencing feel hollow.

We wanted to fix this.

We recalled how much we enjoyed the conversations and uncomplicated time we had together when we were training for the Vancouver marathon. Prior performance being the best indicator of future success, we decided to train for and run another marathon.

This time it would be a destination. We set our sights on Paris.

Finding time to train for a marathon when you are already struggling to spend quality time together is no small feat. It demanded that we get up well before dawn, brave Seattle’s infamous winter rain, and go for long runs in the dark – all before heading to our upwardly mobile but decreasingly fulfilling jobs.

Those pre-dawn runs were life-changing. When you have hours of uninterrupted time running in the cold rain, you need a distraction (anything to minimize the suffering!) so we talked. And talked. And talked.

We were reminded that this time together and this talking was what mattered most to us. Not the accolades from our skip-levels. Not the promotions and salary bumps. Definitely not small perks for making our employers richer. No, we wanted to be together. And getting a taste of it while marathon training made us frustrated and impatient to make a change.

As we ticked off the days (well, very early mornings) and miles, we became less and less okay with the idea that, after this marathon, our lives would go back to the way they were before; that all this effort would amount to nothing more than a fun memory and a participation medal.

Time for a bold change

On an unseasonably warm April day in Paris, we ran the race. Crowds cheered us on as we crossed the finish line. Hand-in-hand, a little dehydrated (hello, medical tent!), and more than a little delirious, we celebrated the culmination of months of training beneath the Arc de Triumph. But we were also celebrating something much greater than a 26.2-mile run.

See, in the days preceding our trip to France, we did something that many people thought – and many said outright – was crazy. We quit our jobs.

After running the race, we planned to use our minimal savings to travel and figure out what was next for us. While we couldn’t fully articulate a strategy going in, we knew that we needed to do some internal and external exploration before we made any decisions about our future. This break would allow us:

Disidentify from work.
Learn about our strengths and values.
Examine every aspect of our lives.
Identify and interrogate our entrenched beliefs.
Enjoy spending time together.

Most critically, we would be able to take everything we learned – about the world and ourselves – to design a new life that, years later on a hike in the Grand Tetons, we would have the perspective, clarity, and wisdom to name: No Vacation Required.