For the last several months, I’ve been looking through travel photos on my phone, reminiscing with Caleb.

Not about the photos from 2018 that I have on this blog though.

Since I last posted here, we have: started a business, moved multiple times, traveled frequently and added a fur baby (Diego) to our family.

And we’ve done an awful job at documenting any of this.

I’ve always had a bad memory. Like most, it has only gotten worse with age. I really hate the brutal reality that I’m quickly forgetting amazing things I experienced just a year or two ago.

So tonight I decided: instead of posting a bunch of #latergram photos to Instagram to finally start documenting again… and reducing those memories down to superficial 1-line captions that didn’t tell the full story, I’d take a stab at writing proper blog posts again.

Mostly about travel, so I don’t forget the incredible moments I’ve had the privilege of experiencing. But also about life – because the two have become pretty intermixed together.

So what’s changed since 2018?

When I last posted, we decided to spend several months in Guatemala. We were determined to start our own business, which we eventually did.

While the idea was to live this romantic “digital nomad” lifestyle, building a company remotely while living in a new place that we hoped inspired creativity, the reality was far from that.

We conceptualized & mocked up the idea of what we wanted to build – an app that connected local hidden-gem chefs to people who wanted to order food directly from them. But that was about it.

Most of the time, we spent exploring, relaxing, teaching, cooking. It wasn’t necessarily an easy place to live for several months, but it was a hell of an experience.

After our stay in Guatemala was over, we went back to Salt Lake City and decided it was go time. We started a company called “Chefpanzee” and spent the next several years going through the rollercoaster that is entrepreneurship.

It was probably the most thrilling, exhausting, gratifying, draining work I’ve ever done.

Before Chefpanzee, I was just a salesperson. After Chefpanzee, I learned so much about business. I wore so many hats. I learned new skills out of necessity that I never fathomed being able to do.

And Caleb and I did this all together. Sure, it was testing at times. But winning together was an all-time high.

It took time, effort and a lot of ingenuity, but we went from being in $40k of debt starting up the business to becoming profitable enough for both of us to treat it as full-time work.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, though, I started to panic. Our restaurant partners were locked down – struggling to staff their businesses in an uncertain time.

I figured, well, it was a good run… but maybe it’s time to head back to stable employment again. I eventually wound up taking a sales job. It was remote, so I was able to keep running Chefpanzee with Caleb after hours.

And the longer-term effects of the pandemic? Well, it’s obvious now. We were a delivery service, delivering authentic, chef-curated food in a time where everyone was starved (for food and entertainment) and stuck in their houses.

Chefpanzee kept growing.

With the growth came immense stress though. Caleb was drowning managing everything solo during the day. I was burnt out, burning the candle at both ends between normal employment and running a business.

There was a stark contrast between the success we were building on the outside, and the deteriorating mental health we were feeling on the inside.

We held on as long as we could and then one day decided… “things need to change.”

After a lot of analysis and months of planning, we sold our home in SLC, put our stuff in storage & moved to the Caribbean – where we currently live now.

More blanks to fill in soon!