Longer Tales by Scrambled Gregs
So much shit to write about but some stories take longer to tell than others. Blog posts are a good jab to the gut with humor and honesty, but a great book should make me wanna cry and laugh and punch the wall and come to realizations about things I was too nervous to even think about.
The other thing is I always thought–and still think–that there’s nothing more interesting than real life, so why make shit up? But real life is only more interesting than fake life when it’s told with such rawness that I cringe while writing the words. If I cringe then I know I’m being truthful, and if at the end of the book I think everyone I’ve ever known will see right through me and hate me if they ever read it, if I’m terrified it actually sees the light of day, then probably I wrote some real shit.
Like how I ended up at America’s most notorious juvenile institution. I can’t just say I was held captive at Isolation Cabin for eight days and expect you to get it. I gotta explain what happened on that first day of middle school, cause it was on that day everything changed.
If it weren’t for that first day, I mighta made it past ninth grade, but I didn’t. I mighta not been tossed in that rehab in Minnesota, but I was. I mighta not been kicked outa there and sent to an anti-semitic in-patient facility in Louisiana, but it happened. And I may not have have done what I did after six months to land me at a place that was later shut down for child abuse.
And I can’t just write about being homeless at 16 without tellin why I was on the run and the cops were out to get me. All this shit takes time. That’s why I made it into a book called The Drifter Chronicles.
The Drifter Chronicles, Volume 1: No Direction Home
The Drifter Chronicles is a series that tells one grandiose misadventure that shaped my adulthood into what it now is, like I just told you. The first volume is called No Direction Home and it starts on the first day of middle school… well, kinda. You’ll have to read it to see what I mean. Here, I’ll even give you the link again. You can read The Drifter Chronicles, Volume 1 right here.
But then there’s all the shit that I’ve learned along my travels. See, I’m a traveler too. I started young, like I just told you. I was hitchhiking around as a homeless teen when I was sixteen and never stopped. I even broke the Guinness World Record for Longest Road Trip in One Country.
I circumnavigated South America. I spent hundreds of thousands of miles on every highway and interstate in the US. I nearly got killed on a road trip in Peru. I met a Brazilian that saved my life in Chile. I was robbed in Santiago. I was robbed again in Montreal then held hostage by a chick too hot for her own good.
But see I can’t tell those stories in this post, see what I mean? I had to write a book about that shit too. So I did, and it’s called Vagabond Secrets. It’s 13 secrets that taught me everything I now know about the art of traveling with confidence, finding fuck partners that leave lasting memories, romantic flings that amount to nothing, and letting the almighty river of life embrace you in her current.
Vagabond Secrets: How to Get Unstuck, Travel Boldly, and Make Meaningful Connections on Your Next Adventure
Vagabond Secrets isn’t just a book about how to travel. That would be boring as fuck. It tells every secret with a personal anecdote about some crazy shit that happened to me in some odd circumstance… There’s no time to not share embarrassing stories, like my first night at a hostel, or falling in love with a girl that doesn’t speak English and chasing her all the way to South America only to have the most horrifying sex possible, or skinny dipping with shrinkage.
So many life lessons have been taught to me through the art of mistake-making… I’m quite good at that. So look, if you wanna dig deep into the life of travel and maybe take a trip that’ll completely alter your existence, I highly recommend you read Vagabond Secrets… you can buy that shit right here.
If you wanna know more about that shit, and not just these little snippets of life, head here to learn more.
Not ready to commit? Start here.