Notes on Coffee, Quitting Quotas, and Empty Highways

Field notes on quitting quotas, chasing miles, and building something that actually feels like yours.

Hello there -

Welcome to my Substack.

I used to measure my life in quotas. Pipeline reviews, QBRs, commission checks. The kind of numbers that make you feel important until you realize they’re just shackles with a shinier name. I hit them, I missed them, I obsessed over them. And somewhere between the back-to-back Zoom calls and the “President’s Club” promises, I started wondering if I was actually living a life of my own, or just renting one from someone else’s balance sheet.

Anyway, this isn’t that.

This is The Escape Journal. For me, Substack feels like the closest thing we’ve got to an old café bulletin board. Slower, quieter, a little more human. Something you stumble across, tack a note on, and come back to later.

Frankly, something that I feel is missing from today’s day and age.

I’ve always fancied myself a writer, ever since I graduated from college with my English literature degree I had high aspirations for but never did anything with.

I don’t know exactly what this will become yet, and that’s the point. I want it to evolve like a long road trip does. Unexpected turns, good coffee, breakdowns you laugh about later. What I do know is that my wife and I are about to trade square footage for miles. We’re moving into our van, pointing it southeast, then tracing the map north up the coast, across Canada, into Alaska, and eventually, who knows. A years-long loop of empty highways and full notebooks.

Here I’ll be sharing pieces of that journey: the places we find, the mistakes we make, the small freedoms we collect. Some of it will be practical ie what it actually takes to build your own business and buy back your time. Some of it will be personal, things I’m reading, thinking about, or jotting down late at night when the road noise is the only soundtrack. And some of it will just be for fun.. because not everything has to have an ROI.

This is for the ones who feel trapped by their 9-5 but dream about open space. For the builders, the wanderers, the restless, and anyone curious about what happens when you trade certainty for curiosity.

I’ll figure it out as I go. Maybe you will too.

Thanks for reading. I’m glad you’re here.