Leaving the Ledger: Going All-In on Full-Time Dive Travel
It was 2020. I was living in a California campground, filming music videos for a living. After an intense spiritual realization about where my life was headed, the state suddenly went into lockdown. A curfew was put in place at 9 p.m. The campground kicked everyone out, and the hotels only accepted essential personnel. With the stay-at-home order, filming music videos dropped dead.
I didn’t have a home, and I couldn’t stay outside with the curfew. So, my wife and I packed up our SUV and left the state. Luckily for us, primitive camping was about the only thing open in the rest of the country. We traveled the U.S., living deep in the woods in primitive locations. No one was around. No electricity, just us.
After six months, Mexico finally opened flights to Cancun. We sold everything but our backpacks, a few pairs of clothes, and a laptop. We purchased dirt-cheap $250 tickets and left the States. As it turned out, that original flight was overbooked, so we took $1,000 in flight vouchers to delay our trip. We spent three months in Mexico—surviving two Category 5 hurricanes—and later used those vouchers to spend another three months in Brazil.
Covid was intensifying and money was running out, so we flew to Pensacola, Florida, knowing my wife could get a job when we arrived. At that time, I was informed I could get retrained by the VA to get back on my feet. I went to school to get an accounting degree. Halfway through my first year, it dawned on me that my veteran status could get me into a good school, so I applied and transferred to the University of Michigan.
I got school set![]()
up, but I needed a cheap place to live. I purchased a house in Detroit for $60,000 - the max amount the bank would give me.
Seven years before COVID, a failed business left my credit in ruins. Those bad marks had just finally fallen off my report. I was 31, and I barely qualified for a small mortgage. Lucky for me Detroit had some very affordable homes.
I thought it was incredible to have a house at such a low price, but my neighbors told me I got robbed at for 60k. For years, we heard gunshots and drive-bys on our street. The abandoned house next door was constantly broken into by drug dealers, often becoming a trap house that would get raided by the police. The neighbors across the street shot off fireworks several times a week at 2 a.m., all year round. The bangs over my house made me feel like I was back in a warzone.
My daughter was born. Then my son. Despite the craziness of living in the hood, my mortgage payment was $250 and the plan for cheap living was working. My wife was able to stay at home and take care of the kids while we lived on a $2500 VA housing allowance.
After my BA was complete, I landed a tax internship at one of the Big Four accounting firms, EY, but I turned it down and took an audit internship at Doeren Mayhew, a top 50 firm. It paid $31.50 an hour. After working there for a year, I was finishing my master's degree and decided to cash in on the promise I made to my wife: to get out of the hood and back to Pensacola's white sandy beaches.
I sold the Detroit house and landed a job at a local Pensacola CPA firm working construction audits.
A year went by and we settled into our new home. Our kids were making friends, our church family grew, and my dive life was on the verge of returning as I slowly built up my camera gear collection again. Diving and filming have always been my two passions.
But deep down, I was drowning in the mundane day-to-day desk job. The work was hardly demanding; it was just a boring time-suck. Yet, I wore a suit every day and gave it my life, just as I do with everything I get into.
I spent six months designing a personal finance system that would help me see my own money just as clearly as I was seeing the finances of these massive, multi-million-dollar companies. Month after month, I meticulously calculated exactly what my minimum cost of living was. I saved every dollar, and one day, the moment arrived. I knew exactly how much I needed to quit my job and exactly how long I could do it for. I had one distinct thorn in my side that was also a blessing: I fractured my backbone in the Marine Corps. I live with chronic back pain, and the VA had decided to compensate me for it.
So, with a family of four, $25,000 in savings, and enough baseline income to cover our basic needs, I decided to go all-in.
The truth is—I was hesitant.
I had just turned 37 and after four failed businesses, countless direction changes, and an absolutely chaotic life even long before Covid, I second-guessed my decision to leave the firm. One thought kept playing on a loop in my head: getting my CPA license. I had the experience, the education, and met all the requirements. Nearly everyone I talked to tried to encourage me that is was the right thing to do. I even paid to sit for one of the four, four-hour exams that are widely known as the hardest licensing tests the U.S. has to offer.
But I never sat for it.
I did that three times, wasting the $365 fee to sit each time. I kept thinking, I’m right here. This is the moment this entire five-year journey was building toward. I could live a fairly good life, getting paid well in a highly esteemed accounting role. The firm was ripe for me to take full advantage of what it was offering. I would just need to spend the next year studying and taking those exams.
But that’s not who I am.
I’m an adventure-seeking, curious person who believes that God takes care of His people no matter what they do, even if it looks like chaos from the outside. All my life, through the failures, the twists and turns, and the crazy situations, it has always worked out—even when it was incredibly hard. I couldn't waste another year pushing my dreams away for something I didn't even care for.
So, I booked a dive trip to the USS Oriskany—the world's largest artificial reef—for the exact weekend I quit my job. It was a celebration for following my heart and taking the leap once again. Because it was a celebration dive, I left my camera at home.
That weekend, on the very first dive, I ended up executing a rescue on an older gentleman who was sinking like a rock.
I have military training and have taken scuba training up through stress and rescue instructor. At 130 feet, when I saw this guy flailing around and sinking past his recreational limits, I did what I do best. I sprang into action, swam after him, and grabbed him at 141 feet. I inflated his BCD and brought him up to a safer depth before passing him off to the dive guide.
The wild part is that when I checked his air pressure, he only had 1,000 psi left. We were five minutes into the dive. He was panicking so heavily that he blew through two-thirds of his air and was headed down to 165 feet with absolutely zero control.
Maybe he would have been fine. Maybe not. All I know is that something bad could have happened, and I’m not the only one who recognized it. By the grace of God, I wasn’t occupied with filming and had actually been watching the people around me on that drop.
Back on the surface, I was informed that I would be getting a free charter out of gratitude for what had just happened. So the next day, I grabbed my camera and had the time of my life diving two other wrecks. When I got home, I edited a nice promo video for the dive charter as a thank-you gift.
The response I got was: “Anytime you want to dive, you let me know.”
And just like that, with zero delay, my dreams were materializing. I got on my knees and thanked God.
Now comes the hard part: taking it across the world, and taking my family with me.
The Surface Interval: Life Between the Wrecks is the day-to-day log of this journey.
I am going to share the hard parts, the struggles, and, of course, the incredible adventures an blessing that come with it. You will see the films, the photos, and the exact financial realities of pulling this entire thing off.
My goal is to encourage you to live your dreams, no matter your age or situation. No one’s life looks like another person’s. The blessings and struggles I receive will not be the exact ones you go through. Do not compare my life to yours; only use it as evidence that God does supply you with what you need, even if how it is supplied is rarely planned or expected.
Take the leap. Keep changing and improving. Go backward if you have to, take breaks if needed, but never give up on yourself. And most importantly—love your neighbor as yourself.
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