1 part Complete In 2015, I quit my digital marketing job at Nike to take a solo road trip around the country, funded by driving for Lyft in each of the cities I stopped in. In the beginning, I thought that driving for Lyft was simply the key to supporting the trip financially. However, I soon found that the dynamic of having strangers jump into my car to talk about life for 20 minutes or so, under the context that we would probably never speak again, was the most powerful piece of my year off. I was so inspired by my passengers that I wrote a book about them, called We're All Going to Die: Lessons Learned From My Year Road Tripping As a Lyft Driver.
My passengers became my biggest teachers in what, lo and behold, turned out to be a year of personal growth and self-discovery. I learned the value of more listening and less ego. I saw how hungry people are for real human connection and conversation in a world more digitally connected and emotionally isolated than ever. I took the time to face my own issues, including my father's suicide five years earlier. I began to understand how important it is to be human - to feel your emotions, to share those feelings with others, and to find lightness and humor in the hard stuff. What became most obvious to me was that at end of the day, we're all going to die anyway. This book is a story about my personal growth, supported by the stories of the many people who trusted me enough to jump into my car and open up their hearts to me.
