September 24, 2025: Probably 3% of people I know know today’s story. Thinking about important life-changing moments, this is one of my biggest. I don’t talk about. I don’t hide it but I also don’t share it. But preparing for my upcoming talk at Vivid Parlor, reflecting on the theme of pivotal moments, typing stories, this one poured out onto the page. It’s about time.

​About: A mostly-weekly publication about living a great story: mostly personal stories, adventure recaps, links to coolness and analog photos, maybe or maybe not relevant to the story.

Quote for the Week: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” - Steve Jobs

Austin Events: Join me at Vivid Parlor’s interactive cocktail night filled with secret messages in bottles, writing prompts, and creative activities based on the “Pivotal Moments” theme (same as this week’s newsletter). I will be sharing a 20-minute story and some photos around one of my life’s pivotal moments.

I’m hosting my first photography exhibition for Austin Studio Tour Nov 8/9 & 15/16 - event link coming soon.

Read time: 8 min

“…after that, everything changed.”

6/10/1995 my family of five moved to Hungary. 8/4/2008 I went to rehab. 7/4/2012 I boarded a one-way flight to Europe. Sometime in September 2013, I spray-painted LIVE A GREAT STORY on a wall. 8/23/2015, I finished The Landmark Forum, and a few weeks later, I ate mushrooms for the first time. December 2021 was my first breathwork experience. 12/31/2022 I boarded a one-way flight to Thailand. 8/31/2023 I stood on top of Kilimanjaro. 693 days later, I proposed in the same spot.

Each moment, a personally historic incident, a turning point in my life’s timeline, a reference event to which I can point and say, “after that, everything changed.”

Turns out there’s a word for these moments.

In Spanish, it’s “demarcación"

In English, it’s “demarcation” and it means “the marking of the limits or boundaries”.

The origins date back to the early 18th-century Spanish “demarcación”, from “demarcar” which means to ‘mark the bounds'. Originally used in the phrase “line of demarcation (Spanish línea de demarcación), the word denoted a line dividing the New World between the Spanish and Portuguese, established by the Pope in 1493. It’s also used as an astro term to define the line 100km high where space begins.

Simply, it means where one thing stops and another thing starts. A clear end and beginning. Old and new. How it was and, now, how it will be. Life before and life after.

What a cool word that I’ve never heard before.

August 4th, 2008

A month before my senior year of high school, and one night after a riotous Cowboys and Indians house party, I unsuspectingly walked into my dad’s house to my entire family seated around the living room waiting for me. All living grandparents, uncles, siblings and parents staring at me. And a towering mountain of a man dressed in a button-down and slacks. I immediately knew it was an intervention.

For the next few hours, one by one my entire family shared how my partying was taking its toll on everyone. Emotional tears, sad memories, raw honesty. One by one, they shared stories of how that one time I was drunk and I did that one thing that really scared/hurt our family. But it wasn’t only that one time. There were lots of other times, too.

It was a big ordeal, a bit of an overkill, in my opinion, then and still now. Was I addicted to oxy’s, stealing and selling to fund my daily drug use? Was I staying out all night for all weekend coke benders? Was I rolling every weekend, skipping class, failing out of school and getting in trouble with the police? No.

Well, not exactly. Yes, I did get arrested for public intoxication at Kanye West’s Glow in the Dark tour, spending the night in jail. Yes, a few times I drank too much with resulting injuries or other very near close calls. Yes, I snuck out of the house often, drinking beers stolen from grocery stores or restaurants around town. Yes, I had a fake ID and one time I bought beer from a girl in my chemistry class who just kind of looked at me funny realizing what was happening. But this wasn’t any different than most of my friends. This was high school. It’s just how it was supposed to be.

My family didn’t think so, as was clearly indicated by this mournful Sunday gathering to highlight the negative, dark sides of what I mostly thought of as a traditional high school experience. And now, after hours of absorbing all of their stories, I was faced with an option: 1) go to rehab 2) be kicked out of the family.

When Mike, the rando bouncer-looking dude who was facilitating this whole ordeal, announced my two options, I distinctly remember looking around the room, sitting in the moment, weighing my choice, thinking through the repercussions of my past actions and this current decision, piecing together a mature thought that I often still look to with admiration:

“I guess I’m going to rehab. But I’m going to make the most of this decision. It will be a new experience and I’ll go into it with openness, non-judgment, willingness and curiosity. If this has to happen, let’s make it a great story.”

Within two hours, I was on a plane to Wilderness Treatment Center in Montana for a 60-day, all-male, inpatient addiction program.

A demarcation line drawn right in the sand. After that, everything changed.

Hardly anyone knows my rehab story.

I rarely tell it. It’s not part of my story that I’ve share a million times, the one that starts at 22, not 18. I just leave out rehab for some reason, even though that experience drastically altered the course of my life. I ended up staying sober for four years. Going to rehab influenced my decision to go to college, which fueled my entrepreneurial spirit, which energized my ambitions, leading me to buy a one-way ticket to Europe, which eventually led to spray painting LIVE A GREAT STORY on a wall, another of my life’s grandest demarcation points.

Was I an alcoholic or addict? No. I met those guys at rehab and I heard their war stories. Surely a lot of them are dead, statistically. They were on a whole other level. Sure, I was negligent with my consumption, aggressively defiant of family rules and admittedly by body just isn’t designed for alcohol, but did all of this warrant a two-and-a-half-month stint in Montana followed by another four at a halfway house? Probably not. However, retroflectively, I understand my mom’s perspective and choice to force upon me a demarcation point that would completely alter the direction of my life.

I rarely share this story. Most of my friends probably don’t know, unless we were the ones sneaking out in high school. I’m not really sure why I don’t share it. Maybe because I went back to drinking. Maybe it was because that part of my story is just way way back. Maybe because I see my adult story starting when I dropped out of college. Maybe because… who knows. But it’s part of my story. And, really, addiction or even habitual substance use is part of a lot of people’s stories. So maybe sharing this part of my story will inspire other people who are facing a similar. Quitting drinking for four years in early adulthood was one of my best life decisions. Quitting drinking in my 30’s was round two of the same decision, and I can’t emphasize the positive impact the second time around.

It’s been awhile since I posted a Youtube so I’m excited to share this raw footage from this year’s Serengeti Safari trip.

-z