Several years ago, someone glanced over my shoulder while I was working on a spreadsheet and laughed.
“Why do you have trips planned four years in advance?”
I laughed too.
At the time, they were only seeing a small piece of it.
The spreadsheet already stretched years into the future. It contained destinations, museums, cycling routes, national parks, hiking trails, road trips, historical sites, strange attractions, and adventures I hoped to experience one day. What they could not see was the overflow list. When the spreadsheet became too full, I created a second section for ideas that would not fit.
Today, that spreadsheet contains more than 2,000 lines.
It grows almost constantly.
When I meet someone during my travels and they tell me about their favorite place, it goes into the spreadsheet. When I hear about a hidden museum, a little-known hiking trail, a historic building, an obscure roadside attraction, or an unforgettable restaurant, it goes into the spreadsheet. When I stumble across something online that sparks my curiosity, it goes into the spreadsheet. Occasionally, I wake up in the middle of the night with an idea and add it to the spreadsheet before I forget.
The list keeps growing.
Then, eventually, I schedule it.
To some people, that sounds excessive.
To me, it feels necessary.
Because I learned something many years ago.
“Someday” is not a date.
If I truly want something to become part of my life, I have to create space for it.
The spreadsheet is how I create that space.
The interesting thing is that the spreadsheet did not begin because I loved planning travel.
It began because I wanted a different life.
About nine years ago, I started taking solo trips.
At the time, I did not fully understand why I felt drawn to them. Looking back now, I realize those adventures arrived at exactly the right moment in my life.
For decades, I had been carrying responsibilities.
The business needed things.
Customers needed things.
Employees needed things.
Family needed things.
There was always a problem waiting to be solved, a customer waiting for an answer, or a responsibility waiting to be carried.
Then I started traveling alone.
Something unexpected happened.
The noise disappeared.
There was nobody asking me to solve anything.
Nobody calling with an emergency.
Nobody expecting me to carry the weight of their problems.
For the first time in a long time, I could hear my own thoughts.
I spent long hours hiking trails, driving unfamiliar roads, wandering museums, exploring cities, and sitting quietly in places where nobody knew my name. Sometimes I had a destination. Sometimes I was just following curiosity.
The farther I traveled, the more I realized I was not escaping my life.
I was discovering it.
Many of the most important questions I have ever asked emerged during those trips. They appeared on mountain trails, beside rivers, during bicycle rides, and while driving across vast stretches of highway with nothing but landscape and silence.
Those adventures helped me realize there was a difference between being alive and truly living.
For years, I had been successful at managing life.
I had not spent nearly enough time experiencing it.
Around the same period, I started making different decisions as a father.
When my daughters Natalie and Annabelle were younger, holidays created an interesting dilemma. Like most parents, I wanted to give them things that mattered. The more I thought about it, however, the more I found myself questioning the traditional approach.
Another toy.
Another gadget.
Another item destined to be forgotten.
None of those things felt particularly meaningful.
So I started giving my daughters experiences.
Some holidays included presents.
Many included adventures.
Instead of another object, we might take a trip.
Instead of another purchase, we might explore a place we had never seen before.
Instead of accumulating things, we accumulated stories.
At the time, I did not fully appreciate what was happening.
Looking back now, it seems obvious.
The toys disappeared.
The stories remained.
One winter during the holiday season, the girls and I traveled to Colorado.
By many people’s standards, the trip made very little sense.
We stayed in a yurt high in the mountains.
There was no electricity.
No running water.
No television.
Our light came from lanterns, candles, flashlights, and moonlight reflecting off the snow.
The bathroom was down a snowy trail away from the yurt. During daylight, the walk felt adventurous. At night, bundled against the cold and navigating through the darkness with flashlights, it felt slightly absurd.
The girls alternated between excitement and complaining.
As children should.
Yet despite the discomfort, that trip became one of the most memorable adventures we ever shared.
At night we played card games under candlelight. I honestly cannot remember which game we were playing. What I remember is the laughter.
The kind of laughter that arrives unexpectedly and becomes impossible to stop.
One person says something silly.
Someone else adds to it.
Before long, nobody can breathe.
Tears are rolling down faces.
The game itself becomes irrelevant.
The moment becomes the memory.
Years later, I can still picture us sitting in that yurt laughing so hard that none of us could speak.
Durin the week, we were driving through the mountains when the GPS repeatedly instructed us to turn onto “Dam Road.”
For reasons known only to children, this was endlessly hilarious.
Every time the GPS repeated the phrase, another round of laughter began.
By the end of the drive, I am not sure any of us could hear the words “Dam Road” without cracking up.
Again, it was not an important moment.
It was simply life.
But those moments became part of our family story.
That is the funny thing about memories.
The moments that stay with us are rarely the ones we expect.
The highlight of the trip arrived later in the week.
One morning we bundled ourselves into layers of winter clothing, attached microspikes to our boots, and started hiking toward a glacier lake.
The trail was snow-covered.
The wind was relentless.
The girls were not entirely convinced this had been a good idea.
Truthfully, there were moments when I was not either.
There were complaints.
A few tears.
Negotiations.
Questions about whether we could turn around.
But we kept moving.
Step by step.
The farther we climbed, the more dramatic the landscape became. Towering mountains surrounded us. Snow stretched in every direction. The wind felt determined to push us backward.
Eventually we reached the lake.
Frozen solid.
A sheet of ice surrounded by snow-covered peaks.
Standing there felt like stepping into another world.
Carefully, we walked across the frozen lake.
The wind howled.
The girls grumbled.
The adventure continued.
Years later, none of us talk about the cold.
None of us talk about the discomfort.
We talk about the experience.
We talk about standing in the middle of a frozen mountain lake.
We talk about the beauty.
We talk about the challenge.
We talk about surviving it together.
Every time we do, we smile.
That trip taught me something important.
The best gifts I ever gave my daughters were rarely wrapped.
They were experiences.
As the years passed, my adventures changed again.
Then Paula entered the story.
Many of my early trips were solitary. They were opportunities for reflection, curiosity, and self-discovery. When Paula entered my life, the adventures expanded in ways I never anticipated.
Suddenly there was another person willing to say yes to unusual plans.
Another person willing to explore.
Another person who viewed adventure as an opportunity rather than an inconvenience.
Before long, her boys joined us.
Then her parents joined us.
Trips that once consisted of a single traveler turned into family experiences.
The circle kept growing.
The stories kept growing.
The joy kept growing.
That progression taught me another lesson.
Adventure is wonderful alone.
It becomes even more meaningful when shared.
Somewhere along the way, I started referring to all of this as Joyopoly.
At first it was a tagline.
Then it became a philosophy.
Growing up, Monopoly taught me one set of rules.
Acquire.
Accumulate.
Own.
Grow.
Win.
American culture often teaches similar lessons. We are encouraged to pursue bigger houses, bigger titles, larger bank accounts, greater status, and endless accumulation. Success is frequently measured by what we own.
I understand that mindset.
I lived it.
I worked hard.
Built careers.
Earned degrees.
Accumulated achievements.
The problem was not that success is bad.
The problem was that I eventually realized I was measuring the wrong things.
The experiences that brought me the greatest joy had almost nothing to do with accumulation.
They involved connection.
Learning.
Curiosity.
Adventure.
Nature.
Friendship.
Family.
Stories.
So I changed the scorecard.
Monopoly asks:
“What do you own?”
Joyopoly asks:
“What have you experienced?”
Monopoly rewards accumulation.
Joyopoly rewards participation.
Monopoly rewards ownership.
Joyopoly rewards connection.
Monopoly encourages people to collect things.
Joyopoly encourages people to collect stories.
Most importantly, Monopoly eventually produces one winner.
Joyopoly gets better when shared.
Today my spreadsheet continues growing.
More than 2,000 lines.
More adventures than I will ever complete.
More possibilities than one lifetime will likely contain.
And that is perfectly fine.
The spreadsheet is not really about travel.
It is about intention.
Every line represents curiosity.
Every line is a reminder that there is still more to see, learn, experience, and discover.
For years, I believed success meant accumulating enough.
Enough money.
Enough accomplishment.
Enough recognition.
Enough security.
Today I ask different questions.
Did I learn something?
Did I experience wonder?
Did I spend meaningful time with people I love?
Did I contribute something positive?
Did I create a memory worth keeping?
Did I actually live today?
If the answer is yes, then it was a successful day.
When people ask why I changed my name to Jeffery Joyous Journey, they often assume the answer begins in a courtroom.
It does not.
The answer begins here.
With a spreadsheet.
A joy list.
A bicycle ride.
A mountain trail.
A road trip.
A frozen lake.
A yurt lit by candlelight.
Three people laughing until they cried.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped measuring life by what I accumulated and started measuring it by what I experienced.
I stopped playing Monopoly.
I started playing Joyopoly.
And for the first time in my life, I felt like I was finally playing the right game. 🌈📖
Can't wait for the next chapter.