My motivation

Independence. People go through Hell to achieve it. Nations have been divided and reborn, relationships have been destroyed and made stronger, outcasts drift further away while socialites climb the rungs of society. We all find independence or die trying.

I am no more special than you or anyone of your friends, yet somehow I seem to have broken the chains of society and achieved a level of independence that many of the people within my circles only wish to obtain.

My secret? I did it while I was young! A cliche thing to say, yes? But it is not at all a cliche thing to do.

When I was young, I had many older and wiser people telling me to “do it while you are young.” They mentored me. They encouraged me. They empowered me to feel like I had permission to try. They created the conditions by which I was able to claim independence for myself.

The only thing that separated me from my peers is that one day, I stopped listening to all the cliches and started doing, starting living.

I have had an extraordinary life. Pick any chapter, and it might sound like a once in a lifetime opportunity. But these experiences have been back to back to back.

Now that I am a little older and a little wiser, I feel compelled to be one of those encouraging voices in the lives of others. I want to encourage you to do it while you are young.

Everyone has a story. This book is mine. I don’t intend to showcase myself or argue that I am better than anyone. On the contrary, I hope to drive home the point that I am utterly average in every way. In some areas, I am below average. One thing is for sure: I have had just as many obstacles in life as anyone.

I will take a moment now and introduce you to a brief story of my life. Some further details will emerge later, but I believe you would like to know who the author of this book is, and what motivates me to write these pages for you. In the course of this book, I will share many philosophies and concepts I’ve picked up in my travels around the world and throughout my diverse career. This brief biography aims to orient you around how all this came to be.

I was born in 1983 as the second child to two Baptist ministers and academics in the suburbs of Lexington, Kentucky.

My first memory is from when I was three years old and living in Campbellsville, Kentucky. I was with my best, and first, friend, Trey.

My fourth year as a little human remains, even 32 years later, to be the worst one so far. I had no love for the preschool I attended during the one year we lived in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. This year proved to be terrible for the whole family, except my brother.

From ages five through 14, we lived once again in Lexington. My father was a sociologist for the Center on Aging at the University of Kentucky. My mother got her second master’s degree; the first was in fine arts, the second in divinity.

Through these years living in Lexington, a family vacation often involved providing testimony to the United States Congress in Washington, D.C. We even met the First Lady a few times. The topic of our deposition was always around healthcare reform. Specifically, to improve access to healthcare for children with disabilities. After hearing our story, First Lady Clinton even visited my brother once in Louisville.

One notable exception to the D.C. vacations that became routine, was a trip to Disney World when I was seven. I got to ride Space Mountain with my granny. It was great.

By age 13, I had made five trips to D.C. I also made an uncountable number of road trips to Louisville to visit my brother, who spent his last four years living at the Home of the Innocents¹, an in-patient nursing home for children with severe disabilities. He had dyskinetic cerebral palsy since birth.

My last year in Lexington was my first year in high school. It was also when I got my first job, delivering newspapers with my dad. We would start working in the early morning and then have breakfast with the jockeys at the Keeneland horse race track.

I attended two high schools that year because a last-minute redistricting sent me to the rival school. At that school, I was in a masterful music program. The Lafayette High School Marching Band ranked #8 that year in a national competition. Despite that great opportunity, I could not find happiness there, separated from my childhood friends. So I transferred to my “rightful” place after New Year.

A month later, in February 1998, my brother died at age 16 during The Forgotten Snowstorm, which dumped over 22 inches of snow on Louisville.² The cause of death was complications of acute respiratory infection. He was en route to the hospital down the street, but couldn’t reach it in time because of the blizzard. His name is Lew Jessen Moore, and his struggle in life motivates me every day to live the life he couldn’t.

Shortly after that, dad got a job offer in his native Louisiana. It was a perfect opportunity with perfect timing. The family needed a change of scenery, and this fit the bill. My parents had worried that it could be tumultuous to relocate a child in high school. When they approached me with the idea of moving, I had my bags packed before they got to the end of the sentence.

In Alexandria, Louisiana, I found myself faced with an opportunity to shift my thinking from little fish, big pond, to big fish, little pond. The next years are a whirlwind, and it is in these years that I started to form a world view for myself.

During my first week in Alexandria, I attended the summer band practices for my new high school marching band. The band director was also directing the orchestra for the community theater’s upcoming run of South Pacific. He needed a drummer. I took the gig.

The community theater and arts organizations of Central Louisiana became a part of my family, so much so that my mother says, “it takes a community theater to raise a child.”

After one year of attending high school number three, I decided that I was not satisfied with my music education and sought another transfer. I found the perfect fit and had an incredible junior year. Entering this year is also when I attended a summer camp organized by the local Rotary Clubs, which would change my life.

It is this camp, and the events of that week, which sets the foundation for this book, though it took me a decade of reflection to figure that out.

In what would have been my senior year, my life took a turn: I moved to Germany for one year. I attended a German school, my fifth high school, for those of you keeping count. I lived with two German host families. I made lifelong German friends, as well as friends from all over the world. Many of them from Brazil.

My eyes opened. My life would never be the same.

I returned to Alexandria and learned that if I went back to school number three, I could graduate in half a year, but I would have to give up music. I took that deal, got a job, saved money, graduated in January, and because I’d had such a hectic high school experience, I decided university should be more “normal.” Therefore, I had six-months to fill until I would start university in the fall.

I made a decision.

My principal, my councilors, my teachers all told me that this decision would be my life’s greatest regret. They told me that I was too young to understand. They begged me to reconsider. But no. I stood my ground. My decision meant that I would miss my senior prom, my high school graduation ceremony, and other momentous occasions which are indeed fond memories for those who have them. I wouldn’t wear the cap and gown, and I wouldn’t receive my diploma while being congratulated as I walked across that auditorium stage.

Instead: I backpacked Brazil for those six months. That experience changed everything about me. I came face-to-face with real poverty for the first time. I also became familiar with how true happiness looks.

I returned to America a changed person. My mother, to this day, believes that I had a brain transplant in Brazil.

Now it was time to enter university. The next years were somehow typical. Precisely the experience I had hoped to have. I only attended three universities across five years. I studied political science and was hyper-involved in student life, student government, the university ethics committee, and a fraternity. I even had a student job with the Louisiana State University Athletics Department, just as my dad did decades before.

Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans in 2015. Baton Rouge was the next major city, and so the residents of the Big Easy came to our lifeboat. I went to volunteer at the American Red Cross. I spent some weeks in shelters, and then somehow, I was hired to rewrite their emergency response plan. I spent two years doing that until I graduated.

Somewhere in there, my best friend “went to Hollywood” on season four of American Idol. I was the drummer in his band. We all moved to Las Vegas for the summer and played music on the Strip. The rest of the group stayed there to pursue music, but I was too close to graduation and went home to finish my education.

Just before graduation, I realized that my education was not something I wanted to put to use in my career. I panicked. Then, the universe righted itself, and I received an offer for a dream job.

From 2007 to 2009, I was a concert promoter based out of Memphis, Tennessee. I organized concerts for the likes of Taylor Swift, ZZ Top, Three Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin, Wyclef Jean, Jason Aldean, Eric Church, and many more.³ Yes, I met them all and have many stories from backstage, tour busses, and private jets.

I loved my work, and it seemed like I was good at it. But I wasn’t happy.

I shifted to a retreat center in Chattanooga to manage events for a leading sales coach, author, and keynote speaker. He worked primarily in the automotive industry, and on June 1, 2009, General Motors went bankrupt and sent shivers through our office.

Quitting this inspiring job, in this fantastic place, with those amazing people, was one of the hardest things I have ever done. But I had decided that I could not live a life wondering, “what if?” So I moved to London.

London didn’t last long. I had arranged a job with a work visa, but just before my arrival, my employer died, and I lost the job and the right to work. I could not find another job before my savings ran out. Being broke and without any apparent options, I started to get desperate. Then the phone rang, and I was asked to move to New Orleans to work in student life at Loyola University.

The world of academia felt familiar. Academia was, after all, my parent’s world. The world in which I grew up. However, it did not take long for me to figure out that it was not my world.

I had been doing some freelance web development work on the side. I’ve always been interested in technology. I built my first website when I was seven. I wasn’t technically advanced, but I had some highly sought after skills and could make some extra cash helping people out. I had two friends who were sharing a lot of similar work, and I partnered up with them from time to time, especially when I found myself out of my depths.

As soon as the sunset on Mardi Gras of 2010, I loaded up my car and drove to Los Angeles to be closer to the two business partners. We had a thriving little business building political campaign websites. It flourished until the election, and then there was no more money. Oops.

Those six months in Los Angeles made a significant impact on me. I learned a lot about life, business, and sleeping on a futon. I had no disposable income, and it didn’t matter, I still accomplished everything I aimed to achieve. I made great friends whom I meet and travel with even to this day.

One person I met there had recently received his acceptance into the Peace Corps. He heard my story and my interests. He saw that I was living without a lot of direction. I shared that I had the goal of serving in the Peace Corps one day. He asked me the best question, “why not today?”

Six months later, I was in Kyrgyzstan.

From 2011 I served as an economic development volunteer in a remote village in western Kyrgyzstan. My assignment was to a community radio station. After a year, I wrote a proposal for a new media platform. Today, seven years later, that platform, Kyrgyz Media⁴, is thriving and is a premier news and storytelling platform in Central Asia.

My time in Kyrgyzstan came to a sudden close when my appendix decided it was time to exit the body. The surgery I had there was old-school and painful. The recovery time was long. Thankfully, all of the T.B. tests came up negative.

Shortly after the surgery, in the spring of 2013, I received an offer to work at a mobile apps development agency in Austin, Texas. This job was an exciting opportunity with the added benefit that it was only 90 miles from where my parents had been living since I graduated from high school.

I spent three years in Austin. It was surprising not to have to buy a car to survive in an American city. I learned a lot at work and was able to enter into a new career category. I reconnected with community service and became a Rotarian. I even had the extraordinary opportunity to spend six months in India on a business trip. Life was good.

Austin was amazing. Indeed, if I am to return to America to live, Austin is the city I feel most likely to call home. But after those initial three years, I couldn’t hold back from scratching the travel itch. There was something that had been on my mind for a long time. I had lived such an extraordinary life, and I had done and seen so many things. I was still so young. Much of what formed my identity had started in Germany, yet I had never revisited Germany.

So I asked myself, “why visit when I can simply move there?” Hallo, summer of 2016!

I found a great job in Product Marketing at a world-leading hotel search website based in Duesseldorf. After one year, I found a path into Product Management, which I had long wanted to do, and can now say with certainty that this is what I want to stick with for a career (besides writing more books, of course!)

After two years, my visa status upgraded, and I was permitted to work for any company in Germany. I looked around, and on the coldest day in December 2018, I moved to Berlin. After getting settled in, I revived my long-held goal to write a book and committed myself to the effort.

Now I sit on my balcony under a summer’s sky and write this book for you.

Thank you for reading.

Judson