I stumbled across Kim’s blog So Many Places last year when Adrian and I were in the final stages of planning our trip to SE Asia and working to get The Beautiful Occupation online. I was instantly hooked by her brilliant and honest writing and have been a faithful reader ever since. It just so happened that Kim and Brian were set to leave for their long anticipated trip around the world a few short weeks before us which made me feel like we were connected in a strange way so when we had the chance to meet up with Kim and Brian in Nepal, it’s safe to say I was just a little excited! Once again we were a few steps behind them. They were just finishing up the Annapurna Circuit as we were preparing to start and they generously offered us invaluable information about the trek.
Dinner in Pokhara, Nepal with Brian (bearded man on the left) & Kim (far right) and fellow trekkers.
Kim has just released her first book – Life on Fire: A Step by Step Guide To Living Your Dreams – and I’m thrilled to share with you our recent conversation. After years of suppressing her dream of being a writer and traveling the world she reached her breaking point and made the courageous decision to listen to the voice within her and to tell the truth about what she really wanted. It was the first bold step toward living the life of her dreams. In her book she walks us through the process and offers a supportive hand to anyone interested in living a life on fire (psst, that’s you!)
Ashlie: First of all, I freaking love the name Life on Fire.
Kim: Thank you.
Ashlie: Does that have any sort of meaning to you? Where did that come from?
Kim: Well, originally I wanted to call the book Ignite because I thought of it as something that would hopefully spark people to live their dream – like a kick in the butt, you know?
Ashlie: Yeah.
Kim: But I googled that and it was already taken so someone who was reading the book early on said you should do something about Life on Fire, you keep mentioning it in the book and she outlined every place in which I’d mentioned having a life on fire and I thought yeah, of course, it’s the perfect title. I want people to feel like their life is on fire.
Ashlie: I wanted to read it just as soon as I heard the title so, it works! You’re perfect to write this book because you’ve been through the process yourself and you talk a lot in the beginning about having this deep seeded dream that was lying dormant for awhile. I think it’s perfect how you refer to it as an inconvenient truth.
Kim: Yeah, isn’t it? {laughing}
Ashlie: Perfect way to say it. At what point was it so inconvenient for you that you couldn’t ignore it any longer?
Kim: It was around the point in time where I started having so much anxiety that I literally would be at work and I would have to run to the bathroom. I would be sitting in my desk and I would hear, not like a real voice, but it was like the inside of me was screaming at me that I was unhappy and this wasn’t what I wanted. For so long I had been able to kind of shut it up or stuff it down I suppose, ignore it and I couldn’t anymore. The voice was getting louder and louder. I would get out of my office chair and run into the bathroom at work, lock myself in the bathroom stall and literally try to talk myself down from this impending panic attack because I just couldn’t ignore what was going on inside me anymore. I just couldn’t do it. Then, a few weeks later – this was kind of going on for a couple months – and then at one point I was running alone in the woods and it pops up again and I knew I have a choice. I can listen or I ignore it and if I ignore it something inside of me that matters a lot to the core of who I am will … be gone.
Ashlie: It will die.
Kim: Yes, it will die. So am I willing to let it die? And I wasn’t … and then that was terrifying.
Ashlie: Talk about a point where the roads diverge, that’s a big moment of choice.
Kim: Heck yeah!
Ashlie: You say at one point in the book that that’s the hardest part. That moment, that acknowledging to yourself what you really want, is the most difficult part of the process.
Kim: I say absolutely! It’s by far the most terrifying part. Telling the truth especially if it’s a truth that doesn’t fit with your life. If the truth is I want to wear a blue shirt today, fine. But if it’s like …
Ashlie: Do you think at that point you could initially sense the amount of sacrifice it would take – is that the kind of truth you were coming to?
Kim: Yeah, I think that’s why it was so scary. I knew that if I opened that door I couldn’t control everything that rushed out of it. I thought what will this do to my marriage? Will I have to give up my marriage? Am I willing to do that? I’m going to have to give up my career, all of my things. I saw everything rush out the door and I didn’t know what I would end up with.
Ashlie: I can totally relate. Everything that you outlined really resonates with me. I’m excited that it’s out there for people to have. You’ve obviously transformed your relationship to fear. How do you relate to fear now vs how you related to it then?
Kim: I think I’m just not afraid of fear. I still have fear but I’m more comfortable with it in my life. I used to think that when something was scary it meant that I shouldn’t do it. Like I say in the book, I thought of fear as a red flag. Now I know it’s not. Now I know that fear just sort of comes along with any big change whether you want to quit your job and travel like me or you want to start a family or whatever you want to do, it’s terrifying if it’s big and it’s going to have lots of implications. But fear is just going to be there anyway.
Ashlie: I have a lot more value on courage at this point in my life.
Kim: Great way to say it.
Ashlie: I think another brilliant thing you point out in the book is how closely related fear and excuses are. They seem to be best friends, don’t they?
Kim: They kind of go hand in hand. I think it’s easy to come up with an excuse when you have something that’s really scary. It’s so easy to talk yourself out of things or have this flash of truth and then find all of the reasons why you could never do it. That’s fear talking.
Ashlie: At one point you said – I could hear the conviction in the words – you said Let’s just get this out of the way, excuses are bullshit. That is the voice of someone who has confronted all of their excuses and slayed them down! You start to have very low tolerance for that type of bullshit.
Kim: Yes, totally. {laughing}
Ashlie: I can hear you screaming it to people.
Kim: Cause you know people will read the book and be like well, that’s her experience but I can’t do whatever I want to do for this and this and this and this and this reason. Listen, I know you have a ton of good reasons. It doesn’t matter who you are I’m sure you could give me a million reasons why you can’t do it – but it’s bullshit. What do you want?
Ashlie: Part of the process for you seemed to be about building a sense of trust in yourself, taking these little steps that really proved to yourself and to the Universe that you were serious about what you wanted. You don’t just wake up feeling big and bold and courageous?
Kim: No, you really have to commit yourself. Like I say in the book, if it were easy you would’ve already done it. It’s not easy. That’s why it’s looming there in the distance, why you’re so afraid of it and have all these reasons you can’t do it. I think it helps to be the kind of person that – to know that you’ll show up for yourself. I think even if we don’t let other people down so often we let ourselves down and we have to know we won’t let ourselves down. If we commit to something, even if it’s a small little tiny thing that will move us one step closer to where we want to be – if we tell ourselves we’re going to do that, we have to do that. We have to know that we’re going to show up for ourselves. If we let ourselves off the hook then we just don’t get anywhere.
Ashlie: Undertaking a book is a big process, yes? How was that for you?
Kim: It was fun. I guess fun’s not the word. It was exciting at first. The first thing I did was I just sat down and said I’m not going to worry about typos, I’m not going to worry if this makes sense or ties together, if I say the same thing fourteen times – I literally just sat down and let it all come out. That was really fun and liberating to just get all the words down. And then the process of editing it was hellll. That took five times longer than the actual writing of it.
Ashlie: That’s where the hard work comes in. You talk a lot about that too, you have to be willing to do the hard work and there are parts of everything that nobody likes but …
Kim: Right, right. It’s not going to be all cake and dancing.
Ashlie: You eluded in this book about another. Are you working on another project already?
Kim: I have this ultimate dream book. Right before Brian and I left to travel our friends gave us this gift which I call the Yellow Envelope. They gave it to us in a yellow envelope, wrote a note and what was inside the envelope was some money and this request that we give this money away around the world – being the conduit for their giving when we saw the opportunity.
Ashlie: Brilliant gift.
Kim: Yeah. I thought this is what I want to write about, this is what I want my book to be about, I want to tell this story so … that’s the book I plan to write someday but we’re still in the middle of it. We haven’t given all the money away yet. When we do give the money away, I sit down, I take notes and I sort of try to capture what the place looked like and how the whole experience felt. Someday I’ll sit down and write that book, once we’re done traveling and back home.
Ashlie: Ok, you quit your job, you sold your stuff, you traveled for thirteen months, you’ve written a book, you’ve definitely established yourself as a writer – you’re making all that work. All the things you dreamed, in so many ways, have come to fruition … what else are you dreaming about? How is your dream evolving?
Kim: I want to keep writing more. I still feel like my dream is on the very edge because I am writing a lot – in so many ways, like you said, everything has come to light but I want some sort of level of success so that I can afford to eat {laughing}. That’s the next step. I want to be established enough that I know for sure that I don’t have to go back to a 9-5 kind of life and put writing on the backburner. I don’t want to do that but I do have to make a living somehow writing.
Ashlie: You have to be able to sustain yourself through that?!
Kim: Yeah, that’s the next step.
Ashlie: I get that. So, you leave on Wednesday?
Kim: Uh-huh.
Ashlie: I can’t wait! Are you going to be able to write as you’re walking or will we get a fill in after it’s over?
Kim: No, I do plan on writing. I’m bringing my computer and I’ve heard that there’s good internet access and I’ve actually read some other blogs where people have blogged every day short little blurbs about the day so I kind of want to do that – I’m not exactly sure how it’s going to work out because I don’t want the blogging to get in the way of the experience. The experience comes first. But if it turns out I can do both and I can blog regularly then I definitely will do that.
Ashlie: It’s a big deal to be doing something like that by yourself.
Kim: Yeah, it’s crazy! I’m looking forward to the experience. To tell you the truth I think I’d be a lot more excited if Brian was coming because I have more fun with him.
Ashlie: That’s a good thing!
Kim: It is! But at the same time, I’m glad that I get to do it alone and I needed the push. I probably wouldn’t have done it on my own free will.
Ashlie: I understand that. Well, is there anything else you want people to know about your book, what it offers them or who it’s perfect for?
Kim: I think it’s just perfect for anybody who has something that they really, really want to do. It doesn’t have to be extreme like my dream was. I think it will help anyone even if they’re trying to do something that seems – I don’t want to say simple because that’s not the word … shit, what is the word? Easy? But not easy …
Ashlie: I get what you’re saying. You don’t have to be ready to completely rearrange your life.
Kim: Right, it doesn’t have to be extreme. Maybe you really want to make room for yourself in your life again and whatever that means for you. Maybe you want to start doing yoga?
Ashlie: Maybe you want to open a cupcake shop? You mention that several times (in the book) so I started to wonder if maybe you have a little dream …
Kim: I think I probably just wanted to eat some cupcakes. I’m like, could someone please open a cupcake shop? I want a cupcake. {laughing} Click here to buy Life on Fire: A Step-By-Step Guide For Living Your Dreams Follow Kim’s blog: So Many Places Find her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter.
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