I’M BACK IN JAPAN after ten days in Thailand. I didn’t know what to expect from this trip, but it changed me. I’m drained — emotionally, physically, mentally.

So much inspiration that I took from the experience, fuel for the next chapter.

But I’m not yet ready to face the world. My system is processing. Twenty-four hours ago I was leaving my friends, both old and new, in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand. Fourteen hours ago I was in Malaysia for my layover, sleeping in a corner of the Kuala Lumpur airport.

A few hours after that, I sat on the plane, soaring through the clouds, watching as the sliver of a yellow moon rose over a piercing orange morning sky. And now I’m in my Osaka apartment, unable yet to unpack, waiting for another day.

It was hot, dry, bright in Thailand. It’s cold in Japan. I don’t yet know how to feel. I stopped for some soba and two rice balls on my walk from the train station at 9:30 am; it warmed my belly and caught my dazed heart; it brought me home to this country that I love.

There’s one all-encompassing lesson that stands out from the last two weeks. It started on the dance floor on one of my first nights in Bangkok.

I was partying with my friends, and this guy started peacocking on our group. He seemed harmless, but obviously just wanted to party with the girls from my group.

I have to give it to him though, he was confident. He had fun by himself on the dance floor and I always gotta respect that. I like to dance and sometimes, that’s me in his position. We were both getting after it with the squad until it was just us.

You’re good man, he said, own it.

That hit hard.

I dance because I just want to let my freak flag fly a bit, but I suppose he could tell there was more I was holding back, ever slightly.

His encouragement stuck with me. It applies to everything. That advice inspired the rest of my trip, so merci, random French dude.

Own your uniqueness. Own your experience. Own your weird, peculiar, beautiful character and style. Go all in on you.

His simple words mean even more than just owning who you are.

It means to lean into whatever experience you’re having, whatever it is in this moment. Lean into life, into her, into him, and let go of the fear. What’s on the other side is living. Truly, the way you’re meant to.

In Thailand I kept finding myself wondering, What really matters in this life? It’s hard to know until you ask. Until you go and discover what matters to you.

And how do you know what matters to you? You pay attention to the things that make you feel alive instead of dead. You adhere to those whispers which call you into the unknown, hold your attention, and won’t let go.

You lean into the experiences which feel right intrinsically in your heart and soul, over what should feel right, what we should want, what should make us happy.

What experiences do you want to have before you leave this Earth? What do you not want to regret? That’s the question that matters to me. From what I’ve learned in my young life so far, I’ve learned that I do not want to regret missing things we could only do when we’re young and we can, even if we haven’t achieved the things which are supposed to make us happy or successful yet.

Those things will come, but we gotta discover if we even want them.

Being in Thailand, surrounded by people with a similar mindset, showed me that there are many ways to go about life, an infinite amount of things that might make us happy.

There’s no right way to find what lights our souls on fire, and that’s all that truly matters to me — I long to live a life inspired. The rest will follow.

Until you get out there and discover what matters to you, you’re gonna be following somebody else’s playbook. You gotta write your own.

And I’m scared, too. I’m scared of it all. But I’m more scared of never knowing the wonder of overcoming fear, and the confidence that comes from climbing through it.

I wanna get it all outta this trip of being alive, and we can only do that by fully embracing who we are without holding back an ounce.

Own it, whatever it is, fucking own it.

Because of the advice of mon ami, I started posting what I do when I travel on social media, really embracing the little things I love.

When I travel I do pushups in the morning, even if I’m hungover. I gotta sweat it out. I’d do this on my hostel roof in Bangkok, and I met several friends this way, drenched in sweat, getting after it in the Thai heat.

When I travel I hit little outdoor gyms. This is often what I love most about a city — it’s free outdoor gyms. They can make a trip, becoming part of my daily routine like they became for me in Tel Aviv, Israel and Lisbon, Portugal last summer.

When I travel I walk and I ramble about life. I’m often just in awe. I eat a lot of good food — very important. All of these things I could keep to myself, but I want to make this my life!

Before this trip to Thailand I’d think, I don’t want to look like a try-hard, putting videos of myself working out on Instagram.

But I’m not doing it just for the ‘Gram. I’m doing what I’ve always done, because those morning pushups inspire encouraging thoughts, and those thoughts carry my day in a foreign land, and if I can inspire somebody else to do some pushups when traveling, why the hell not?

If I want to make a brand of my most authentic lifestyle, I can gradually expose a watered-down version of who I truly I am, or I can own it.

I wanna see how far Vinny Van Patten can go if he gave it everything, and if that turns some people off, so be it, that’s not my tribe.

I just don’t give a shit anymore, I wanna love with everything I have. I wanna bleed it all out. I wanna sweat every ounce I have so I may fly lighter, stronger, braver, golden and scorched by the rays of the sun.

I want to own this life, my life, the one that only I could live and share. 

There’s so much to reach for. So much to live for. So much to die for.

And it all means the same damn thing.