Today, I found some notes that I wrote down before I started my trip around the world. In italics are some pre-amble thoughts and some context. The notes that I wrote before my trip will be in normal font.
It’s been two years now since I started traveling around the world. April 23rd, 2023 was the day that I left America. Absent a daylong layover in Los Angeles on my way from Peru to Bangkok, I haven’t been back to the United States since.
I was initially compelled to write “it feels like a lifetime ago” — but I think it’s more profound than that. It feels like a separate life altogether. We have the same name, the same face, same family and friends… but the Paul Leszczynski of April 22nd, 2023 and the Paul Leszczynski of August 29th, 2025 could not be more further apart.
I look back on the man I once was and feel a rush of emotions. First, there is contempt. Contempt that I would allow myself to become such a pathetic being. But I was pathetic even before I began displaying the outward characteristics of it. I was pathetic even back when I looked (to all outward appearances) like a winner.
So how bad was I two and a half years ago?
This over here is a photo that I took. About a week or so before my trip. This was the bedroom that I lived in while I was in Los Angeles. I shared an apartment with two other men. The original apartment that I moved into had two other people who I got along with incredibly well. But one moved out to the country, and the other moved in with his fiance. And then another roommate who we had brought in moved out as well… into a house that he bought with his two brothers. So I was forced to scour through CraigsList to find a person who I would want to bring in as a roommate. Maybe I just have terrible judgement — or maybe I was such a pathetic wretch back then that no one worth their weight in dogshit wanted to live with me — but the two fellows that I brought in were not people who I wanted to live with.
Three years prior, I was a software sales representative in San Francisco. This is the “winner” years. But, I absolutely hated it. I remember walking home every day and muttering under my breath: “I need to kill myself.” “I need to kill myself” almost became a mantra of mine. Six months before I left SF, I also got an adderall prescription. I hated my life and my job so much that I couldn’t concentrate. When you’re medicating and muttering that you need to kill yourself… it might be time for a change.
My issue was that I misdiagnosed the problem. Living in the United States, you believe that your worth and your happiness is tied to your job and your earnings. I thought that I just hated being a software rep, and that I would be a lot happier if I was able to be the thing that I always wanted: a screenwriter in Hollywood. In February of 2019, I packed my bags and moved down to LA to pursue this dream. By May, I had quit doing sales at all and took a job as a busser in a restaurant to concentrate on screenwriting.
At first, I was happy. I think every major life change comes with a certain endorphin rush. But, after years and years of banging my head against the wall, trying to become a screenwriter, I began demoralized. I stopped writing. I stopped pursuing opportunities and networking and doing all the things that you have to do to “make it” in Hollywood. When I first moved to LA, I noticed that there were lots of people I worked with who wanted to be actors, writers, directors, singers, etc. — but didn’t spend significant time actually pursuing those interests. In my opinion back then (and still now), I believed that they were chasing those pursuits so that they could justify the fact that they were really just waiters who had nothing else going on. By my third year in Los Angeles, I realized that I was slowly becoming one of those people…
Not just that… but my life, the life that I had created for myself in order to pursue the screenwriting that I wasn’t really pursuing anymore, was miserable. I don’t want to go into that many details, but I hated my job, I hated my roommates (as I mentioned) and I wasn’t getting laid. I had become obsessed with FIFA: anything to not comfort the reality of how horrible my life had become. And, so, in October of 2022, I decided to quit my job. I had set up some basic income streams… but not nearly enough. It didn’t matter, I needed to get out.
I lived on scrips and scraps for the next few months, until March 2023, until my business started to pop off. By early April, I was on track to start making 10k per week. I was pumped. I had wanted to go on a trip around the world for my entire life. I remember back when I was 12, I was pitching my mom on letting me go on a trip around the world. It went just as well as you expect. A year before, in May 2022, I was planning a trip, but it fell through. But finally, things were going well enough that I decided to say fuck it… and go.
Anyway, being someone who had wanted to be a screenwriter, I decided that I should write some stuff down. Maybe I was going to make it into a book? I don’t know. I was writing it as a book until after Rio de Janeiro. And then I stopped. By that point, I stopped writing about a life and started focusing on living it. The first two pieces I published on this Substack were contemporaneous pieces I wrote in Rio and on my way to São Paulo about my experiences in Medellin and Rio.
One thing I find ironic about this… I wrote two and a half chapters of the “pre-travel” part of the book. I ended up putting that part on hold because… well… who is really interested in that? But now. Given how foreign of a person my former sense seems to be… that’s the writing that I am the most interested in. I can rewrite any of my stories from my trip from memory. But to be able to go back into the shoes of a man as miserable as I was…
That, for me, is now impossible. At least unless something changes dramatically.
Anyway, I am publishing this for you because if you read this and think to yourself: “man, I completely empathize with him, he sounds just like me.” I don’t mean to insult you or attack you. Again, I am calling myself back then contemptible. Not you now. But if you do have that feeling. If you feel that kinship to a man who was so miserable —
Then maybe it’s time for you to contemplate a trip around the world. And without further adieu…
Part I - Why I’m Traveling Around The World
My life has been jumping from one nervous breakdown to the next.
Four years ago, I was working in software sales. Making six figures. Had a nice apartment. Was able to afford pretty much anything I wanted (within reason).
One year later? I was bussing tables at a restaurant.
To be fair, when I was working in software sales, I would mutter, “I need to kill myself” on my walk home from work every day. I guess I did, in a way.
I moved to Los Angeles for the sandy beaches. Instead, I’ve spent these years staring at the four walls of my bedroom as I attempted to become a writer.
I failed at that, like I do with most things in my life.
And instead of a contract to write the next hit film, I earned four years of regrets of a life not lived - and a lot of experience in the correct way to drop a plate at a table (I still haven’t mastered it).
So, six months ago, I quit and decided that I would go back into sales. I’ve been working as a freelancer - yet… still haven’t started living life again. Something about habits becoming grooves that turn into walls.
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