After graduating from college, I found a good engineering job. I was earning decent money, and my wife found a nursing job that paid even better.

But I soon found that the money meant little to me.

I was spending my days in an office, characterizing semiconductor devices and making reports, but what I really wanted was the freedom to spend my time on vibrant life experiences, trying to make a difference in the world.

The promise of a stable, well-paying job seemed to be that, in exchange for giving up the majority of my time, I would be able to afford things that would make me happy. But if the thing that made me happy was free time, wasn’t spending it all at work self-defeating? What if I wanted more time and less money?

Some would say that time is money; I say that’s absurd. Time is a universal property of physics that predates us by billions of years. Money is an arbitrary system created by Homo sapiens a few thousand years ago.

The subjective value of our experience of life does not depend on some digits stored away on a bank server. But that’s exactly the way we’ve come to value life. That’s why we think it’s acceptable for wealthy people to pay pennies for the dirty work of resource extraction and manufacturing, to get cheap products to sell at a massive profit. We act like multiplying wealth is an inalienable right even if it causes social harm, mass extinction, and climate change, as though a “strong economy” somehow makes up for this long-term degradation of life. Once I saw how problematic capitalism is, I couldn’t unsee it.

I was heading down a life path that would require me to spend my days earning money to buy false security and other things I didn’t need, at the expense of what I truly wanted and found satisfying, and it bothered me.

I was also struggling in my marriage. We were best friends, but we were so young when we wed that I didn’t understand who I was or how my goals might change. Though she and I were still on the same page about religion, ethics, and politics, we came to realize that we wanted to lead different lifestyles.

In my first year of engineering, I made a New Year’s resolution to complete 52 day hikes that year because my occasional outings in the past had left me feeling happy and refreshed. Hiking helped me get the much-needed exercise I was avoiding, and multiday backpacking trips offered me access to a tranquil frame of mind I hadn’t known existed. Regular day-long hikes seemed like a reasonable commitment to my physical and mental well-being.

This was also the year when, at age 24, I had an operation to correct my pulmonic stenosis using a valve from a cow’s neck. The valve was placed on the end of a catheter, fed through a major vein near my groin all the way up to my heart, and expanded into place with a balloon at the end of the catheter. It was much better than another open-heart surgery!

A year later, though, I got sick. I had chills during the day, ran a high fever, and sweat profusely at night, which had never happened to me before. I researched the symptoms and correctly diagnosed myself with endocarditis, an infection in the inner lining of the heart. My new heart valve was infected and required six weeks of IV antibiotics to cure.

I hadn’t even been aware that I was at risk for this potentially lethal condition. Even today, everyday activities like brushing my teeth can introduce microbes to my bloodstream, which might travel to my heart and cause endocarditis if I’m unlucky — which is probably what happened. Each time it happens, it becomes more likely to recur.

There’s little I could — can — do to prevent future infections. Antibiotics might not be enough next time. Next time I might need another open-heart surgery to extract the valve, or a dislodged bacterial growth might cause a stroke, paralysis, or organ damage. Maybe I’ll die.

If my open-heart surgery and loss of faith hadn’t already taught me to appreciate life’s ephemeral nature, this new threat of disease pushed me over the edge.

I began to think about how I could experience more freedom, novelty, beauty, and meaning in my life.

I resolved that if there was something I wanted to do in my lifetime, I better do it immediately. Waiting until retirement was too risky. There was no guarantee I’d be alive and healthy by age 30, nevermind 65. I began to think about how I could experience more freedom, novelty, beauty, and meaning in my life.

One of my friends had hiked a big section of the Pacific Crest Trail, a 2,650-mile footpath between Mexico and Canada, and offhandedly suggested that I do it too. Initially, I laughed off the idea as far-fetched, but it lodged itself into my brain. And, as I continued to fall in love with backpacking, I thought about it often.

What would be the point of working all those years to build personal wealth if I never got to do what mattered most to me?

I made plans to enact my escape.