Mark Alan Fish

Three years ago, I left San Francisco, California, and moved to Boise, Idaho.

At the time, I thought I was simply changing where I lived. Looking back, I can see I was beginning to change how I lived.

I didn’t know it then, but that move in June 2023 would eventually lead me to leave my corporate career, let go of most of what I owned, put what remained into a 10×5 storage unit, and head out on the road with no permanent home.

I called it the reMARKable Odyssey.

But lately, I’ve been wondering if the Odyssey actually began long before I gave it a name. Because somewhere across these past three years, I discovered that the most significant geography wasn’t changing around me.

It was changing within me.

Release

When I left San Francisco, I was tired — frustrated, wound up, angry, exhausted. I had loved San Francisco for many years and once believed I would spend the rest of my life in the Bay Area. But eventually, the life around me no longer felt aligned with the life I wanted for myself.

Something inside me knew it was time to go.

So I chose Boise, a city where I knew no one. It gave me something I hadn’t realized how much I needed: space. Space to slow down, reconnect with what mattered to me, and begin pursuing a long-held dream of becoming a coach.

Over the next two years, that space allowed a much bigger question to emerge.

Not simply… Where do I want to live?
But rather… How do I want to live?

That question became louder after I left my corporate career in July 2025. As I went through my journals from that time, I noticed how often I wrote about having too much stuff — things taking up not only physical space, but mental space and energy.

I began wondering what would happen if I let most of it go. What if I put what mattered in storage, released my apartment, and spent a year traveling? What if I loosened my attachment to stuff and places and used this time to explore something entirely different — myself?

So I started releasing: furniture, possessions, my apartment, familiar routines, my definition of home, and, perhaps most importantly, my need to know exactly what came next.

In October 2025, I wrote in my journal: The more I release and let go of, the more freedom I experience, the lighter I feel, the more joy I have, and the better my life gets.

Becoming doesn’t always start by adding something new.

Sometimes it starts by creating enough space for something new to emerge.

Explore

On November 2, 2025, I drove out of Boise toward Sun Valley with the soundtrack from Into the Wild playing in the background.

The reMARKable Odyssey had officially begun.

After several intense years of working and studying, and months of preparing to completely change how I lived, I arrived in Sun Valley — and suddenly, everything stopped. My life became incredibly still. It took nearly two weeks just to unwind and begin settling into this completely different way of living.

That’s where the real exploration began.

Yes, I was exploring new towns, mountains, beaches, coffee shops, and landscapes. But underneath all that external movement, I was exploring myself. Over the months that followed, each place gave me a new opportunity to notice who I was, what I wanted, what energized me, what didn’t, and what I might want to create next.

Not every destination gave me the experience I expected. In fact, several seemed determined to teach me some version of the same lesson:

This may not be the experience I imagined — but perhaps it’s the experience I needed.

I arrived in Coeur d’Alene thinking I might have found my next home. Seven weeks later, I realized I could love a place without needing to live there.

I went to Hawaii imagining sunshine and paradise and arrived just in time for two weeks of back-to-back storms and rain, lots of rain. Yet Hawaii became one of the most intense, reflective, creative, and meaningful chapters of the entire journey.

Months later, Alaska gave me the awe and wonder I had hoped for, but it also gave me an unexpected question: Did I come here because I truly wanted this experience, or because Alaska had become another destination on a checklist?

I was beginning to understand that exploration isn’t simply about going somewhere new. It’s about paying attention to what the experience reveals.

Somewhere along the way, I also became more comfortable not knowing the entire route. I began thinking about Wayfinding — the freedom to move forward without needing the whole map, trusting that presence will reveal the next step and intention will guide it.

I wasn’t lost.

I was learning to navigate in real time.

Choose

Then, during that month in Hawaii, the Odyssey presented me with a decision.

I could continue living completely on the road, moving from one destination to another. Or I could establish a small Base Camp in Boise — a place where I could coach, write, build my business, and regularly launch from to continue exploring.

At first, Base Camp felt dangerously close to giving up. Hadn’t I just released an apartment? Hadn’t I chosen freedom? Was I really going to turn around and get another one?

Eventually, I realized I had confused Romantic Freedom with Real Freedom.

Romantic Freedom said: Keep moving. Stay untethered. Don’t let anything anchor you.

Real Freedom asked a different question: What kind of life actually allows you to do the things that matter most?

That changed everything.

I wasn’t choosing Base Camp to limit my freedom; I was choosing it to expand my range. I wasn’t abandoning the Odyssey; I was redesigning it.

I began to see that I didn’t have to choose between being grounded and being free; I could create a rhythm that allowed for both.

I started calling it Anchored Freedom.

And with it came an identity shift. I was no longer simply the guy traveling the West. I was becoming the guy building a life with movement built into it.

Because exploration without conscious choice can eventually become another form of wandering. At some point, we have to take what we’ve discovered and decide what we want to do with it.

The Cycle of Becoming

Looking back across these three years, I can now see a pattern that wasn’t visible while I was living it:

Release. Explore. Choose.

Release what no longer fits. Explore what might. Choose what does.

And then, eventually, do it again.

Because there is no final destination in becoming. And that’s a good thing. I’ve seen those movies, and they don’t end well.

Becoming is a cycle.

A choice that feels completely aligned today may eventually reveal something else we’re ready to release. A season of stability may create the foundation for a new exploration. An unexpected experience may show us something about ourselves we couldn’t have discovered any other way.

And none of this requires selling your furniture, putting your life into a storage unit, or driving into the mountains with the Into the Wild soundtrack playing.

Becoming requires movement, but movement doesn’t always mean miles.

Sometimes the geography that needs changing is a belief, a career, a relationship, an expectation, an old identity, a definition of success, or a story we’ve been carrying about who we’re supposed to be.

We all have an internal geography. And sometimes we realize we’ve been living somewhere within ourselves that no longer feels like home.

And when that happens, perhaps it’s simply time to begin the cycle again.

Three years ago, I left San Francisco believing I was changing where I lived.

Today, I can see how much farther I traveled.

The man who left San Francisco in June 2023 was frustrated, exhausted, wound up, and angry — but determined to move forward, to create something different. The man writing this today feels free, alive, energized, and eager for whatever comes next.

I’m still traveling. I’m still exploring. And I’m most certainly still becoming.

And perhaps the journey was never really about the geography at all.