I grew up in Arizona, drawing and making things long before there was a phone in my hand all day. I spent a lot of time outside. There were cowboys and cactus and rattlesnakes and miles of desert that, at first glance, looked like absolutely nothing. I think living there taught me to look a little harder. The desert is actually full of life, you just have to pay attention long enough to see it.

I moved to Los Angeles for college and studied visual communication. I also failed out for a while, which was probably useful in the long run. During my time away I took classes in journalism and storytelling before eventually going back and finishing my degree. After school I stayed in LA, working as a set designer and art director for a few years until I realized I didn't really want the life I was building. So I quit my job and booked a flight to Indonesia.

I wanted to travel, and if I wanted to keep traveling I needed to figure out how to make money from wherever I happened to be. I taught myself how to illustrate, found an agent, and turned a hobby into a career.

Over the next decade or so I worked with clients including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, TIME and brands around the world. I was illustrating constantly, traveling, doing shows in New York and working on campaigns bigger than anything I'd imagined when I started.

And then I got tired.

Not necessarily of drawing, but of making things all the time because someone needed something made. I had built the career I'd wanted and still had this nagging sense that there was something I was still looking for.

That feeling pulled me into a completely different world. I started studying yoga, meditation, philosophy and the mind. I went on silent retreats, traveled to conferences, completed more than 500 hours of meditation teacher training and spent years experimenting with attention, perception and what happens when you get quiet enough to actually notice your own mind.

The thing I've always been most interested in isn't really illustration or meditation or travel. It's curiosity. I like noticing things. I like asking questions. I like entering worlds I know nothing about and seeing what happens when I stay there for a while.

These days I live in Montana and my work has gotten a little harder to put in a box, which I think is probably a good thing. I still illustrate. I write and tell stories. I teach workshops and classes. I'm exploring experience design and new ways of bringing people together through art, movement, breath, meditation and play. And I've started making my own illustrated investigations into whatever I can't stop wondering about.

Mostly, I'm still doing what I did as a kid in Arizona: looking around, getting curious, and making things out of what I find.