Returning to the Edge
When I wrote to you last year after my first Arctic expedition, I shared how those voices in your head—the ones that whisper doubt, fear, and every insecurity you've been avoiding—eventually go quiet when you push past them. How the simplicity of purpose on the ice strips away everything but what matters.
I'm writing this from Longyearbyen. Again.
But this time it's different. This time, I'm here a few weeks earlier—darker nights, harsher conditions. This time, I'll be spending more than double the duration on the ice. Equipment check today. Packing the sleds on Monday. We head out Tuesday morning.
A year passes quickly when you're running from yourself. That feeling I described before—when all the voices go quiet and you're left with nothing but presence—it fades. The shadows creep back in. The noise returns. It always does. And before you know it, you're drowning in the comfort of everyday existence again.
So you go back.
You have to.
This isn't just another expedition. It's the next phase of what I've been calling my White Whale Journey. My Misogi if you will. The thing that consumes me, terrifies me, calls to me. Next year: crossing Greenland. 540 kilometers. 25 days on the ice. But first, this.
I'll say the quiet part out loud: this is fucking selfish. I need this. I need to spend 8 to 12 hours a day alone in my head while pushing my body to breaking points. I need that headspace where everything burns away except what's real. Where I can't hide from myself anymore. Where, eventually the dark voices go quiet.
Mental health is downstream from physical health—I've said this before and I'll keep saying it. When you force your body through hell, your mind has no choice but to follow, to adapt, to clear itself of the bullshit that's been accumulating. The magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding. That clarity I found last time? That peace when the voices went quiet? I'm chasing it again. I'm addicted to it. And yes, I'm completely selfish about wanting this.
But there's another side.
I desperately want you—yes, you reading this right now—to do something that scares the shit out of you. Not necessarily dragging a sled across Arctic ice (though I wouldn't discourage it and would be great if you wanted to join me), but something that forces you past your comfortable boundaries.
Because it's nearly impossible to push hard for something when you don't know how fucking good it feels to get it. This is why I share these journeys. This is why I do the mindset coaching. I want to guide people toward that feeling—the raw, unfiltered sense of being completely alive that only comes when you've walked through your own fears. It consumes me—this hunger to see people break their own chains. Not for show, not for me, but because I've been there. I've tasted what lives beyond the fear. Pushing people past their self-imposed limits—watching their eyes change when they finally get it—it feeds something primal in me. Because watching people settle for half-lives when the real thing waits? That's the tragedy I can't swallow.
I need you to see my story as your permission slip. As the match that lights your own fire. Take every frozen step I make, every fear I face, every moment of preparation and use it as jet fuel for the changes you keep putting off. I'm not climbing mountains and crawling across ice so you can watch from a safe distance—I'm doing it so you know it can be done. So you know the barriers you've built are paper-thin against real hunger. Your turn. Your move. The clock is ticking while you wait for a sign that was always there.
Two days out from departure, and yes, I'm pretty terrified. Anxious. Nervous. And I want that feeling. Because change isn't complicated. Never has been. We just dress it up that way so we can keep hiding.
You want different? Then be different. Today. Not tomorrow. Not when conditions improve. Not when others approve. Now. That thing eating you alive inside? Say it. That decision paralyzing you? Make it. That truth you're suffocating? Release it. Stop performing this elaborate dance of hesitation. Stop drafting texts you never send. Stop rehearsing conversations you never have. Stop mistaking contemplation for action.
Your silence isn't wisdom. It's fear wearing a sophisticated disguise. I've watched people waste decades calculating potential reactions, mapping worst-case scenarios, building complex justifications for their immobility. Meanwhile, their lives evaporate in puffs of "someday" and "maybe when." Fuck that. Change doesn't arrive on your doorstep dressed as comfort. It comes as disruption, as the conversation that makes your voice shake, as the decision that feels like stepping off a cliff. Your relationships won't shatter. Your world won't end. Your identity won't dissolve. But something has to break for something new to emerge.
Last year taught me that the real expedition isn't across the ice—it's into yourself. From my journal last time: "This is harder than what I hoped for, but I still want more." That's the paradox that keeps me coming back. The certainty that growth happens only when we're uncomfortable. When we have no choice but to confront ourselves. A year ago, I felt those shadow voices go quiet for the first time in a very long time. I tasted what it's like to exist without their constant commentary. And now I'm back, chasing that silence again, knowing it will cost me even more this time.
The journey starts in two days. I'll be on the ice, in the dark, in the cold, pushing past what I thought possible last year. And somewhere in that vastness, I'll find myself again. Shake hands with myself. The self that exists beyond the noise. The self I can only access when everything else is stripped away.
That's my White Whale.
That's my Misogi.
What's yours?