LOST and Found Grass Skirt productions
LOST in HawaiiFound at Sea
The improbable opening that turned Hollywood, island life and deliberate delusion into a decade of permanent travel.
“To continue a life of permanent travel, I had to be completely delusional.”
Not careless. Not unprepared. Delusional enough to believe that a temporary opening could become a life design—and disciplined enough to build the logistics after the leap.
Horace Greeley said go west. I kept going.
I showed up in Hawaii and magical things began to unfold. It started with one uncomplicated decision: go. There was no ten-year operating plan, no promise of permanence and no evidence that the island would reorganise my future. There was only motion.
Maui became OÊ»ahu. A makeshift car-home became a foothold. A marine deploying to Iraq sold me a Saab for one hundred dollars. That improbable car carried me across the island and eventually into a reverse commute from KaÊ»aÊ»awa—through the folds of the KoÊ»olau Range and back toward Honolulu.
The geography mattered. Kaʻaʻawa was not simply an address. It was green vertical country: mountain, rain, trade wind and ocean compressed into one daily view. I was living inside the scenery that television used to represent elsewhere.
The Reverse Commute
Kaʻaʻawa to Honolulu: a daily passage through mountain weather, film-country landscapes and the growing suspicion that ordinary life had already ended.
The $100 Threshold Vehicle
It was transportation, shelter, evidence and metaphor: not glamorous, but moving in the correct direction.
Beyond the Edge of the Map
Hawaii did not feel like the destination. It felt like the launch platform for Fiji, the Pacific and the ocean-going life to come.
Before I found the sea, I got LOST.
An unexpected opportunity connected me to LOST, the ABC television series being made on Oʻahu. The island could become almost anywhere on camera: tropical wilderness, anonymous coastline, another country, another time. For me, the production was not simply entertainment. It was proof that an invented world could create real employment, real relationships and real momentum.
I had arrived without a conventional plan and suddenly found myself inside a story about people stranded between their old identities and whatever came next. The parallel was difficult to miss. I was not stranded, but I had deliberately stepped outside the old map.
The television series was called LOST. The personal experience was the opposite: it gave the next chapter coordinates.
Hawaii Film Studio
The improbable workplace that turned a speculative move into a lived chapter.
Inside the Story World
A television set is organised magical thinking: imagination supported by schedules, crews, craft and relentless execution.
Proof of Proximity
Sometimes the first reward for following the impulse is not the final destination. It is proximity to people and places that make the next move imaginable.
Production context: HawaiÊ»i Film Office records identify LOST as an ABC/Disney Hawaii-based series made on OÊ»ahu. Kualoa’s KaÊ»aÊ»awa Valley was among the island landscapes used by the production.
Magical thinking became a navigation instrument.
Hawaii placed me in a psychological space that encouraged exploration, oneness and what I can only call mystical coincidence. I encountered teachings described to me through the language of Huna, mana and life force. I did not treat them as a substitute for effort. I treated them as a way of noticing alignment.
Joseph Campbell’s idea of following your bliss gave that alignment a narrative form. His promise was not that life becomes effortless. It was that commitment reveals doors that were invisible from the safe side of the threshold.
“Follow your bliss, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”
Attention
What looked like coincidence became usable information: who appeared, what opened and which direction generated more life.
Intention
The dream stayed deliberately larger than the current evidence. That excess created a direction before it created a plan.
Action
Bliss without movement is mood. I kept converting inspiration into applications, contracts, certifications, passages and departures.
Respect
This is my personal account of ideas I encountered in Hawaii—not a claim to speak for Native Hawaiian culture or spiritual authority.
Field Note: Hidden hands versus visible work
Campbell’s “hidden hands” did not remove the need for logistics. They seemed to appear after a commitment had already been made. The pattern was consistent: decide, move, meet the next person, acquire the next capability, repeat. Mystery may have opened the door. Preparation made it possible to walk through.
Listen to the Hawaii-to-horizon story.
Huna, Hollywood and the Open Ocean
The Hawaii chapter: following bliss, entering the LOST story world and discovering the route toward a maritime life.
Who Wants to Be a Time Millionaire?
The philosophy that came later: experiences over possessions, freedom over accumulation and time as the real measure of wealth.
The Weightless Life in a Heavy World
A digital and geographic life built from portability: skills, stories and relationships carried farther than possessions.
The delusion became an operating model.
Hawaii was not the final chapter. It was the rehearsal for a life that would no longer require a conventional home. The next version moved onto ships: first through work, then through love, then through a deliberate practice of permanent travel.
I lived on cruise ships, worked across departments and eventually travelled as a guest entertainer and World Cruise Coordinator. The ship provided the infrastructure: room, meals, transport, community, schedule and horizon. My job was to remain useful enough to keep moving.
Sarah and I became what I call the privileged homeless. The phrase is intentionally paradoxical. We were not without shelter or support. We were without the fixed address most people use to organise identity. Home became a person, a ship, a cabin number, an airport code—or the next contract.
A lifestyle that does not require permission from geography.
- Live where the opportunity is.
- Measure wealth in usable time.
- Let movement create the network.
- Assume the next door exists before it is visible.
Freedom supported by systems, credentials and repeatable value.
- Seafarer training and maritime credentials.
- Teaching, entertainment and coordination capability.
- Portable work, lightweight possessions and digital records.
- Contracts, compliance, travel documents and operational discipline.
Magical thinking chose the horizon. Operational thinking kept the booking.
The Call to Adventure, Repeated
American Hawaii Cruises turned the island chapter into shipboard capability. The open ocean was no longer scenery. It was the workplace.
The Island from the Water
Once viewed from a ship, Hawaii became both origin and bearing: the place where land taught me how to leave it.