I’m undoubtedly unprepared. I’ve kept busy the last few days to keep my nerves from creeping to the surface. Am I terrified? No. Am I overly confident about my plan and my safety? Absolutely not. Am I excited? Heck yes! I booked three nights at a hostel in London before leaving the United States for a solo European adventure I hope will last about two months. Day 4 and beyond is not planned. “I’m keeping the trip super flexible,” I tell myself, my family and friends. To be honest, I have no idea what I am doing. I just know I want to see more of the world and I have found myself with significant free time for the first time ever. Truthfully, we’ll never feel ready to take a big leap but change requires risk and I’m excited to see where it leads me.
I started loosely planning for this trip two years ago. I put it off. I was quite literally living out my dream in Raleigh, North Carolina with a close group of friends, a downtown apartment and a fulfilling and impactful job as an investigative reporter for a local television station. I’ve known I wanted to be a journalist ever since I was eight years old growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I remember racing home from school to watch the news — flipping quickly between the four local channels to see the top story of the day. I knew all the reporters and anchors by name and studied their career paths. I would sit at the kitchen table and read stories aloud from the Philadelphia Inquirer pretending to be sitting at the anchor desk. When I was 11, I started “The Fisher Weekly” — a handwritten family newspaper with a circulation of four homes that delved into my sister’s dating life, my brothers’ choice of hair product and how my parents were spending their time: “Mom has been staying home doing wash and cleaning the house a little more than she should. She is never taking a break,” I wrote in the November 9, 2003 issue. “Dad has been working a lot and bringing home the pancakes.” The family newspaper was short-lived but it ignited my passion for writing, storytelling and creating.
I became the editor-in-chief of Lower Moreland High School’s newspaper, Lion’s Roar, and helped launch the school’s first-ever TV station before becoming managing editor of The Voice, Bloomburg University’s student newspaper and anchor for BUTV, the college’s news station. Before graduating college, I got my first professional paid bylines writing features and news stories for the Press Enterprise, a small newspaper that covered several small towns around the university. I’ll never forget the look of embarrassment — followed quickly by a smile — when the managing editor took a red pen to my first story about a Barney Fife impersonator working the crowds at the Bloomsburg Fair. My copy was messy, unstructured and too long but I found a newsroom of people who were interested in helping me get better. I woke up the next day and drove my 1994 Nissan Sentra from campus to a nearby gas station to pick up a copy of the paper. My story ran on the front page! “Scott Epperson has made a career out of impersonating Barney Fife, even though the original run for The Andy Griffith Show ended 44 years ago,” the first line read.
I shipped off to Lawton, Okla. for my first on-air reporting gig after applying to more than 75 stations across the country. I was first rejected for the Oklahoma job. “After much deliberation, we have chosen another candidate. Good luck in your search,” wrote David Bradley, the news director who emailed me two weeks later to say “due to unexpected circumstances, we have another reporter opening.” The truth? The first guy chose not to move to Lawton. I jumped at the opportunity! The offer came by email. $22,000 salary. Three weeks later, I made the 24-hour, 1,600-mile drive with my mom from Philadelphia to the small city of 90,000 people tucked in the southwest corner of Oklahoma that is home to Fort Sill — one of the U.S. Army’s largest basic training posts. I spent 15 months doing every job in the newsroom — reporting, anchoring, producing, writing web stories, shooting and editing video and even answering phone calls from pissed off viewers. I was hooked!
From Oklahoma to Virginia Beach and then Raleigh, I have always considered it a privilege to wake up everyday, meet new people, ask questions, listen, learn, observe, ask more questions, highlight or solve a problem, bring clarity to a confusing topic and perhaps even make someone smile along the way. Journalists truly do write the first draft of history. I thought reporting was cool when I was 8. I’m even more in love with journalism now and I fully understand that having watchdogs in communities across this nation is essential to the democracy we all value so much. It can be an exhilarating and fulfilling job on the best of days. It can be a stressful and depressing job on the worst of days. Through the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of stressful days easily outnumbered the exhilarating. I like to think I have an upbeat personality and I always try to make people smile through the tough moments and tough days. But in that three-year period, a lot of people were not happy. Rightfully so. People were dying. People were constantly sick. People’s lives were changing. Society was changing. It all felt so out of our control. It was out of our control. Some people stayed at home, limited their contact with others, ordered takeout and watched a lot of Netflix. As a reporter, COVID-19 instantly became the biggest, longest and most important assignment of my career. All of the information was new. It was coming in fast. People needed facts. Lives were on the line. I reported on people dying in nursing homes years earlier than they should have left this world. I reported on small business owners losing the investment they poured their heart, soul and savings into for years and years. I reported on people losing their jobs and having to find new ways to provide for themselves and their families while simultaneously staying healthy. I reported on children, college students and adults alike who experienced isolation and loneliness and felt more anxious and depressed. Perhaps people’s mental health will be longest lasting effect of the pandemic. As a psychotherapist told me in early 2023 during an interview, the majority of young adults seeking professional therapy do not have a positive attitude about the future and their place in the world. I sat in silence for about 10 seconds. It broke my heart. Here’s the thing: I’m an optimist. I believe the future is bright. I believe some of our best days are always ahead of us. My wish is that people can always find gratitude in what they have and find peace in knowing the future is ours to seize.
Still, I have more moments of doubt than I care to admit. Those toxic thoughts creep in slowly but can at times be debilitating to the creative mind. I didn’t take too well to turning 30. And when I turned 31, I started to more seriously wonder some things for myself: What do I want to experience? What will be my impact on the world? How can I best serve others? Who’s lives can I help change for the better? How can I merge my skills and passion to change the world? Truthfully, I think we all can change the world in some way. Our everyday actions in life have the power to impact others and it creates a rippling effect that will eventually change the world. Stop and think about that. Your actions — big or small — can impact someone in such a special way that changes their actions and the next person’s actions and so on.
By the beginning of 2023, I had so many questions weighing heavy on my heart. I started to feel the weight. That trip I started thinking about two years ago that I tucked away in the back of my head started coming into clearer focus. Against every fiber of my motivated being, I put trust in the idea that I needed to stop forward planning to see what new ideas might arise from a newfound state of living in the present moment. To enjoy life, to take more time for people, to create and to explore. In 2018, I reported on a married couple in their 40s who quit their jobs and sold their cars and other belongings to embark on a “life reset” trip around the world. “I think it’s very hard to reflect on your career and your life and what you are doing when you are in the middle of it,” Peter Sengenberger told me. Fast forward five years, I found myself struggling to focus on the present and my goals for the future.
I started planning in earnest for my trip in March 2023 but July came way faster than expected. I just spent a month living with my brother in Los Angeles, decluttering my brain after my first 10 years as a television news reporter. My life has now been condensed into two bags — less than 40 pounds. For a guy who typically shows up to the airport one hour before a flight departure, my three-hour early arrival at Los Angeles International Airport should tell you I’m thrilled for the adventure and equal parts anxious and scared. I’m traveling solo to London. Paris will be my second stop. After that, wherever the world takes me! I have no partner, no kids, no pets, no house — no strings — which is allowing me to keep my travels up in the air. I have always prided myself on having “everything figured out.” Whatever that means. I wore it as a badge of honor. But at this very moment, my life is in flux. Nothing is written in stone. I just believe we have to step outside of our comfort zone to learn, grow and become the best version of ourselves. I’m excited to write, take pictures, meet new people, ask questions, tell fun stories and learn — all of the things I love about my day job without the tight deadlines! My heart is filled with so many questions and I’m so excited to answer some of them.
Song Choice: Starting Over/Chris Stapleton
This song screams “adventure” from the very first beat. My adventure is just beginning. “I ain’t got no kind of plan” perfectly explains my situation and “nobody wins afraid of losing” is a good reminder that winning requires us to “take our chances and roll the dice.”
The Coffee Break 
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