Ideas, reflections and stories from D.J. Gifford.
I thought I had travelled the world collecting stories. It took writing my memoir to realise I had really been moving through four seasons of living, and only by discovering a fifth season could I finally recognise the pattern that had quietly shaped my life.
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Six months after publishing my memoir, I stopped marketing and started questioning who it had really been written for. The answer changed the way I think about books, gift giving and the people most likely to help those stories find their readers.
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We've all heard the saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover." This article explores why we still need to judge the cover to decide whether to begin, and why the real change isn't the cover itself, but the layers of packaging we've placed around it before discovery even starts.
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Every printed copy of No, I Won’t Buy You a Drink! now includes an Eight Guilt-Free Hours certificate inside the front cover. Here’s how to give the certificate to someone who deserves the time to enjoy a good book, whether it’s for Father’s Day, a birthday, Christmas or simply because they need a little time for themselves.
Read Article →We often hear that society has a connection problem, but perhaps we’re looking at it from the wrong direction. We have more ways to connect than ever, yet we can still walk past the people around us without noticing them. Perhaps genuine connection begins not with finding more people, but with paying attention to the ones already there.
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I thought I had travelled the world collecting stories. It took writing my memoir to realise I had really been moving through four seasons of living, and only by discovering a fifth season could I finally recognise the pattern that had quietly shaped my life.
Read Article →
Six months after publishing my memoir, I stopped marketing and started questioning who it had really been written for. The answer changed the way I think about books, gift giving and the people most likely to help those stories find their readers.
Read Article →
Books once needed only a cover to invite curiosity. Today they're surrounded by reviews, profiles, interviews and endless promotion before we've even reached the cover. People have followed the same path. What happens when we stop discovering the story and start judging the packaging?
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We've all heard the saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover." This article explores why we still need to judge the cover to decide whether to begin, and why the real change isn't the cover itself, but the layers of packaging we've placed around it before discovery even starts.
Read Article →
We spend countless hours learning how to start conversations, yet almost no time learning what our responsibility becomes once somebody has already chosen to say hello. Perhaps authentic connection doesn’t depend on asking better questions. Perhaps it depends on letting the right people discover where our real story begins.
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Finding knowledge once required curiosity, organisation and persistence. Looking back, I wonder whether those same skills quietly prepared us for almost everything else worth having. As knowledge became easier to access, did we accidentally stop carrying the very skills that helped us explore life itself?
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A simple conversation during my travels left me with a question that never really went away. Why do we assume one person should always take the first social risk? The answer changed the way I observed people—and eventually became the title of my memoir.
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The more comfortable I became in a place, the more I wanted to move on. It wasn’t because I’d stopped enjoying it. I had simply begun to understand it. Looking back, I realised I wasn’t travelling towards places—I was travelling towards discovery.
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Several readers told me they left my memoir untouched for months, then finished it in a single day. It made me wonder whether the hardest part of reading isn’t the book itself, but giving ourselves permission to begin.
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I thought I was writing a travel memoir. Somewhere along the way, I realised I was really writing about people and the ordinary conversations that quietly change our lives.
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While writing my memoir, I realised I'd been using a word for years that didn't exist. Fakaging describes the subtle ways we package ourselves for acceptance while quietly hiding who we really are.
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Building a website, learning the publishing process and writing a memoir all reminded me of something that has quietly shaped my life for decades: the unknown has never been something to fear. It's where I've done most of my growing.
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Publishing my first memoir taught me that success isn't about reaching everyone. It's about finding the readers who connect with the story you genuinely wanted to tell.
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Backpacking through the 1990s meant living with uncertainty every day. Looking back, I sometimes think getting lost wasn't the problem - it was part of the experience.
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When I finally sat down to write my memoir, I realised the moments that stayed with me weren't always the dramatic ones. They were the ordinary conversations and quiet observations that most people would probably forget.
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Hearing loss never became the main story of my life. Instead, it quietly changed the way I experienced the world, teaching me to notice the people, conversations and moments that many others overlooked.
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Long before the memoir existed, Ricardo Bumachunski was an imaginary friend from childhood. Decades later, he became the perfect guide for a story built on curiosity, travel and the people met along the way.
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The Bumachunski Challenge isn't about talking to strangers for the sake of it. It's about becoming curious again and discovering the remarkable stories hidden within the people we pass every day.
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We know astonishing amounts about people we've never met, yet often know very little about the neighbours, colleagues and strangers we see every day. Perhaps the problem isn't a lack of stories. Perhaps we've simply stopped asking.
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We often hear that people are too busy to read. But after writing my memoir, I began wondering whether many books simply aren't written for the millions of people who don't normally buy them.
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Looking back over years of travel and observation, I realised that the people who coped best with life weren't always the smartest or the wealthiest. More often than not, they were simply organised.
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When I finally sat down to write my memoir, I realised something important. Most people don't trust conclusions until they understand how you reached them. That simple realisation shaped the entire structure of the book.
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Why would an author deliberately avoid writing the kind of travel memoir readers expect? Looking back, I realised I wasn't interested in describing the world as much as understanding the people within it.
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