The Six Years I Didn't Touch Fire

My brother and I learned fire together. We drove up and down the valley in Utah when we were teenagers doing fire shows for 50 bucks. That was our thing that we did together.

I started training with fire when I was 12.

I lost my brother nine or ten years ago. It hit me hard and I didn't process any of it for seven or eight years. I just made myself more and more busy because it was helping keep everything locked. So I didn't have to deal with it.

When he passed I didn't pick up any of my fire stuff for, I think, six years. I was lost in that busyness for a long time. My marketing company was swallowing me alive, 15 employees in an office in Ogden, Utah.

I was living in California. I was in San Diego visiting for my sister's wedding reception. I was with my wife at the time, sleeping in his bed, and he was out. We got that knock at the door from the police officer.

I was picking up my mom and trying to be there for her and dealing with my own stuff. Then I had the luxury of going back to California and nobody knew about it. So I was able to just brush it under the rug.

I went to a three-day summit in Park City. The company was called Corporate Alliance. The organizer asked get-to-know-you questions. What's the most unique thing about you? I think I was the third person that went and I said I'm a fire knife dancer. There was a gasp across the whole audience.

At the first break she came up to me and begged me to perform after the dinner banquet.

We went out to the courtyard and everybody followed. I'll never forget that day. It was sprinkling a little bit, and I had a tiny bluetooth speaker. I put on some Polynesian music and started throwing some fire.

I still have the videos of that night and it's embarrassing when I look at that. You can visibly see my hesitation. It was really slow spinning. I'm just like, wow, I've come a very long way.

After that they all started calling me the fire CEO. I'm like, that's catchy, I guess I'll buy that domain. I ran with that for a while.

I had started dancing with another group, and the person who started that group disappeared to Nevada overnight. Everybody was looking at me like, Joseph, what are you going to do about this? I said I'm busy, I've got my own business, don't ask me to do any more than what I'm already dealing with. But we started taking baby steps in that direction.

I was in some personal development work, I think it was a workshop. Then I worked with therapists, I bounced around a lot of different ones, and my topic of my brother came up. I was able to get into it a little bit further.

I feel pretty good about it now. I've dove really deep with my AI, and it's something that I can talk about now without breaking down.