Lost in Las Vegas + The Breadcrumb Rule
Finding your way around downtown Las Vegas is a challenge. Not because the distance is far, but because your ability to get where you’re trying to go is hijacked by a labyrinth of walkways, overpasses, escalators, and pedestrian funnels designed to lure you in. Within a minute of turning around, you’ve lost all sense of how to reverse the journey. Eight‑foot poker machines erase your breadcrumbs. Your orientation dissolves.
My hotel is about six blocks from the heart of the Strip. On my first three journeys, I got hopelessly lost trying to find my way back — walking in seamless, endless circles of Venus‑fly‑trap walkways. I’m a seasoned, relaxed traveller, but even so, the anxiety rises when you realise you have no bearings.
Today, when I walked into the centre of the Strip, I deliberately set breadcrumbs. I picked landmarks. I walked straight lines. And on the way back, I reversed the sequence. Presto — just like David Copperfield taking free‑powered flight across the MGM stage, my hotel appeared: the Excalibur, with its medieval Disneyland façade.
For the first time, I made the journey to the Strip and back with no anxiety at all. Not because the city changed — but because I had bearings. I trusted them. And when you trust your bearings, anxiety has no reason to rise.
That’s when it hit me:
this is exactly how recovery works.
Recovery is a journey with very little certainty. Anxiety is natural. But if you have even a rough mission — and you break that mission into small, incremental milestones — your anxiety lowers as you move. Not because the journey becomes predictable, but because you have orientation.
I call this The Breadcrumb Rule.
In recovery, breadcrumbs aren’t clues from the universe. They’re the small milestones you set for yourself:
• showing up to a meeting
• calling your sponsor
• journaling for five minutes
• choosing not to drink today
• apologising instead of defending
• going to bed sober
• reading one page
• taking a walk instead of spiralling
These aren’t achievements. They’re orientation points.
And here’s the key:
Breadcrumbs work even when you miss them.
If you hit a milestone, you know where you are.
If you miss a milestone, you still know where you are.
Either way, you’re not lost.
Movement creates bearings.
Bearings reduce anxiety.
And anxiety reduction is what keeps you on the path.
About Jason Bresnehan
Jason writes in a modular, mind‑drift style that moves between business, recovery, faith, anthropology, and the oddities of everyday life without warning or apology. His work blends operator‑grade clarity with sideways narrative turns — the kind that start in a boardroom, drift through Scripture or Tasmanian riverbanks, and land in a piece of doctrine you didn’t see coming.
He has spent years helping organisations and people get unstuck, and his writing reflects the same instinct: take something messy, name it cleanly, and make it usable. His pieces — whether on addiction, Catholic symbolism, business operators, or human quirks — aren’t lectures. They’re field notes. Observations. Fragments designed for real people in real moments, including the tired executive delayed in an airport lounge at 11:45pm.
Jason publishes micro‑chapters as he writes them — standalone pieces that don’t follow a cadence or a theme. They accumulate over time into a larger body of work, shaped by curiosity, faith, operator discipline, and a refusal to perform — just get outcomes.
Founder of the Hadspen Foundation, Jason is committed to building frameworks for spiritual recovery that are both repeatable and personal. His writing is guided by discernment, narrative cadence, and the belief that doctrine should support—not overshadow—the human story.