Midway while sailing across the Pacific with just his cat named Phoenix, Oliver Widger reflected on why he thinks his many followers — more than a million on TikTok and Instagram — are drawn to his story of quitting his 9-to-5 job and embarking on a journey from Oregon to Hawaii.

“The world kind of sucks and, like, I don’t think I’m alone in how I felt with my work,” Widger, 29, told The Associated Press on Wednesday via Zoom. “You can be making $150,000 a year and you still feel like you’re just making ends meet, you know what I mean? And I think people are just tired of that and working really hard for nothing and want a way out.”

He abruptly quit his job with “no money, no plan” and $10,000 of debt.

He liquidated his retirement savings, taught himself to sail mostly via YouTube and moved from Portland to the Oregon coast, where he spent months refitting the $50,000 boat he bought.