A twenty-year journey. A trail of impossible decisions. And the flood that finally cleared the path to purpose.

 

In Bloody Knees: Nothing Worked Until Everything Broke, Dan Romeo invites readers into a raw and unsparing account of a life lived in motion—through career ascents and abrupt exits, personal heartbreak, endurance pursuits, and spiritual reckoning.

 

Guided early by a mentor’s Stoic mindset and the quiet discipline of his “Three P’s,” Romeo navigates divorce, a cross-country drive into the unknown, the pull of ambition, and the belief that relentless effort could outrun doubt. He quits a job that won’t let go, builds a business from nothing, and survives the destabilizing shock of a global pandemic—only to watch it all collapse when a sudden flood destroys what he spent years constructing.

 

That moment becomes the reckoning.

 

Bloody Knees is not a victory story. It is a meditation on endurance, identity, and the cost of mistaking perseverance for purpose. With grit, vulnerability, and dry humor, Romeo explores why suffering so often masquerades as progress—and how starting over, stripped of illusion, can finally point us toward what truly matters.

 

Sometimes the fall isn’t a failure.
It’s the only way back up.