I had a very normal childhood. I grew up in the small desert town of Mojave, California. My family lived in a quaint house at the edge of a tiny neighborhood. Our house was nothing special; it was a simple home with a partially built airplane in the garage and one fully assembled in the living room.

At least that is how I remember it until one particular event. It happened while I was in my mid-twenties, married to a handsome young test pilot, and enjoying my life on a remote Air Force base in Southern California. I had just settled into my lawn chair to participate in an Air Force spouses’ ritual that takes place on many military bases around the world. In celebration of the end of the workweek every late Friday afternoon, the spouses in the neighborhood grabbed the kids and their lawn chairs and headed to the front yard of a previously designated house. A wobbly table loaded with leftovers from the week, lots of kid food, and, of course, bottles of cheap wine took center stage. I loved getting together for some juicy adult conversation.

The required yearly move made it difficult for us military families to be anything other than keepers of the home front. Often, the primary duty of any military spouse is packing for the next move. Every two or so years, we were required to research new schools and find the area’s best dentist, hair salons, and restaurants, only to pack everything up again for a different location and a new group of neighbors to drink wine with on Friday afternoons.

I loved our gatherings. They were like my own personal reality show. The topic this particular week was the crackpot up the street. I was intrigued. From her lawn chair with an unmistakable eye roll, my fellow Air Force spouse said, “He is building an airplane in his garage!” The other group members shook their heads and giggled. Who would ever do something so strange? I was confused. Why was he odd? It couldn’t be the airplane, could it? I grew up surrounded by people who built airplanes in their garages. How could something so familiar seem so strange to everyone? I started to question myself. Maybe it was just the bad wine.

I struggled to put the pieces together in my head while the conversation moved on to other things like school schedules and the next themed party. While I understood that the backward-looking experimental airplanes from my world weren’t the first thing people imagine when thinking of an airplane, was it so unusual to build one in your garage? Okay, I’ll give you that one in the living room—that was a little usual but not unheard of. I mean, people build cars in their garages. What is so strange about building an airplane? What was I missing?

At that moment, I started to see my upbringing in a whole new light. For the first time, I understood that my view of the world is unique. I grew up watching my uncle design and build airplanes that didn’t look like anything else in the sky. I saw my father fly those same airplanes into the history books, achieving many of the world’s aviation firsts. On that Friday afternoon in my neighbor’s front yard, I realized it was a matter of time before I was officially identified as the weird person on the street.

I spent the rest of that afternoon chatting about recipes and plans for the weekend, but all I wanted to do was introduce myself to the man up the street. I knew I would find him more engaging. Since then, I’ve spent my life looking for unconventional people and chasing after life’s rarely explored adventures.

I grew up in the Rutan family. If you are familiar with aviation, you know the name. Burt and Dick Rutan are the modern-day Wright brothers. Some describe Uncle Burt as the brains of the two men. Burt is a revolutionary aeronautical designer with more than forty aircraft and one spaceplane in his portfolio. If Burt is the brains of the two, then his older brother—my father, Dick—is the fearless, golden-armed pilot who takes life by the “balls” (his word, not mine) and holds many world-recognized records and milestones to prove it.

These two men in my life have put me at the forefront of many aviation firsts, from the milestone-setting around-the-world flight of the Voyager to the X-Prize-winning space flights of SpaceShipOne. Both are part of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum’s collection.

Reflecting on that Friday afternoon, I find it no surprise that I now live in my own unconventional orbit. My family is full of quirky characters on both sides. On my father’s side, we have aviators, self-proclaimed adventurers, and people who spend their whole lives looking up to discover new ways to go higher, faster, further. My mother’s side offers the sparkle of Hollywood clothing designers. In her world, everything was full of glamor. Her younger brother, Dennis, was a self-made clothing designer who dressed everyone from Elizabeth Taylor to the king of pop himself, Michael Jackson. Dennis’s house, nestled in the Hollywood Hills, resembled my garage back in Mojave, except his “home builts” were elaborate costumes and spectacular beaded gowns created for Hollywood’s red carpet.

These two realities rarely overlapped. My childhood flipped from hours spent in a small, dusty old hangar to a mansion overlooking Sunset Boulevard. I moved seamlessly between the two, never once considering how extraordinary these two influences were. I grew up on a tiny airport located in a forgotten desert town, but I wore a designer gown to the prom. It’s no wonder I related to that crackpot up the street.

When I was sixteen years old, my father became an international superstar when he along with his copilot, Jeana Yeager, became the first to fly around the world without stopping or refueling. I spent the next few years traveling with him as he enjoyed the benefits of fame. Then in a flash, as a result of a blind date, I met my future husband.

Once again, my life flipped, this time from press tours and international VIP events to marriage. Within a year of that blind date, I became the Mrs. in Lieutenant & Mrs. Hoffman. The next twenty-six years took me worldwide as we lived everywhere from South Korea to Southern California; all the while, I kept embracing my crackpot self.

Approximately every year, a new assignment took us on a different adventure. With every move, I embraced exploring our new location. I liked to think I was coloring with every crayon in the box. I became a financial counselor, a water aerobics instructor, and a museum docent. I’ve attended culinary school, worked as a head chef, and earned my level one sommelier certificate. I learned to fly, became a professional speaker, and started a nonprofit and a disruptive start-up. I wrote two books and had the unfortunate opportunity to experience breast cancer twice. I should have made it more clear that I wanted to color only with the happy colors in the crayon box, but life isn’t set up that way.

The day arrived when my handsome test pilot husband said it was time for him to transition to civilian life. My twenty-six-year experience as a military spouse was coming to an end. I had to start thinking about who I was going to be in my new permanent life. It wasn’t easy; in fact, it was more terrifying than having my father teach me to fly.

What was a newly appointed civilian girl to do? No job description listed “person who has colored with every crayon, even the ugly ones.” As a self-identified crackpot, I felt a bit unprepared for real life with only Hollywood glam and desert airport rat experience. My LinkedIn page looked like a mile-long directionless mess. Feeling stuck, unable to escape the gravitational pull of a life without adventure, I had no idea how to move forward. So I decided I needed to learn to build an airplane in my living room in order to continue pursuing my unconventional life in a conventional world.

Since then, I’ve experienced an endless series of ups and downs, which felt like I was on a turbulent flight with no pilot. During my lowest times, I couldn’t find a resource to guide me through the specific feeling of being stuck on my desired life path. It seemed everything I found started with a story of someone with an Ivy League degree having a bit of a hard time then ending with, “and then I sold my company for $6.5 million.” That narrative is far removed from what I was experiencing at that moment; it caused me to feel even more in a void. There were no lifelines in sight other than the one I needed to build for myself.

In my new book I used my experiences in chasing the unusual with all its successes, failures, and lessons learned to create a guide to living an unconventional life. I hope to help my fellow crackpots and fringe dwellers find the courage to say “screw gravity” then reach for the stars.