Welcome to On Fire.
This is a space for anyone who’s ever felt flat, stuck, or secretly hungry for more.
It’s where I ask one big question:
What does it take to live a passionate life in a world that numbs us?
Through essays, interviews, and raw reflections, I explore how we reignite our spark — and keep it alive.
Who I Am
I’m Krista Stryker — writer, jiu-jitsu athlete, and founder of the Human Aliveness Lab.
For the last decade, I’ve been obsessed with one question:
What makes a person feel fully alive — and how do we sustain that aliveness over time?
That obsession started with movement. I felt numb after college, disconnected from meaning. Then I discovered high-intensity training — and it changed everything.
I built 12 Minute Athlete, a global fitness brand and app that’s helped hundreds of thousands of people discover their inner athlete.
But even as I chased peak performance, I started noticing something was missing.
A kind of spark. A deeper why.
I didn’t want to just optimize—I wanted to feel lit up again.
So I started On Fire.
At first, it was a personal quest: to talk to the most passionate people I could find and figure out what they knew that the rest of us didn’t.
Since then, I’ve interviewed nearly 80 of the world’s most passionate people — from mythologists and mentalists to circus performers, fingerstyle guitar legends, and pigeon rescuers.
I’ve immersed myself in the psychology of passion, dug deep into the science, and talked to top researchers to understand what really lights us up — and what keeps that fire alive over time.
That quest led me to found the Human Aliveness Lab (HAL) — a new center of gravity for the study and storytelling of passion and aliveness.
HAL is where I’m building tools, studies, and cultural frameworks along with some of the top thinkers in this space to decode human passion and bring aliveness back into modern life — for individuals, teams, and culture at large.
On Fire is where I share what I’m learning — through interviews with some of the most passionate people on the planet, the latest science on human flourishing, and raw field notes from my own path through burnout, mastery, and passionate living.
What You’ll Get
I post twice a month — usually on Wednesdays (and sometimes more when I’m especially fired up). You’ll get:
Deep essays on passion, purpose, energy, and creative fire
Profiles of the world’s most passionate people — and what they teach us
Tools and frameworks for reigniting your own spark
Personal reflections from the edges of performance, identity, and transformation
This isn’t content for content’s sake.
It’s a field report from the front lines of aliveness.
Join the Movement
Some of what I share is free for everyone.
Paid subscribers get:
Behind-the-scenes looks at building the Human Aliveness Lab
Raw, unfiltered reflections from the journey
Early access to new offers, beta programs, and live experiments
Your subscription directly supports our mission:
To bring passion, vitality, and aliveness back to modern life.
If you’re ready to stop going through the motions — and start living on fire — you’re in the right place.
I’m so glad you’re here.
