I Just Kept Going: brick by brick… by Tony DeChico (Book Review #2398)

Some stories of transformation begin with a dramatic revelation. Others begin much earlier, with a child learning that survival means figuring things out alone. In I Just Kept Going: brick by brick…, Tony DeChico presents a candid account of a life shaped by instability, ambition, addiction, crime, loss, and ultimately the difficult work of rebuilding.

Leaving home at fourteen with one dollar is a striking beginning, but what follows is far more complicated than a simple story of hardship overcome. DeChico describes learning how to survive and, eventually, how to appear successful and in control while carrying an increasingly complicated private life. Money and opportunity enter the picture, but so do addiction and illegal marijuana operations. At one point, he becomes engaged to a Seattle police detective who knows nothing about the other side of his life, creating a particularly striking contrast between the person he presented to the world and the person he was struggling to keep hidden.

Then the DEA arrives, and the carefully constructed life begins to collapse.

Yet one of the more compelling aspects of DeChico’s story is that losing everything does not magically transform him. There is no convenient moment where everything suddenly becomes clear and the past disappears. Instead, the book emphasizes something considerably more realistic: change can be slow, uncomfortable, and filled with setbacks.

That honesty gives the memoir much of its weight. DeChico moves through crime, addiction, federal prison, homelessness, and profound loss, but the story does not treat suffering as an automatic path to redemption. Hitting bottom, as he makes clear, is not necessarily enough to make someone change. The harder challenge is choosing to change repeatedly afterward.

His eventual encounter with Kriya Yoga, in the lineage of Paramahansa Yogananda, introduces a very different dimension to the narrative. Spiritual practice becomes part of a gradual process of confronting the past rather than escaping from it. The transformation described here is not presented as a spectacular reinvention but as a quieter rebuilding of a life, one piece at a time.

The phrase “brick by brick” is therefore more than a title. It captures the central idea of the memoir: a damaged life does not necessarily have to remain permanently damaged, but rebuilding requires patience, honesty, and persistence.

What makes I Just Kept Going particularly affecting is its refusal to turn a complicated life into a neat inspirational formula. DeChico acknowledges the contradictions—success alongside addiction, freedom alongside destructive choices, survival alongside self-imposed imprisonment. His story suggests that sometimes the very qualities that help a person survive can later become the things they need to overcome.

Ultimately, this is a memoir about persistence, but not the simplistic kind. It is about continuing after failure, continuing after consequences, and continuing long enough to become honest about who you are and what you want your life to become. Tony DeChico’s journey reminds readers that rebuilding does not happen all at once. Sometimes, you simply keep going—and eventually, the bricks begin to form something new.

Written by Jayran Main