If My Life Is So Cool, Why Do I Feel Like I Need a Cold Drink and a Good Fan?

on 6-25-2008 in Travel Advice, Travel Lifestyle, United States

GUEST POST: While I am on the road this week and exploring Madrid, I’ve arranged for some of my favorite travel bloggers to share their travel stories and advice here. So enjoy, give our guest bloggers lots of love and be sure to check out the author’s site.

9-5, quit your job, travelling, dream life

Admit it: some of you are crazy with envy. You log in to Almost Fearless from your cubicle, hoping your boss doesn’t catch you because you should be preparing a monthly report or making cold calls to boost sales.

It’s okay. I understand. When I worked 9-to-5 in a job I detested, I regularly suffered insane bouts of jealousy just thinking about people I saw in the park while I schlepped from one meeting to another. Why didn’t those people have to work?! How did they pay rent?! I assumed they led amazing lives, free of worries and full of fun.

That was before I quit my job.

A few months back, I received an e-mail from someone who read an article I’d written about how to ditch the 9-to-5 life. Joe, a recent college graduate, had taken a job as a debt collector to pay off his own school loans, but he confessed that he was sure he was slowly dying—already—of corporate boredom and anxious dread about his own professional future. He wrote:

I literally hate, nay, despise every single aspect of [my job]. I hate that I have to be up by 6am, I hate that I have to drive 45 minutes, I hate that I have to work 9- 10 hour days, I hate that I have to wear a shirt and tie EVERYDAY even though all I do is sit on the phone, I hate the people, I hate the fact that the only time I see the sun is on lunch break and weekends because I’m up and AT WORK before sunrise, and I don’t leave until after dark… The pay sucks….it’s just…not what I’m meant to do.

I answered by asking Joe if he had a dream, and he said he did. But he was convinced that dozens of obstacles existed that stood in the way of exiting the cube and pursuing the dream. I told Joe he didn’t need to exit the cube in one dramatic departure, like I did, and that my life was, contrary to popular belief, quite ordinary.

He didn’t believe me. My life was so cool, and before our correspondence fizzled out, he’d developed a fantasy about my life that sounded, well, just dreamy.

When folks like myself, Christine, and her husband take the leap and pursue the dream, lots of people think that life changes completely. Somehow, because we are living outside the cube, everything else in our life also changes: we suddenly don’t have to pay bills, we become immune to the tragedies and sadnesses of life, whatever character flaws we have disappear, and we spend our days emanating an aura of utter coolness, our only worry collecting one more stamp in our passports.

But if my life is so cool, why do I feel like I need a cold drink and a good fan?

Don’t get me wrong. Since I kissed my 9-to-5 job good-bye, I’m happier than I’ve ever been, and when I say every day since has been extraordinary, I mean it. But my dog still poops and I still have to pick it up. People I love still get hurt (my husband slipped in the bathtub and got 11 stitches while I was away in Mexico), still divorce, still die. I’m still clumsy, I still can’t dance, and I still can’t balance a checkbook. In other words, the mundane and the downright yucky stuff about living do not simply disappear when you decide to live your dream.

It’s hard, when you’re in the cube, to think that the dream life you see someone else pursuing is anything other than cool. If you’re suffering from ennui and envy this week as Christine and her husband settle in Madrid, just think about this: The dogs probably crapped in their crates on the transatlantic flight, the landlord probably forgot to deliver the key to their new apartment, the lights probably haven’t been turned on yet, and they’re probably eating cereal because they don’t know where the market is.

In other words, the cool life is… quite normal.

About the Author:

Julie Schwietert Collazo is a writer, editor, researcher, and translator who lives in New York, Mexico City, and San Juan. She has a BA in English and Women’s Studies, a Masters of Social Work, and is working on a PhD in Literature at the Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe. You can find her online at Collazo Projects.

Photo (top): Stoichiometry

Essential Baby Steps Towards Living Your Passions

on 6-25-2008 in Travel Advice, Travel Lifestyle, United States

GUEST POST: While I am on the road this week and exploring Madrid, I’ve arranged for some of my favorite travel bloggers to share their travel stories and advice here. So enjoy, give our guest bloggers lots of love and be sure to check out the author’s site.

passions, plunge, encouragement, worldwide travel, baby steps

I refuse to believe there is a single person on earth without a talent of some sort.

Everyone was born with at least one passion – that skill you’re so effortlessly good at; consciously or even subconsciously. Once you’ve realized those skills, they become your passions. For those who have discovered what they were born to do, living outside those passions feels like a burden.You’re in a constant state of evaluation – “I don’t feel happy”. “I wish I were doing this”. “If only I could do this”.

So people resort to more drastic steps by taking absolute control of the situation and jumping right in while others take a more phased approach towards fully living their passions.

Start already. Be proactive

It’s the same motivation you need to drag yourself out of bed at 6am for some gym time. You’ve got to push yourself. Say you’re passionate about photography and you transform behind a camera producing memorable shot after shot, now is as good a time as any to weave photography into your lifestyle.

Life happens. Mortgage payments. School loans. Other annoying bills. These are factors that trap people in dead-end jobs. How do you get yourself out of those and then spend time on your passions (most of which could be cost incurring as well)?

A likely scenario could be:

  1. Re-evaluate your budget. Do you really need cable and that additional car? Do you really need that townhouse?
  2. If you’re in a soul-crushing job, change it. You may need to work two jobs to pay down those bills.
  3. Find a more flexible job you actually like so you can live well beneath your means and start saving like crazy
  4. Take the full plunge when you’re ready

This is a multi year process that will inch you closer towards living your authenticity. Liken it to weight gain. You didn’t pack on those pounds overnight, and you’re certainly not going to lose them in a jiffy.

While you’re being proactive about simplifying your life,you can start exploring at least one of your passions on the side.

Declutter. Learn to say no.

You’ve got to pause, reassess your life, relationships, and projects, and then take proactive steps towards decluttering your life so you can actually start focusing on what you really need to be doing.

Those who know me well know for the longest time, I couldn’t say no. With strong web development skills in my portfolio, I volunteered time for years for small organizations that could barely pay yet snagged up a good portion of my time outside work. In a sense, I felt trapped from pursuing what I really needed to be doing which included photography, writing, and other creative passions.

But now, I’m a million times more discerning when it comes to picking out what I’d rather spend time on. I’m all for pro-bono, volunteer work, but once you start losing that free will spirit; you need to find other realms in line with your strengths to volunteer within.

If you love your job, find a way

What?! You actually love both your job and a vagabond lifestyle?! Blasphemy!

There are thousands of us who work in our field of study and love our jobs. Having two degrees in my field doesn’t suggest craziness. I actually wanted to do what I currently do – working with interactive maps and integrating enterprise systems. As a GIS consultant, I have a pretty sweet job I enjoy. It’s cool and exciting and I never know what crazy project would come in the door.

But early on, I’d realized my creativity and other passions I was born to pursue. With limited time outside work, I decided to pursue them.The win-win situation meant my creativity and authentic self spilled over into my technical world, turning into a wonderful marriage.

By decluttering, you can open up time outside of work to focus on those things you need to focus on.

So what would the perfect lifestyle be?

First things first, the perfect lifestyle does not exist. Even if you’re born into unbelievable wealth with no financial worries and a steady flow of opportunities to pursue your passions, what you lose is a sense of reality and a grasp on what it feels like to truly work hard to cease opportunities and appreciate breakthroughs.

As travel writers, we all want that ultimate gig that lets us travel the world for free with continual cultural immersion that churns out award-winning pieces, editors loving our pitches without even reading them, and those glossy publications printing our articles every month.

But in the end, is it for our own personal growth or just bragging rights? You can spend hours scouring the web on advice about giving it all up and following your dreams.

But you have to tune in to your inner voice. You and you alone will know when you’re ready to take the plunge. At the right moment, you will feel a tremendous burden off your chest no amount of money offered can replace.

For me, intuition and strong faith remain my guide. But remember, life is too short not to start living your authentic self to its fullest.

About the Author:

Travel writer and photographer Lola Akinmade has found some of her passions in life and works actively to live them each day.

Find her at Lola Akinmade.

Photo: lou & magoo

The 5 Trials of Bringing your US Phone Overseas

on 6-25-2008 in Travel Advice, Travel Lifestyle, United States

GUEST POST: While I am on the road this week and exploring Madrid, I’ve arranged for some of my favorite travel bloggers to share their travel stories and advice here. So enjoy, give our guest bloggers lots of love and be sure to check out the author’s site.

cell phone, hazards, sim cards, worldwide travel

Sure, I’ll admit it. My first reaction was:

“Something about cell phones that is more complicated than it needs to be? You lie sir, you lie.”

However, after a little research even my internal, British accented, voice is starting to accept it. US cell phones were not bred to range free in the world.

Why You Foolishly Want to Bring Your Cell Phone

It is not uncommon to be drawn to the idea of using your phone abroad. This is, quite possibly, the only phone in the world with a picture of your dog.

When you consider all the phone numbers programmed, the preferences set just right, and one’s inability to cancel it before the end of the contract the idea of using it during your trip sounds pretty good. But, before you get too comfortable to this idea you should know what the fates have in store for those who venture down this path.

The First Trial – Leaping The Cell Phone Language Barrier

There are two main types of cell phone networks. One is called GSM, which I have nicknamed “The Standard.” This is used by most of the world. The other is called CDMA, which I have nicknamed “chew on our 13%.” CDMA is only used by about 13% of the world’s cell phone population. However, it is very popular in the US. In fact, it is kind of the North American standard.

In order for your phone to work in a different country it will have to be able to use the cell phone network there. Most of the time this is going to require a phone that can handle GSM. However, in India, South Korea, Israel & parts of South America this will require a CDMA compatible phone.

The Second Trial – Burrowing Under an Annoying Second Level of Cell Phone Language Barriers

If you turn your decoder ring a little further, you will see that things are even more complicated. Cell phone communication involves a lot more quasi-unstandardized stuff. In addition to the type of network one must also consider the frequency “bands” that they use. Unfortunately countries use different ones.

In order for your cell phone to work it must be able to use the local frequency band. Without this it can’t even “hear” the necessary signal. Some phones can use many bands (”tri-band” phones or “quand-band” phones). Your phone might need to be one of these.

cell phone, hazards, sim cards, worldwide travelThe Third Trial – The Giant Monster That Every Quest is Required to Have

Many cell phone companies have a nasty habit of locking you out of any feature that you didn’t explicitly ask for by notarized dolphin-carried mail…in triplicate. One of those features can be having a phone that works in another country. This feature, often called “international roaming,” must be explicitly activated before your phone is allowed to play with the foreign cell phone system.

Oh yeah, and many of the US phones that could use GSM and the right frequency have those features “locked” by the cell phone company. This is done to prevent you from using another sim card and {gasp} paying another company.

The Fourth Trial – Navigating The Labyrinth with The Help of a Friend

It’s not the customer service person’s fault that the phone company has made things harder. But, if you get too angry at them and start acting like it is their fault, they can make the process even more annoying.

However, if you woo them onto your side, a good customer service person can be an incredible resource for navigating the complicated rules of that specific company.

Be nice. Pronounce “international roaming or something like that” as clearly as you can. It is also probably worth asking if there are any other hoops the company wants you to jump through before the phone will work in your proposed destination.

The Fifth Trial – How Much Are You Really Willing to Sacrifice?

After all that you could still get charged $1-$5 per minute. Kind of makes you wonder if those last four trials were worth it huh?

Aside from switching companies, you have a very limited ability to change the price. That said, there are times when requesting a “world plan” can save you a bundle of dough. It is surely worth asking your customer service friend about.

There Are Other Ways

You don’t have to go through this. There are many other options for communication from foreign countries.

For example:

  • Buy cell phone & sim card there
  • Bring an unlocked cell phone (possibly called “world phone”) & get a prepaid sim card there
  • Use Skype
  • Use any other quality voip option
  • Yell really loud
  • Telepathic communication
  • Smoke signals (curvature of the earth could cause a problem with this one)
  • Tell a friend to tell a friend to tell…

About the Author:

This article was written by SimplyLeave.com’s “Chief Title-Maker-Upper-on-Whims” (aka – “puff puff puuuuuuff” in the SimplyLeave.com dialect of smoke signals).

SimplyLeave.com is a humor site about travel.

Photo (top): Omar Chatriwala

Photo (mid): Woodley Wonderworks

Driving Towards Eternity

on 6-25-2008 in Travel Advice, Travel Lifestyle, United States

GUEST POST: While I am on the road this week and exploring Madrid, I’ve arranged for some of my favorite travel bloggers to share their travel stories and advice here. So enjoy, give our guest bloggers lots of love and be sure to check out the author’s site.

Passion, Travelling, Guest Post, road trip

Allen Ginsberg wrote in “Howl”,

“who drove cross-country seventy-two hours to find out; if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had; a vision to find eternity.”

It’s not easy to point out the things that drive a man to wander in search of something he doesn’t understand. Maybe it’s a simple biological need to explore and feed into his own curiosity, or maybe it’s simply a reason to escape.

Ginsberg grew up in Paterson, NJ. I didn’t grow up far away from there. My hometown lies right outside New York City, west of the Hudson River in an extremely populated town called West New York. For my entire childhood when people would ask me, “Where are you from?” and I would reply, “West New York” it took a few minutes to explain to them that it was actually in New Jersey.

As a child, the copies of National Geographic along with the pictures of Southeast Asia left behind by my father, relics of his tours in Vietnam, opened up an exotic world to me. Anything without skyscrapers for me was exotic.

I can’t complain. Being a bus ride from Manhattan was a godsend in its own. New York City is a place like no other on this planet. For me, it is the staple of modern human civilization. The city is an organism that breathes culture, and pulses with life.

However, it was always there for me. Always casting its large shadow over the streets on which I grew up. I thirsted for escape, not because it suffocated me, but because I knew there was something else out there.

Growing up in the circumstances in which I did, traveling was a bit difficult. I wasn’t willing to take up my father’s advice to join the Army if I wanted to see the world; and having no money, left me with few options. I simply had to wait.

Problem was that I needed to travel and head out west. I wanted to live in California. Since I was 18, I had been saying to my friends that I would go out there; many times I used it as an excuse as to not commit to girlfriends. “I really would love to make more of this relationship, but I’m moving to California,” I would say to them as the years passed by.

Not having a proper degree, and no money in the bank, I put my hopes for many years in that I would write a masterpiece that would somehow fund my way out of where I had grown up and bitter. This of course was nonsense, I wrote a crappy novel and couldn’t get any of my short stories published.

Many years later and a few years ago, I was living in Rahway, NJ and working in a small computer manufacturing company under ridiculous circumstances. I still had not had the opportunity to travel as I wanted. The bitterness inside of me grew and bubbled. Once again I searched and looked around for some escape but I saw myself tied to my prison of bills and responsibilities.

Eventually, this bitterness grew so much that it got me fired from my job for as my ex-boss put it, “offending him.” It was no heartbreak, but once again I found myself hungry and scared. Luckily for me, this allowed me to truly think about, “what’s next?”

Passion, Travelling, Guest Post, road trip

I HAD to travel. I knew that if I found a new job, I would stay put just where I was and live longer with more regret and always dreaming of eternity. So within a few months of my sudden forced departure from my last place of employment, I had packed up all my belongings in my very efficient Honda Civic and drove across the United States. Luckily for me, there was a good friend with an empty couch waiting for me in Southern California.

In the following seventy-two hours while driving cross-country, I was to see lands and places that I had only seen on postcards posted on the walls behind the counters of many diners in New Jersey.

I experienced torrential downpours and floods as I left New Jersey, blinding snowstorms driving through the Appalachian Mountains near Pittsburgh, great-plains that stretched in every direction for as far as the eye could see, winds gusting through the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona that lifted red-sand all around having me imagining that this was what the Mars landscape must look-like. All before reaching my final destination where I could see the Great Pacific Ocean. I had finally found peace and my vision of eternity. I was destined to travel.

About the Author:

Joe A. Melendez eventually lived in Santa Barbara, California for ten months and worked as a Staff Writer for the Santa Barbara News-Press. He decided that news reporting was not his forte and now currently resides in Badajoz, Spain where he survives off scraps of ham and works on his fiction. You can see more from him at Whiskey And Beans.

Photo (Top): Shek Graham

Photo (Mid): Chance Gardener

Good-bye in the City

on 6-25-2008 in Travel Advice, Travel Lifestyle, United States


GUEST POST: While I am on the road this week and exploring Madrid, I’ve arranged for some of my favorite travel bloggers to share their travel stories and advice here. So enjoy, give our guest bloggers lots of love and be sure to check out the author’s site.

Saying Goodbye, leaving your city, moving, travelling

Moving is a seriously big deal and I know of what I speak. In the last twenty years, the longest I have ever lived in the same apartment or house is two years. Seriously! In those two decades, I have lived in five cities (and one small town) in four countries on three continents. Trust me. I’m an expert at leaving.

So you are about to embark on your big adventure and there’s a whole list of things to do. Give notice on your apartment. Check. Cancel the cable. Check. Research new home city like mad. Check. But are you ready to say goodbye to this place you’ve called home for the last two or twenty years?

Even those with a low need for “closure” will benefit from saying good-bye in the way that is right for them. Some ideas for a more meaningful leaving:

1. Be a tourist in your own city
Think about all of those cool places in your city that you always wanted to visit but could never find the time. Make a list and start right now. Have a picnic in the park with your dogs. Spend an afternoon at the modern art museum or the aquarium. Tour your town on a double-decker bus filled with people from all over the world.

2. Photographic Memories
They say a picture is worth a thousand words; make that two thousand for those of us who live “away”. Take digital photos of your favourite people and places including the interior and exterior of your home. Some of these photos might even end up on the wall (or fridge) of your new place. If you don’t already use Flickr, open an account so that you can access your photos from anywhere and share shots of your new home(s) with friends.

3. A Meal to Remember
Make a list of your five favourite restaurants and enjoy a good-bye meal at each one before you go. Invite friends to join you. Introduce your friends to each other. This is also a perfect time to ask the chef at your favourite place for the recipe for her famous hollandaise sauce… because you are moving and Sunday mornings just won’t be the same without those Eggs Benedict.

4. Party!
If no one is planning a going-away party, host it yourself. Invite all of the really yummy people in your life and choose a cheesy theme if that’s your thing. Sing karaoke or grill burgers in your back yard. Go golfing or camping with your group of best friends. The important thing is to celebrate your friendships and relationships by having an amazing time together. Give your camera to a trusted friend and ask him or her to serve as photographer for the event.

5. Show Gratitude
This good-bye is also difficult for the people in your life. Make time to tell the members of your tribe how much you appreciate them… and how much you will miss having them in your life every day. Say it with a bouquet of lilies, a letter written in your big loopy handwriting or a bottle of their favourite wine. Nothing says, “I dig you” like homemade chocolate chip cookies.

Other Ideas:

  • Worried about losing touch? How about ordering Moo Cards printed with your new address, e-mail, and blog address. (No blog yet… start one!)
  • Do you live near water? You could write goodbye in the sand in letters big enough to be read from space. How about setting afloat a message in a bottle… it could be an ode to your hometown or, for the non-poets, a list of things for which you are grateful.
  • There’s no law that says you have to sell every object you have ever owned. Keep what’s precious and decide what you’d like to take with you as a daily reminder of home. I have a (seriously tacky) red ceramic bull from Barcelona and you can bet that, when we next move, that bull will be stowed away in my carry-on luggage to remind me of Spain.

Creating meaningful good-bye rituals will allow you to stay connected to the place and people you are from and still be fully present where you are, without thinking back and wishing that you’d done it differently.

We’d love to hear about your good-bye rituals.

About the Author:

Monna McDiarmid, a Canadian teacher and counselor, has been living abroad for ten years and blogging for just two. She currently lives in Barcelona with her partner in a small piso decorated with photographs of their travels and a small red ceramic bull. You can visit her blog at Teacher Meets World.

Photo: JensChapter3