Category — Health and Fitness

The lonely cry of the Peruvian Leafcutter filled the air…

I was dreaming (nightmaring?) I had to get up and go to work. I was tired and hitting the snooze button…

I woke up in the dark with my alarm going off.

5:00am

Time to get up, make instant coffee, break-fast with a Cliff Bar, stretch, and be in the water for the 5:40am sunrise.

Alarm off.

5:00 am in El Salvador has a pleasant climate. A breeze was coming in through my north-facing window, nice and cool and in the high 60´s.

North wind? The wind is offshore this morning.

Coffee.

Get up, find a mug in the community pile – and mix it strong – about one quarter instant coffee, three quarters water. The trick is to drink as much as you can as fast as possible – instant coffee tastes like mierda.

Power down the bar (and glad that it´s chocolate chip to cut the aftertaste of the coffee), chase it down with a juice-in-the-box. Manzanillo today.

More wax on the board? Nah, I´ll finally do it tomorrow… tomorrow… tomorrow…
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It´s not the heat – it´s the humidity.

For some reason, neither feels bad right now.

Maybe that additional year in far northern coastal California has given me new perspective. Lying in a hammock, all pores open, sweating, feverish…

All the open pores feel like they are exhaling (not panting) – outgassing all of the pollution, sickness, and stress associated with the last several months of work.

I feel as if I´m slowly deflating.
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Happiness is a learned condition.

When I travel by myself, friends and family often wonder if I´ve gone mad. They´re getting used to the idea, but many do not understand it.

It all depends on what you are looking to get out of your travel.

When traveling with friends/family/significant others, the focus of the good times is sharing experiences with those travel partners – a worthy cause. This reminds me of something an ex-girlfriend once said (who had a caustic sense of humor). We were looking at a friends´ travel photos – and the photos were awful. Every single one of the photos featured either one or both of them – and they took up the majority of each photo. It was so bad that we could hardly see the landscape/architecture/things that they were trying to photograph. After a while, the ex-girlfriend could no longer contain herself. As she received the next picture, she blurted out, “Oh look! Another picture of you with different lighting!”.
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When in Doubt – Write About Relationships

Work, overtime, business travel, this, that – I’m glad I have set up a system to keep myself on track for this project. I find myself backsliding a bit when I get ridiculously busy and/or the stress levels ratchet up.

This is one of those times. I am looking forward to the end of the month – so I can see how well I have done. In the meantime, in a state of complete busy-ness, my impulse spending is speeding up; it’s a burrito here, an apple fritter there, unnecessary greasy-salty snack there…

As I write this webpage – now almost two months in – I receive a variety of responses from friends and family. One of the more common responses follows the line of thinking that I need to settle down and have kids. If I would only settle down and have kids – I would be content. This webpage and “search for greater purpose” would be satisfied by raising kids.

They are exactly 100% correct – in a way. If I had kids, I most likely would not be following this current thought-path and writing on this page. Not because I would feel sated by the experience of raising kids – and seek no more from the buffet-table of life. I think the reason is that I would be too tired to do anything else. Satisfaction would likely be there though – I feel enormous job satisfaction when I teach, and raising a child is probably the ultimate teaching project.

So why am I not looking to buy and outfit a house for raising a family? Shouldn’t I be putting my money and energy into “nesting” to attract a mate?
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Simplify. Downsize. Get Rid of Stuff.

This weekend I had to prepare to move from an expensive house to a much cheaper room. I needed to downsize and sell off some of my stuff. Over the last couple weeks, I had made progress and sold off much of my furniture. However, with the end of the month occurring this Friday, I need to be nearly finished this weekend! I emptied almost all the remaining contents of the house into my living room to take inventory.

It was a practical idea. Two years ago when I drove here from Minnesota – I was able to downsize enough to fit all my possessions into a 6′x12′ covered U-Haul trailer (which almost killed me several times on downhill sections – but that is a different story). I eventually rented a 2-bedroom house here in California – and at the same time, my supervisor at work moved away and they sold me lots of stuff to fill up the house (because they didn’t want to have to drive a moving van across the country a second time within a year).

Anyways, I no longer have the V6 SUV to tow the 6′x12′ – I downsized to the 4-cylinder pickup – so I need to be able to fit my life into a 5′x8′ trailer. I have had people comment on my soon-to-be monk-like existence – but do monks have 5′x8′ storage units?
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WWMBD?

It’s a Human Brain’s World

Out of the three brains: the Lizard Brain, the Monkey Brain and the Human Brain – the Human Brain has the power to overcome the Lizard and the Monkey. For better or worse – our society is geared towards a Human Brain existence.

Our brains can be thought of as three functional areas – the Lizard Brain, the Monkey Brain, and the Human Brain.

Out of these three, the Lizard Brain is the oldest and most primitive. The Lizard Brain is the cerebellum and the brain stem. Lizards only have this structure – while for us it is just a small portion at the base of our skulls – “the brain is like an iPod built around an eight-track cassette player”. The Lizard Brain controls reflexes – and reflexive actions. All of our instincts are housed in the Lizard Brain. Lizards – having only Lizard Brains – do not think, they only act instinctually.
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(surfing is frugal)

Over the the month of January, I’ve had time to think about and refine my original idea. The premise is still the same – I can not continue along my present path.

Something needs to change.

I am currently finishing the task of paying off credit card debt, and working paycheck to paycheck with very little savings. My job takes most of my time and energy. I am renting too much house for just myself and my dog.

I am only one unfortunate event away from poverty.

Actually, most of us are only one unfortunate event away from complete poverty. We are not as safe as we try to make ourselves feel. This statement is not meant to make us live in fear. Quite the opposite – we should not let fear keep us from living the lives we want to lead.

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“Why am I doing this?”

That seems to be a popular question for me… why I would do something like the “Year of Living Frugally”.

I have a job. A job with a pension and health insurance. I can currently afford my bills – outstanding debt included. There are people in this rural community who would kill for the job security I currently have.

So… why?

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New year’s Day. New Year’s Resolutions. Too much darkness, not enough sunlight. Too much fatty, sugary food. All these things can bump one into a more introspective mood. Especially those of us with mild Seasonal Affect Disorder – whose holiday plans fell through (which was driving south for more than a week of sunny SoCal and Baja 70-degree-and-Santa-Ana weather). Instead, I spent the last week in the gloomy, chilly rain of far northern California.

During the summer and fall, I can’t think of a place I’d rather be. I love it here. However, sometimes I really hate the damp dark rainy Pacific Northwest winter climate. Once the darkness sets in, and the rain starts, and the average local buoy reading is 20-foot plus and sideways rain blowing onshore – there’s no clean surf for months. There are the rare days, when the winds die and the ocean calms – like this New Year’s Day (although the surf was too flat) – but that was the exception rather than the rule. The average surf go-out during these times means looking for waves wrapping around the protective headlands and hoping it filters the chop from 12 feet to a more manageable 5.

To survive, many of the long-time locals take this time to vacation in warmer climes. A co-worker told me I should plan next year’s winter vacation now to make sure it happens.

So on a warm sunny day, feeling the happiness, I let myself think of the ideal winter vacation (instead of the usual driving south to couch-surf with friends-and-family for a week over the last week of December).

Why not go around the world?

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