www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LAuzT_x8Ek

So many people live within un-happy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism , all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a person than a secure future. The very basic core of a persons living spirit is their passion for adventure . The joy of life comes from our encounters with the new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty. -- Christopher McCandless, Into the Wild

Food for thought…chew on that.

]]> http://www.bornentrepreneur.com/2010/07/12/damaging-your-adventurous-spirit-with-a-secure-future/feed/ 0 http://www.bornentrepreneur.com/2010/07/12/viva-la-backpacker/ http://www.bornentrepreneur.com/2010/07/12/viva-la-backpacker/#comments Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:15:46 +0000 David H Walker http://www.bornentrepreneur.com/?p=105

I was going through some old papers when I came across a page I literally ripped out of a magazine while I was traveling in Australia from a couple years ago. from the article:  today’s backpacker is no longer a “worthless, party-addicted wanderer, roaming Australia in a Combie Van.”

You dine, rather than consume.

It’s a one hour cup of soup and a glass of red wine at a local bistro. It’s not a four minute, thirty second frozen dinner and diet coke consumed at your laptop in less time than it took to heat up.

You sit in silence and listen to your breathing.

You don’t text message back and forth or look at your watch or be uncomfortable that you’re in public at lunch by yourself having a good time. You put your cell phone on mute (not vibrate) and turn it upside down.

You walk slow, with your head up, proud and purposeful, but with a curious nature about you.

You don’t walk fast, head down, shoulders hunched, thinking about your destination and the imposition the walk is causing you.

You think, “right now, my walking is the destination.”

You are proud of the small things you have accomplished today, instead of beating yourself up and feeling guilty for those you haven’t had a chance to get to yet.

You know that, not only will happiness find you, but that it is right here in this moment.

You try not to get too excited about the future because, not only is it almost always different than you imagine, but you realize that the present is where the actual experience exists.

You imagine a moment and a feeling the way you want it to be. You attach a firm picture in your mind to it, and then you let it go, comfortably knowing how the energies of the universe will shift and shape to allow it to come to fruition.

Relaxation is not being so serious.

Relaxation, most importantly, is not being so hard on yourself.

Life is too short to feel regretful. Life is too short to not enjoy the present. Life is too short to be afraid. And certainly, life is too short to be anxious, uptight, and in a hurry. Life is too important to forget this.

You look at people in the eyes and be with them because you realize they are not a distraction from your moment. They are the key piece to it all.

Some comments of interest so far:

• time zone changes are frustrating. In the beginning I thought it would be helpful to have such a dramatic time change between Sydney and Austin, thinking that I’d be able to knock stuff out and have it show up in my colleague’s inboxes when they wake up. Not so easy. I’ve started going out more at night (naturally) so it makes it near impossible to wake up at 5am or 6am as I was before. This morning I woke up at 9, checked the local time in Austin and it was already the afternoon—which kind of deflates my personal motivation—their day is already almost over.
• unexpected interruptions of flow. Whether it’s broken suitcases, discussions about what to do for lunch, or doing laundry, it’s all an interruption. If anything, it is training to be able to leave and then re-enter a solid state of flow. Difficult indeed, but a necessity in this environment. The only way I can think of that would counter all the distractions would be to wake up super early in the morning (which I was doing before) or having ‘closed door’ office hours. I do not want to do that, though, as it really is shutting off other people. But then again, maybe if they understand it’s for the best and only for a limited amount of time, that would be okay. Still debating the best method…Ah, perhaps a good alternative to an actual closed door is for me to put on headphones. I still feel a little guilty about that, though.
• fear of opening my inbox. I’m sitting here without having opened my gmail inbox because last time i was in there it was 276 unread messages. That was after a 4 day hiatus of not having internet access because I was staying at a lakehouse hundreds of kilometers outside of Sydney. Last night when I checked it after coming in from a night out I guess I COULD have processed it all and gotten it down to zero, but I tell ya that’s frustrating just thinking about. I guess the trick is just setting out the time and knocking it out. Not sure how to conquer it otherwise. My 3-4hrs/day of working are quickly dwindling due to extra distractions (mainly my parents have now arrived in Sydney, so there are 6 of us all staying together in a small 3 bedroom apartment.
• Hmmm…Okay, time to start processing so I can close some/all of the open loops. Speaking of, I wonder if this segment of my trip is teaching me to be more comfortable with having some open loops out there…time will tell.

Two days in a row now that I’ve woken up super early. The first time it happened (4am) I thought it was a fluke because of a misaligned body clock, but when I woke up naturally this morning at 5am I realized, perhaps my body is so anxious to “get things done” that I’m jettisoning myself out of bed.

Some people claim that my trip to Australia should be a time of disconnecting and total relaxation. In my opinion, though, that is an old-school escapist vacation mentality. I LOVE my job. I am enamored by the work I get to do, and get paid for, so “disconnecting” for me is not a fun thing to do. I don’t need/want to “escape” from anything, even while I’m traveling.

In terms of workflow a few things I’ve learned thus far:

• very important to get through emails and to-do items just as always. I remember yesterday morning as I was leaving for the day to explore Sydney I had this pain in my gut because I was not taking my laptop with. It was kind of funny as Katrina knew it too. However, it wasn’t because I’m addicted to being connected, it’s because I’m addicted to extinguishing open loops. I had a lot of open loops that morning, despite my waking at 4am. Mainly because I was going through an inbox of 150 emails due to about 72hrs of non-processing—and still didn’t finish. And mainly because I was trying to get through them all–mistake! Point learned: Prioritizing emails responses and to do items is a MUST when traveling.
• I’ve accepted now that I’m not going to be able to do as much as I could before when I was working 8-10hr days. Now, I’m trying to squeeze it all into one 3-4hr block in the morning and a 1hr or so block of casual social networking in the evening. This is forcing me to be okay with not quite being SO responsive to everyone. It’s okay to let a few email fall through, as long as I put them in my to-do list to reply to them later. The anxiety of leaving for the day for exploration is not because of the low priority open loops. It’s because of the high-priority ones, those that I didn’t get a chance to get to because I was focusing too much on the lower ones. So I’m learning priority-level discipline–albeit forced, so that I don’t have that pain in my gut when I leave for the day without my laptop.
• Web based tools. Keeping the clutter low on this little computer is a must, mainly because the hard drive is so small – 12gig. But in all actuality, this is a blessing. I like not having a bunch of applications installed on here—it’s almost like a mental cleansing. I’ve been using Google Docs quite a bit and also instead of installing programs I try and find an web based alternative. For example I always like keeping track of my time I spend doing tasks. This is mainly because when I get into my flow, I totally lose track of time and then find myself frustrated with how many hours I focused on something that was low priority. I’ve been using Online Stopwatch instead of my usual Multitrack Stopwatch. In all honesty, it’s just a small file to download, and I could install it, but it just feels good NOT to.
• Not having a means to digitally capture my life as usual is tough. I normally use twitter and facebook mobile throughout the day to catalog my ongoings. This is impossible here, though, as international rates are a pain with my current cell phone plan. I might change it, but maybe it’s a good thing to challenge myself here. Not sure. It is getting me to blog more after all and post  facebook photos.
• Brainstorming increases dramatically when out of the element. All day—TONS of ideas. Wow, can’t even explain. Just being exposed to so many different elements that only being in a foreign environment can provide is quite breathtaking. My brain impressed me. If anything, that’s a reminder to everyone that we still have the faculties to brainstorm like always, but perhaps we’ve forgotten the path to that synergy. Or perhaps the pathway has changed over the years, it’s just a matter of tapping into it in a new way.

That’s all for now. I’m going to work on a miniature version of a weekly review so that I can make sure that I’m not overlooking anything crucial on my to do list. Lookign forward to it as today will be an AMAZING day of exploration if I can be sure to have closed all open loops. No more anxiety, hopefully.

It’s 4:35AM in Australia and while everyone else (my sister, her roommate, & my girlfriend) are asleep, but my internal clock was aching me to ‘get the hell outta bed!” So here I am sipping tea and writing a blog post.

Before my travels to Sydney I purchased the super tiny Asus eeePC 901 series.

Yes, the thing is tiny. I’ve figured how to type pretty well on it, though!

There are a number of challenges that traveling abroad has already presented and will be presenting soon. I will be here for 6 weeks, so as person who spends about 12hrs/day on the computer (personal + professional) things will be transforming a bit. Hopefully it will teach me to work in a more efficient, productive way. I feel like it’s almost like jumping into the deep end a bit…we shall see.

I will be sharing these challenges and the steps I’ve taken to overcome them over the course of the next few weeks. My girlfriend, Katrina, thinks they sound like boring posts…lol, but I’m really facinated with it anyways.