Vagabonding – Book Review

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Vagabonding

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.
~ St Augustine

The first book I read in 2010 was Vagabonding by Rolf Potts. Not only did I find it to be a delightful read, but also to be full of useful information. No matter if you want to travel or simply find more adventure in your daily life, Vagabonding has advice for you.

Here are some snippets for you:

  • The hardest thing about travel is deciding to go. Once you’ve made that commitment, the rest is easy.
  • Live richly instead of getting rich from life. Live well instead of “do well”.
  • Money is needed to survive, of course, but time is what you need to live. So use money to meet basic survival requirements but spend time lavishly to create the life values that make the fire worth the candle.
  • Monasticism on the move – on the road we often live more simply, with no more possessions than we can carry, and surrendering ourselves to chance.
  • One the road, you should never forget that you are uniquely in control of your own agenda.
  • If you view the world as a predominately hostile place, it will be. ~Ed Buryn (Likewise, a positive worldview can lead to inspiring, human-centric road experiences.)

Every chapter is full of useful information. Vagabonding is not so much a checklist of actions to take as it is a guidebook for how to look at the world. Who knows what you might learn!

Don’t ever live vicariously. This is your life. Live.

Get your copy and see how much better your life could be.

Sometimes Simple is Better

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My wife and I currently live in a 2-bedroom apartment. That second bedroom? Designated as an office/art studio.

The office part is true. It houses our school books, a massive desk that is used on a daily basis, and other sundry items.

It also works wonderfully as an art-supply storage room. Most of my materials are carefully tucked away in corners and the closet. Unfortunately, storage was not at all the goal; action was.

The Problem

I came to realize that even though I never worked on any of my projects, I had a lot of great ideas. I even had the energy and a few minutes to spare to work on them. Unfortunately, the prospect of having to clear a workspace, drag everything out of storage, and then set it all up. After working, it’d be time to clean back up again.

Out of those twenty minutes I had to work on a project, about 5 of them would be spent painting. The rest would be set up and clean up.

And so, my projects never moved past the idea stage.

The Solution

As with so many problems, the answer to mine was quite simple. I needed to greatly reduce or completely remove the amount of prep and clean-up time required for each session.

I needed a dedicated art-space. Fortunately for artist me, painting and drawing don’t require a lot of horizontal space. Vertical is the way to go. This means that I didn’t need another desk, but a place to put my canvas or paper. An easel!

Egads! Easels are expensive. They range from $40 for a weak, wobbly thing to tens of thousands for easels that move on their own. I didn’t want anything fancy. Functional, sturdy, and easy on the wallet. While I’m at it, I also want it to be small and light-weight as well.

Fortunately, such a contraption is surprisingly easy to make. An easel is nothing more than a capital “A” that is leaned up against a surface. Two pieces of $1.45 lumber, one piece of scrap wood, 6 screws, a 3 cuts… and I’m done. Total cost was about $3, and it took less than an hour. If I had power tools, it could be done again in about 10 minutes.

Einstein said it best:

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

My easel is a simple affair, but it fulfills my requirements, and means that I’m ready to pick up work on my current project with only a minute or two of preparation.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to go get some painting done! (You should check out some of my portraiture over at www.French-HoltCreations.com.)

How to Get 4 Free Plane Tickets Every Year

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Join the Travel Hacking Cartel
Want to travel more? Don’t want to pay high prices to do so? Fortunately for all of us who do, Chris Guillebeau just launched the Travel Hacking Cartel.

What is it?

The goal of the Travel Hacking Cartel is to democratize free travel. Chris and his team plan to demystify the process of travel hacking. Our members can “go anywhere, anytime.”

What you get

  1. Regular “Deal Alerts” sent via email and SMS/text message (when a big opportunity comes up, our members will be the first to know)
  2. Tutorials and an extensive Knowledge Base to get people started (our research showed that most people have no idea what to do with miles and points… we’ll tell them)
  3. The Refer-a-Hacker Program that pays members 500 Frequent Flyer Miles for each referral (we’ve tried to make this process extremely easy – everyone has their own referral link directly in their account settings)
  4. The “World’s Greatest Guarantee” – if members follow our directions and spend at least 30 minutes a month travel hacking, they’ll earn enough miles for at least 1 plane ticket every quarter, or 4 plane tickets a year (we also provide info on how to redeem miles for great awards)

Maybe Monday’s post about Becoming a Frequent Flier Master piqued your interest. Here’s the chance to get more serious about it, to really earn those points and actually use them to go places!

Let’s Travel!

I don’t know about you, but I love the idea of getting to travel for free. My wife and I have a lot of places that we want to visit, and being able to get 4 free tickets a year, guaranteed! is definitely something we’ll be doing.

I’m already a member of the Travel Hacking Cartel. Won’t you join me? Let’s go traveling!

Join the Travel Hacking Cartel

How to Travel More

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Do you wish that you traveled more often? Wish it didn’t cost so much? I’m right there with you. My to-visit list can be summed up into “everywhere”. However, I can’t afford to buy a plane ticket across the country, much less across the ocean.

Fortunately for both of us, Chris over at the Art of NonConformity has written a fabulous guide to help us out. Chris knows a few things about traveling, and making it affordable, since he’s given himself 5 years to visit every country in the world (and has visited more than 125 of them thus far). In this guide he has condensed the knowledge he has gained during more than 8 years of travels.

 

Frequent Flier Master


Become a Frequent Flier Master
No, you don’t have to actually frequently fly to make use of this guide, but it will help you be able to fly more often. There are numerous ways to earn frequent flier miles (almost half of which don’t involve having a credit card), and this guide comes with a fabulous “earn enough miles for a free ticket or your money back” guarantee.

 
What more could you ask for? A risk-free chance to earn enough frequent flier miles to fly for free. I’m going to be putting the information in that guide to use, because I want to start actually visiting those places on my list. Dreaming about them just isn’t enough.

What about you? Go check out the guide.

It’s All About the Attitude

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Attitude changes everything. I’m sure you’ve seen the motivational posters that say “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” Well, it’s true.

The adventurous commute

How do you feel about your commute? Is it a dreadful pain to be endured twice a day? It doesn’t have to be.

My commute is an adventure. I love it (even if I don’t quite like the destination). My day starts off with an exciting trip, and going home is even better because I love the trip. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I enjoy the traffic, getting caught at lights, or am thrilled with the people who cut me off. However, because I approach the commute as an adventure, I do find it to be enjoyable.

I know that others don’t see it the same way I do. They look through their windshield wipers at me on my motorcycle, in the 30-something degree weather, and you can see the bewilderment on their faces.

A different approach

All that you need to do to change your attitude is decide to take a different approach than normal. Instead of dreading your commute, look at it as an adventure. Don’t like your job? Look at it like a challenge instead of a chore. Having a hard time finding a job? Make it a game.

We get out of life what we put into it. You know what they say about lemons, you can either be sour or make lemonade.

Need some inspiration? Check out one of the recommended books:
Sticky-Note Love
Working for Yourself
Food Rules
Vagabonding
Art of Non-Conformity
Power of Less

Simple Recipes

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Do you ever wonder at what you eat? What’s in it, where it came from, etc? I do. Even more frequently I wonder Why did this cost so much? I could make it at home.

After reading Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual I’ve been giving these questions some more thought than normal. Even though it can be hard to find the time to cook from scratch, I enjoy it. More than just enjoying the process, I enjoy the food more. Not only because I know what’s in it, but so often it just plain tastes better.

As I searched for recipes the other day, I ran across the StoneSoup blog. Jules, the author, has committed to cooking with no more than 5 ingredients (not including oil, salt or pepper). Furthermore, she has written a couple of ecookbooks, including one that only requires 5 ingredients and 10 minutes! What a lovely principle!

It often takes more than 10 minutes to place an order for delivery. It definitely takes longer to go and pick something up. For less time, you can have a simple, delicious home-cooked meal. What’s not to like? With so few ingredients, it’s easy to have what you need on-hand for many of the recipes.

Real food

Not only are these quick recipes, but they’re also made of real food. Just like Michael Pollan recommends.

Cook more

What about you? Would you cook more often if only the recipes weren’t so complicated? If you didn’t have to go and buy ingredients that would only be used once or twice? Not to mention how much time you’ll save. I would, and that’s part of why I like this cookbook so much. I’ve already made a couple of the meals out of it, and will be trying more out in the near future.

Give it a shot. Explore StoneSoup, and check out her free ecookbook.

Food Rules – book review

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Food rules

Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual
by Michael Pollan

I first ran across Michael Pollan at a friend’s house. He was reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma and offered to let me borrow it. I was intrigued and read through it quite quickly. I found Michael’s conversational writing style to be quite enjoyable and it helped me to better appreciate the information that he was sharing while he told his stories.

Having enjoyed The Omnivore’s Dilemma so much, there was no hesitation about picking up Food Rules when I saw it on the store shelf. It’s a small book, and I actually managed to read about 1/3 of the book while waiting for my wife. (So as to not pick on anyone, we weren’t shopping. I was waiting for her to get off from work.)

This book could be the answer to all of the various diets out there. The ones that say you can’t eat meat, the ones that say you should predominately eat meat, or the no carbs, or mostly carbs… It all gets so confusing.

In Food Rules Michael presents seven words that sum up what we should eat. That’s refreshingly straight-forward. A meal-planning guide that I can understand and follow.

Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.

He then goes on to provide “rules” that help to further define these three sentences, giving more details that will help you stick to those seven words whether you’re shopping, cooking, or eating. 64 simple rules that are easy to remember, easy to follow, and great for your health. No rule takes more than two pages, most less than one.

The rules are simple. It’s easier than you think. The good news? You don’t even have to cut out things like chips, cakes, ice cream, pies, or other goodies (see rule 60).

Check out Food Rules for yourself.

An Addition to Adventure-Some

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If you visit the Adventure-Some site, you will notice that I have added a list of “Darn Good Books” to the left side of the page. (If you only check out my posts in a reader, via email, or on facebook, you might want to go take a look.)

Darn Good Books

One of my goals for 2011 is to read 52 books. I thought that I could share my progress with you via the sidebar of the site. I will list the books that I’ve particularly enjoyed so that you can check them out as well*. I will try to keep the list basically within the realm of adventuring, but often read well outside of this area. So you may see books about business, relationships, personal finance, or anything else.

Reviews

Since I will be showing books that I’ve enjoyed or found useful, I thought that it would be helpful to you if I commented on why that was. So you can expect to see a review for most of the books that make the “Darn Good” list.

 

* If any of these books happen to catch your fancy, please note that they are affiliate links. Meaning that if you click on them to purchase a copy I will receive a percentage of the price. Any funds received go to pay for expenses that Adventure-Some occurs.

On Seeing Further

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If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
– Isaac Newton

Recently I’ve been planning out how I will be building my business over the upcoming year. I already have my goals for 2011, but I needed to further define my roadmap for building a business. In order to shorten my learning curve, I’ve been learning as much as I can from people who have done already it.

Since my business will be solely online, I searched out people who have built successful online businesses. Though most of the sources I looked at were targeted toward bloggers, I was still able to find a lot of valuable content in each of them. Even though my business won’t be a traditional blog, I will be utilizing many of the same strategies that bloggers would be to build awareness of my business and gain customers.

Sources I’m Using

Over the last couple of weeks I have been reading quite a bit, and taking notes from the sources I’ve been exploring. These notes will help me to build my site in the most efficient way; from the actual construction of the web pages to maximizing the time I put into networking. (Note: All of these are free resources, though you may have to trade an email for some of them. Well worth it!)

  • 18 months, 2 blogs, six figures – Corbett Barr shares how he built a 6 figure income from 2 blogs in 18 months. While living in Mexico on sabbatical.
  • 279 Days to Overnight Success – Chris Guillebeau is a professional writer who I greatly admire. In this manifesto he outlines how he built his writing career in less than a year.
  • 6 Figure Blogger Blueprint – David Risley started his first website in 1997 and has been making his living online since the turn of the century. This Blueprint outlines the steps he took to do this, minus the mistakes he made.
  • 201 A-List Tips to Rock Your Blog – There’s a lot of information out there, and these tips from Leo Babauta and Mary Jaksch do a fabulous job of narrowing down what you need to know. Each of the tips are short and extremely useful. There’s no fluff here, and I know that I will be returning to it repeatedly to keep learning.
  • How to Failproof Your Business video series – This video series by Naomi Dunford and Dave Navarro is amazing! I’m still watching through the eight videos and taking notes, and have bookmarked them for future reference.

My plan is almost complete. Using the guides above, I have been able to create a roadmap that is very likely to help me reach the goal I am aiming for. By standing on the shoulders of those who came before me, I will be able to avoid some of their mistakes and possibly go further than they have.

Are you learning from those who go before you? With their help, what could you accomplish?