My wife checked flight tickets to Costa Rica yesterday.
We intend to spend 3 months in the Land of the Ticos beginning in February.
Peep the featured image. We spent 2 weeks in that region in 2013. Arenal, Costa Rica. I woke to that volcano in the distance. Perhaps we will head back.
I feel my life is pretty neat but nothing special because I made clear, definite, freeing and sometimes uncomfortable decisions over 15,000 hours to live this life. But to most people, my life may appear to be mind-blowing. Stop what you are doing now. Imagine if you and your wife bandied about the passing thought:
“3 months in Costa Rica during the winter would be nice.”
Then imagine 10 minutes later you bought tickets, booked an AirBnB and were all set.
Most folks would deem this as being pretty neat, fun and freeing.
My wife and I usually do things this quickly but given the current global climate, we are waiting until a few weeks pre-trip to ensure we can travel to Costa Rica sans test. Even that is a great freedom; booking last minute trips to exotic lands, for months of travel.
Even if traveling the world is not your gig and you deeply love being a home body, few humans look at my life as being average, boring or hum drum. But I did largely mundane, simple, basic things to become a pro blogger who circles the globe. Few humans understand this truth; spectacular lives seem preceded by doing simple, mundane things generously for 5,000 to 10,000 to 15,000 hours or longer.
I sit in front of a laptop, write blog posts solving people's problems and publish the posts. I guest post. I comment genuinely on blogs. I chat folks up on social media. I monetize through my 100 plus Amazon eBooks, courses, audio books, paperbacks, affiliate streams and various other channels.
That's it. Simple. Plain. Basic. Even boring, sometimes.
But I did these things for 15,000 hours.
Other bloggers:
- panic after 5 hours
- greedily try to squeeze a life of travel via blogging through ONE viral blog post
- engage in complex, asinine blogging strategies
- spam or scam
- resist the fear of being not enough, feel lazy and quit blogging after 2 years
- write one post every 3 months then stop blogging for 3 months, blogging-working for 8 hours each year
- never network
- never guest post
All of these fears and 50,000 more arose in my being during the past 15,000 blogging hours spanning 12 years of my life. I faced, felt and released each fear and proceeded to do simple, basic, mundane things over 12 years. Write blog posts. Comment genuinely on blogs.
I have fun blogging. Befriending folks through blog commenting feels freeing to me. But I sometimes get bored with each. Sometimes I do not want to guest post. I feel these fears then get back to doing simple things.
The upside of doing simple things generously for a long time: peace of mind, freedom, liberation and living a life most deem mind-blowing, quite spectacular. We chose to house sit in the tri-state through February but if both sits dissolved now we would book a place and buy plane tickets for Costa Rica in the next 10 minutes. Few humans have this level of freedom but me and my wife did simple, basic, generous things for 12 years to be able to live such a neat, liberated life.
Beware; trying to do complex, spectacular, brilliant things leads to a boring, mundane, ho-hum life because you swing, whiff and miss, forcing you to work a job to pay bills. Trying to do spectacular things puts you back into survival mode again and again because doing simple things generously for a LONG TIME leads to the seemingly spectacular life.
