(skip to bottom if you’re busy, but please read….)
It wasn’t until I was back in my car that I realized I had just walked past a chicken in the front yard of a house nearby. It was at this moment that I realized I had been in South America too long. I mean, I was searching for an apt in San Diego, after all. We don’t have chickens in people’s front yards. Normally, that is. Sooo…I didn’t rent that apartment… (It was next door, but I figured there was a reason there was a chicken stutting around and I was sure I didn’t want to know that reason.) Instead, I rent an apartment with a dirt alley behind it. I’m guessing some of my overseas friends might think, that’s no so weird, but in San Diego, it is. We don’t have dirt roads or alleys here. We just don’t. Why? Well, cement is not that expensive, so we use it. Anyway, literally every single f’ing day, I drive in and out of that alley and honest to God, every day I feel like I’m back in Peru. It is so bumpy and narrow. Just wait till that chicken finds his way over to my apartment (it’s only about 10 blocks away).
So what it’s like being back in San Diego after 3 months on the road? Pretty much the same. What did I learn about life? Nothing. Am I glad I went? Yeah. I danced on a table in Bogota, slept on a hammock on the Caribbean, caught pirahna on the Amazon, watched the eternal monkey/dog battle that rages on, and…well a bunch of other stuff. Like watching He Man and She Ra in Spanish. If you want to turn into He Man in Spanish, hold your sword up and shout, “Por el poder de Greyskull, yo tengo el poder!” If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s probably for the best.
What were the highlights? Well, I’d have to say my new friend “El Juan” in Bogota catapulted most of Colombia into the top ten. (I just gave him the name “El Juan” – he earned it.) Iguazu Falls, in Brazil/Argentina. Go there. Simpsons in Spanish. Watch it. (Homer Simpson sounds like the Mexican bee guy. It’s sweet.) And Chilean completos…try to avoid them. They’re hotdogs with about 12 pounds of condiments on them. You’ll eat them. You’ll regret it. You’ll forget and eat them again. You’ll remember and regret it again. It’s kind of a cycle. But at least there’s beer to wash it all down. Honestly, I’m not sure where to start describing it all. So I decided not to bother. There’s lot’s of pictures out on my website, which is frankly getting a little ridiculous. I’ve been accumulating that collection of photos for about 12 years. I was actually on the phone tonight with my friend Shannon that I met in Australia, whom I hadn’t spoke to…in 12 years. We were catching up and swapping stories and I found myself describing the last 12 years of my life, thinking, holy crap, I’ve led a ridiculous life. Which begs the obvious question, what’s next? Well, I was thinking about writing a book.
Over the years, I’ve had an increasing number of you (roughly 80 now on this list) tell me I should write a book. So one day after eating lunch with a friend, she texted me and said, “I think you should write your book”. I stared at my phone for quite a while and finally thought, yeah, it’s time…
(——– If you skipped the above, start here ——)
So if I were to write a book, what would you want to read about?
I’ve lived in 8 countries and traveled to almost 50 couuntries on every continent except Antarctica, met a large collection of people (mostly making life better, some I could have done without), worked/studied/bartended/bummed overseas, listened to people’s ridiculous stories, told my own, climbed mountains, eaten strange foods, got sick from some of them, built up a professional career, taken months at a time to travel 3 separate times, traveled short weekends, done road trips around my own country, become an “eternal tourist” even in my own town, clashed with foreign cultures, learned from them, taken buses big and small, ridden all manner of trains and cars, done the touristy thing, done things were there were no tourists, traveled in groups, traveled alone, traveled with a girlfriend, had a great time, been horribly lonely, felt like I was on top of the world, felt like my ego was completely crushed, traveled healthy, traveled with physical problems, and so on and so on and so on.
I haven’t done everything. But I’ve done a lot. So odds are, if you have a question about it, I can answer it. And I can probably make you laugh at the same time. So if I were to spend a lot of free time in the next year writing a book, what would you want to know? (And don’t worry, if I don’t know the answer I probably know someone who does.)
My writing tends to contain 3 main components that I get fulfillment from writing about: education, humor, inspiration. (Well, actually you can tell me whether or not that’s true…) So anyway if I wrote a book, it would contain those 3 elements.
I’d like to ask you to answer the following three questions, and you’d really be doing me a favor if you answered honestly (I’d rather find out from you than spend a year writing a book that no one reads – so yes, be blunt):
1. In the last 12 years, what emails/posts of mine have you read, enjoyed, liked, disliked, been inspired by, been bored by, etc? (Or what kinds of topics?)
2. What is the single most interesting thing that you would like to read about (wrt travel)?
3. What is a dream of yours pertaining to travel that if I wrote about, I could help you achieve, no matter how big or small?
Thanks guys,
Matt
ilivenow.com
