Category Archives: Quotes

Hampton, Virginia: Welcome Back

    

[1] Yes, life DOES take VISA!
Diagnostic to determine that Shorty Rock (my car) cannot be fixed? $78
Installing alarms on The Duplex due to weekend break-in? $700
Still feeling like the luckiest chic on the planet? priceless.

[2] Jorge left Andrea and I in Cuernavaca one Jack Daniels drenched morning at 4am to head on to Acapulco with a bunch of random new-found friends. I didn’t cry. Mostly because he was tipsy and kept naming the 3 frogs on my t-shirt after the three of us in a hiccup-riddled state of inebriation. Andrea and I caught a bus back to El DF (Mexico City) where we had to split up and head to different bus terminals to get to our respective destinations (Ecuador for her, Guanajuato for me). We both cried as we hailed separate cabs at the station, clutching hands and starting sentences we couldn’t finish. Finally she just got in her cab and that was it. I’ve since heard from both of them and they are well. No longer the stars of this here blog and the center of my international social life, but no less missed.

[3] I was startled to find that I was both excited to get home to the states and blue to be leaving the life I’d been living the last 3 months. Even after being back for a month (I got back in early June) I am still equally excited about being home and anxious to get back to Latin America. Though I’m enjoying focusing on some of my non-travel related goals, I am also plotting my return to Mexico (October depending on the free-lance contract situation). I am also realizing that though I dubbed this my “one year off”, that I’m falling in lurve with the lifestyle itself and one year won’t be nearly enough.

[4] Dream Big. If there is something you dream of doing, something so crazy you don’t even say it out loud but you often think “If I could do X….” then get started, life waits for no (wo)man and you deserve your shot at bliss as much as anyone. Good luck, God Speed and Stay Tuned. It really wouldn’t have been the same without you.

“I’d rather die on my feet than live a lifetime on my knees.”
– Emiliano Zapata

The Optimist’s (Traveler’s) Creed

 

“Be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. Talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet. Make all your friends feel there is something special in them. Look on the sunny side of everything. Think only of the best, work only for the best, and expect only the best. Be as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. Give everyone you meet a smile. Spend so much time improving yourself that you have no time left to criticize others. Be too big for worry and to noble for anger.”

~Christian D. Larsen (also recognized as The Optimist Creed)

(via irk)

I couldn’t have said it better myself

The Double Life By Don Blanding*

How very simple life would be
If only there were two of me
A Restless Me to drift and roam
A Quiet Me to stay at home.
A Searching One to find his fill
Of varied skies and newfound thrill
While sane and homely things are done
By the domestic Other One.
*an excerpt

Strategery

“Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.”

– Julius Caesar