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On choosing life

Why Biking 7,000 Miles to Patagonia is Essential for Creative Living

If you need conversation material at parties, I suggest planning a seven thousand mile bike ride. It gives you the ability to talk to anybody. It’s a story that spreads on its own. People will just walk right up to you and ask, "Is it true? Holy shit."

I just turned 30, and I’ve decided to use this year to radically shape the rest of my life. I am about to leave my job and ride a bicycle for seventeen months, from Oregon to Patagonia. The need to do it (and it really felt like a need) hit me about three years ago when I read a quote from famed naturalist John Muir.

“I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news.”

Now, I hardly make any money, and I don’t feel like this "trivial world of men" has nothing to teach me. But there was something about drawing close to 30 that felt like I was losing something. The newness of life and career and cities and friends began to find their comfortable patterns, and once you see the pattern, time speeds up. That’s why we hear old people always warning us of how fast life passes. It really doesn’t pass by any faster than those long childhood summers, but we just lose fascination, or I should say we lose wonder. We are no longer astonished by the way the world works.

A famous cure for that is travel.

Many of my friends do not find it surprising that I would do this trip, though my conviction to do it surprised me. I never thought I’d follow in my parents’ footsteps.

I am not original. I am a sequel. In the 1970s, my father finished college and his unrest with America—thanks to the Vietnam War—inspired him to walk across it. He felt such distaste for his country, and at the same time, a discomfort with his own ignorance of it. He realized he didn’t really know his home. He thought, "What better way to discover a place than to walk through it?" He left from New York state and walked to New Orleans over two years, where he met my mother, seduced her out of seminary, and they walked together to the coast of Oregon. It was a five-year journey in total, one they wrote about for the cover story of National Geographic magazine in 1979.

My parents never pressured me to be a writer or a traveller. They never really pressured me to be anything other than myself. But they did send me to college and then to law school hoping that I’d contribute something meaningful. Maybe it was intentional, maybe it wasn’t, but the assembly line of education and career gave me the very same discontent that America gave my father 35 years ago.

Don’t mistake me. I loved my education, I loved my twenties, and I love my job. My journey is not a reaction to distaste. It is a reaction to an observable trend: human beings amass comfort and minimize risk as they age. I get it. I can see the value in that. But both of those things have a tendency to diminish character. I have enjoyed living my life in dynamic seasons, and I intend to continue that. It is a choice to look squarely at the decisions we all feel like we have to make and the priorities we all forget.

I am 30 now, and I don’t want a mortgage. I don’t want property-based responsibility because I think it’ll change my brain chemistry. It makes you focus on protecting what you have rather than fighting for what could be. It seems like the observable transition from idealism to conservatism. As for now, I do not want that.

I want to pursue wonder, appreciation, and adventure. I want to meet people and learn from them and write their stories and tell others. I want to become a man that pursues virtue and character and color and romance. It feels like the people in our lives who seem to have done that are the ones we love most. If I have a family some day, I want to give them a father full of stories and whimsy and love for being alive. I see too little of that.

You may think I am prolonging adolescence and avoiding responsibility. Well, I can simply say that I am not impressed by grownups or their society. But I will also say that I disagree with you. The choice to pursue a dream, at the destruction of my comfort, with the loss of safety and certainty, all for the purpose of doing something that inspires others to a fuller life of wonder and creativity and quality, to me that is a burden of responsibility worth carrying. To me, that is growing up.

Benjamin Franklin once said, "either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." I like that. I intend to do both. When I am finished, I want to write a book about it all. I hope you will follow my journey and maybe meet up with me along the way for a drink or a meal. I leave August 25, 2013 from Florence, Oregon. I would love to learn from you and tell you what I’ve seen.

On technology and quality of life (again, I know, sorry)

Cool article on technology and how we can get so much more out of life by doing less (and being in only 1 place at a time).

I´ve come to associate having multiple screens (chat + navigator + word document etc.) as trying to listen to multiple songs at the same time... it doesn´t work.

http://despacio.org/en/category/blogposts/

Technology and Quality of life

Posted on April 9, 2013 by pardo

By Jonas Hagen (with input from Carlos Pardo), also appearing in http://slowcity.tumblr.com/
OK, this is a big topic, sure. Let me share a tale with you. I went on a trip recently from the United States of A to a cold Northern European country with fellow university students and I forgot the power cord for my computer at home. I tried in vain to buy a replacement and resigned myself to spending nine laptop-less days. This trip was full of lectures and I always sat at the back of room, so I got to see what the non-forgetful people were doing on their tablets, laptops, smartphones, etc.
The completely unscientific results of my survey of the activities carried out on the devices:
- 75 % visiting a popular social networking website
- 20 % playing videogames
- 3 % online shopping
- 2 % doing other work (not at all related to the lecture)
So what has technology, or more specifically, what have small, portable, always connected to the world-wide-web computers, done to the classroom learning experience? One answer: we’re not present anymore. Our minds are constantly in different places, rarely concentrating on what’s going on where our bodies are. For those of us that were already prone to daydreaming (I include myself here), we’re even less present.

A maverick mayor of a major city is making a speech – a perfect time to catch up on emails.
Photo: Dr. Enrique Jacoby
When I go to bars these days I often see a few people sitting at the same table, each staring at a smartphone, no one talking to their neighbor.

A few weeks ago I went into the men`s lavatory and (excuse the graphic imagery) saw a gentleman relieving himself and sending a text message at the same time. A few days ago, at another location, I saw another gentleman doing the same thing. I made a comment and he said, “well these days you use the five minutes of bathroom time to send texts and emails.” It seems like the “peext,” o or “pee-mail” has become a part of life.
OK, some people have had telephones in their bathrooms for decades, and I am not suggesting we prohibit these practices or go back to a pre-smartphone world. But I do think it’s worthwhile to reflect on the costs of these technologies as well as the benefits. That way we can make better informed decisions about when to use them, and when not to, instead of having the simply take over our lives.
Another anecdote: I recently went to court to see an important case involving a nuclear reactor that a state wants closed to protect its people from death and disaster and a corporation wants open so it can make tons of money. No cellphones allowed in court; everyone checks theirs at the door. Guess what? Everyone pays attention to what is happening. It’s almost a surreal experience.
I once had an smartphone with an internet connection. I am a bit obsessive and checked my email every 2 minutes, and also felt that I should constantly be writing work-related emails. I had no more peace of mind. I now have a simple cellphone. I might get a smartphone for the camera, but don’t want to be constantly connected to email again.
What are the implications of having lots of contact via the web, text, etc, but less contact in the flesh? I suspect that our net (no pun intended) happiness goes down. There is no substitute for being face-to-face with real people. Think of the most meaningful moments in your life. They probably didn’t happen while you were staring at a screen.
Do you ever leave your phone at home and notice that you feel much freer and more present? Maybe in the future we will have bars or other places where no cellphones/smartphones are allowed inside? Maybe teachers will accept that students are doing anything but using computers as learning tools and encourage their students not to bring them to class?
Now I am going to go destroy some looms.

On sacrificing our most precious asset, time...

Reminds me of the fisherman paradox...

Fisherman and an Executive are sitting together having a cup of coffee, when the Executive asks:

EXECUTIVE - "Why don´t you get a job that pays more?"

FISHERMAN - "What for?"

EXEC - "So that you can make some more money and with that afford to do the things you want"

FISH - "Like what?"

EXEC - "Like travel to an island and sit in the sand and do nothing for 2 weeks a year"

FISH - "But that´s what I do already, every day of my life..."

http://www.raptitude.com/2010/07/your-lifestyle-has-already-been-designed/

Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed

Well I’m in the working world again. I’ve found myself a well-paying gig in the engineering industry, and life finally feels like it’s returning to normal after my nine months of traveling.
Because I had been living quite a different lifestyle while I was away, this sudden transition to 9-to-5 existence has exposed something about it that I overlooked before.
Since the moment I was offered the job, I’ve been markedly more careless with my money. Not stupid, just a little quick to pull out my wallet. As a small example, I’m buying expensive coffees again, even though they aren’t nearly as good as New Zealand’s exceptional flat whites, and I don’t get to savor the experience of drinking them on a sunny café patio. When I was away these purchases were less off-handed, and I enjoyed them more.
I’m not talking about big, extravagant purchases. I’m talking about small-scale, casual, promiscuous spending on stuff that doesn’t really add a whole lot to my life. And I won’t actually get paid for another two weeks.
In hindsight I think I’ve always done this when I’ve been well-employed — spending happily during the “flush times.” Having spent nine months living a no-income backpacking lifestyle, I can’t help but be a little more aware of this phenomenon as it happens.
I suppose I do it because I feel I’ve regained a certain stature, now that I am again an amply-paid professional, which seems to entitle me to a certain level of wastefulness. There is a curious feeling of power you get when you drop a couple of twenties without a trace of critical thinking. It feels good to exercise that power of the dollar when you know it will “grow back” pretty quickly anyway.
What I’m doing isn’t unusual at all. Everyone else seems to do this. In fact, I think I’ve only returned to the normal consumer mentality after having spent some time away from it.
One of the most surprising discoveries I made during my trip was that I spent much less per month traveling foreign counties (including countries more expensive than Canada) than I did as a regular working joe back home. I had much more free time, I was visiting some of the most beautiful places in the world, I was meeting new people left and right, I was calm and peaceful and otherwise having an unforgettable time, and somehow it cost me much less than my humble 9-5 lifestyle here in one of Canada’s least expensive cities.
It seems I got much more for my dollar when I was traveling. Why?

A Culture of Unnecessaries

Here in the West, a lifestyle of unnecessary spending has been deliberately cultivated and nurtured in the public by big business. Companies in all kinds of industries have a huge stake in the public’s penchant to be careless with their money. They will seek to encourage the public’s habit of casual or non-essential spending whenever they can.
In the documentary The Corporation, a marketing psychologist discussed one of the methods she used to increase sales. Her staff carried out a study on what effect the nagging of children had on their parents’ likelihood of buying a toy for them. They found out that 20% to 40% of the purchases of their toys would not have occurred if the child didn’t nag its parents. One in four visits to theme parks would not have taken place. They used these studies to market their products directly to children, encouraging them to nag their parents to buy.
This marketing campaign alone represents many millions of dollars that were spent because of demand that was completely manufactured.

“You can manipulate consumers into wanting, and therefore buying, your products. It’s a game.” ~ Lucy Hughes, co-creator of “The Nag Factor”

This is only one small example of something that has been going on for a very long time. Big companies didn’t make their millions by earnestly promoting the virtues of their products, they made it by creating a culture of hundreds of millions of people that buy way more than they need and try to chase away dissatisfaction with money.
We buy stuff to cheer ourselves up, to keep up with the Joneses, to fulfill our childhood vision of what our adulthood would be like, to broadcast our status to the world, and for a lot of other psychological reasons that have very little to do with how useful the product really is. How much stuff is in your basement or garage that you haven’t used in the past year?

The real reason for the forty-hour workweek

The ultimate tool for corporations to sustain a culture of this sort is to develop the 40-hour workweek as the normal lifestyle. Under these working conditions people have to build a life in the evenings and on weekends. This arrangement makes us naturally more inclined to spend heavily on entertainment and conveniences because our free time is so scarce.
I’ve only been back at work for a few days, but already I’m noticing that the more wholesome activities are quickly dropping out of my life: walking, exercising, reading, meditating, and extra writing.
The one conspicuous similarity between these activities is that they cost little or no money, but they take time.
Suddenly I have a lot more money and a lot less time, which means I have a lot more in common with the typical working North American than I did a few months ago. While I was abroad I wouldn’t have thought twice about spending the day wandering through a national park or reading my book on the beach for a few hours. Now that kind of stuff feels like it’s out of the question. Doing either one would take most of one of my precious weekend days!
The last thing I want to do when I get home from work is exercise. It’s also the last thing I want to do after dinner or before bed or as soon as I wake, and that’s really all the time I have on a weekday.
This seems like a problem with a simple answer: work less so I’d have more free time. I’ve already proven to myself that I can live a fulfilling lifestyle with less than I make right now. Unfortunately, this is close to impossible in my industry, and most others. You work 40-plus hours or you work zero. My clients and contractors are all firmly entrenched in the standard-workday culture, so it isn’t practical to ask them not to ask anything of me after 1pm, even if I could convince my employer not to.
The eight-hour workday developed during the industrial revolution in Britain in the 19th century, as a respite for factory workers who were being exploited with 14- or 16-hour workdays.
As technologies and methods advanced, workers in all industries became able to produce much more value in a shorter amount of time. You’d think this would lead to shorter workdays.
But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work.
We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing.
Western economies, particularly that of the United States, have been built in a very calculated manner on gratification, addiction, and unnecessary spending. We spend to cheer ourselves up, to reward ourselves, to celebrate, to fix problems, to elevate our status, and to alleviate boredom.
Can you imagine what would happen if all of America stopped buying so much unnecessary fluff that doesn’t add a lot of lasting value to our lives?
The economy would collapse and never recover.
All of America’s well-publicized problems, including obesity, depression, pollution and corruption are what it costs to create and sustain a trillion-dollar economy. For the economy to be “healthy”, America has to remain unhealthy. Healthy, happy people don’t feel like they need much they don’t already have, and that means they don’t buy a lot of junk, don’t need to be entertained as much, and they don’t end up watching a lot of commercials.
The culture of the eight-hour workday is big business’ most powerful tool for keeping people in this same dissatisfied state where the answer to every problem is to buy something.
You may have heard of Parkinson’s Law. It is often used in reference to time usage: the more time you’ve been given to do something, the more time it will take you to do it. It’s amazing how much you can get done in twenty minutes if twenty minutes is all you have. But if you have all afternoon, it would probably take way longer.
Most of us treat our money this way. The more we make, the more we spend. It’s not that we suddenly need to buy more just because we make more, only that we can, so we do. In fact, it’s quite difficult for us to avoid increasing our standard of living (or at least our rate of spending) every time we get a raise.
I don’t think it’s necessary to shun the whole ugly system and go live in the woods, pretending to be a deaf-mute, as Holden Caulfield often fantasized. But we could certainly do well to understand what big commerce really wants us to be. They’ve been working for decades to create millions of ideal consumers, and they have succeeded. Unless you’re a real anomaly, your lifestyle has already been designed.
The perfect customer is dissatisfied but hopeful, uninterested in serious personal development, highly habituated to the television, working full-time, earning a fair amount, indulging during their free time, and somehow just getting by.
Is this you?
Two weeks ago I would have said hell no, that’s not me, but if all my weeks were like this one has been, that might be wishful thinking.

El Logo - por Juan Camilo Estela

Bicicletas en Bogotá

Dice Pardo que nos hace falta traer a la bici del plano recreativo al plano cotidiano en Bogotá...

http://www.eltiempo.com/blogs/despacio/2013/05/lunes-con-guayabo-de-ciclovia.php

Lunes con guayabo de ciclovía

Por carlosfpardo el 19 de Mayo 2013 8:22 PM

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(gente borracha en esta vida)

El guayabo es, según la RAE, un malestar por haber bebido en exceso. Si no me equivoco, es un síndrome de abstinencia alcohólica que se presenta al día siguiente de haber bebido como un pez durante horas. Palabras más, palabras menos: es un castigo divino por borracho.

 

 Siguiendo con la misma idea, voy a hablar de algo totalmente distinto: La ciclovía es un evento más viejo que yo (digamos que se concibió en 1974, pero nació en 1976 y tuvo su adultez en 1983 o 1996, según el biógrafo que lean). Y todos los que están leyendo esto en Bogotá deben tener clarísimo a qué se refiere, ya sea porque la gozan todos los domingos o porque la aborrecen cuando van "al club". Pero todos, estoy seguro, han salido así sea un ratico a la ciclovía del domingo - que lance la piedra el primero que no-.

   

(gente pintoresca en esta vida)

 Algo que pasa desapercibido en muchas partes es el hecho de que la ciclovía es un evento multitudinario (casi dos millones de personas salen de paseito cada domingo, según las cuentas del IDRD con ayuda de la Universidad Nacional), pero el resto de los días de la semana la cantidad de personas que usan modos de transporte como la bicicleta, caminar, trotar o patinar se reduce a menos de quinientos mil. Este fenómeno lo llamó alguien (todavía no hemos sabido quién) "la amnesia de los lunes", pero yo lo rebautizo hoy como "guayabo de ciclovía" para darle un sabor más local y menos neurológico.

   

(y me preguntarán por qué le digo Guayabo del lunes)

 Después de que este fenómeno del guayabo de ciclovía me lo describió Claudio Olivares en uno de sus viajes a Bogotá, conecté varias cosas en mi cabeza y me comenzó a parecer muy raro. Pero no es totalmente raro, porque de inmediato también me imaginé a alguien discutiendo este fenómeno y diciendo (entre paréntesis los gestos corporales acompañantes a cada frase): 

 "Pero esque mire, uuuuna cosa es una cosa (brazos extendidos hacia la izquierda)... 

"... y oootra cosa es otra cosa (brazos extendidos, esta vez hacia la derecha)..." 

 Ahora de manera gráfica con mi murraco ya bien reconocido en el blog:

 

(se reciben donaciones para tomar un curso de dibujo)

En realidad, el murraco tiene algo de razón (y aquí está lo problemático del asunto), y es que la ciclovía se concibió, engendró, promovió y consolidó como una alternativa de recreación y deporte para la multitud sudorosa de bogotanos que la utilizan. Pero, si uno quisiera realmente generar mucho más bienestar en esos ciudadanos, debería promoverla como un pequeño ejemplo dominical de lo que podrían hacer (sin disfraz de superhéroe, ni el teni, ni guantes, ni salpicón) el resto de la semana. Sí, estoy diciendo que la bicicleta se puede usar todos los días de la semana y que no hay que usarla como si uno fuera Mariana Pajón porque no se trata de ir corriendo como una gacela sino que se trata de demostrar la gracia con que se puede desplazar por la ciudad sin esfuerzo. 

   

(gente cool en esta vida, caray)

 En conclusión: para que la ciclovía deje de darnos guayabo los lunes, tenemos que trascender la idea del uso de la bicicleta como algo eminentemente recreativo y deportivo para transformarlo en algo que haga parte de nuestra vida diaria. Y eso, señoras, señores y murracos, es lo que nos va a salvar del infierno que nos tienen preparado -con caldera y todo- esos castigos divinos que nos están esperando por creer que somos superhéroes dominicales...bueno, algunos sí tienen otra idea en mente cuando se disfrazan y hay que respetarla...véase el video:

  El Domingo del Chapulin from Don Mister / Manuel Contreras on Vimeo