If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all. —Anna Quindlen
What is success to you? I often think about how lucky I am to be living my dreams. Some days I have to pinch myself in order to make sure it’s not that kind of dream.
Even so, I still struggle with the opinion of others about my life. There is also pressure to play the role that society wishes me to play. If I just do what others want me to do, that’s not success on my terms. That’s what the “feel good in your heart” is all about—it has to be your own success.
If your personal success is real and also happens to match the wishes of family, friends, and the world, then so much the better. But whatever you do, make sure that life’s successes are your own.
“There is no use in trying,” said Alice; “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I dare say you haven’t much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
I have to catch myself when saying “That’s impossible!” when faced with challenging circumstances. This quote from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass is great for reminding me that nothing is truly impossible. If I set my mind to it, I can do it.
Amazingly, Erin and I have just passed a big milestone: one year of full-time RV travel. It’s been a fun adventure, and we hope to continue for at least one more year. Next summer, we plan on driving to Alaska, so if the RV wants to fall apart after that it would be great timing.
Read Erin’s recap of our first full year.
For those of you who ask “Where are you right now?” all you have to do is check fautrever.com every week. I keep a map of our location at the top of the home page; you can click the map to see our general area on Google Maps in case you want to zoom out to see what part of the USA it is (don’t worry, I know you aren’t all geography buffs!). I usually update the map as soon as we arrive in a new location—generally by evening of the same day.
Our travel blog is generally two weeks behind “real time” because of all the research, photo editing and processing, and writing it takes to put together a post. Plus, that gives us a chance to mentally process our experiences before wrapping them up nicely for you.
If you aren’t subscribed to our travel blog, grab the RSS feed or sign up on our website for the email updates. We post about three times a week.
Here’s to another year on the road, and living our travel dreams!
Posted July 11th, 2007 to travel ·
Everyone needs a social life, right? I signed up for a MySpace account earlier this year, but never updated it or customized it much. To be honest, I probably was just too busy. But, it also wasn’t inviting, compelling, or easy to use, so that contributed to my mostly ignoring it besides putting up two pictures and accepting three or four friend invites.
This week I signed up for Facebook, another insanely popular (if less so) web-based social application. It’s like night and day—so much better! On MySpace, 9 out of 10 friend invitations were spam; Facebook’s invites have been mostly legitimate. The interface to add your details and customize your settings is clear and simple.
Facebook also made a great move recently by allowing third-party applications to synchronize with your account. In less than 5 minutes I had my Flickr account showing 15 random photos and Twitter updating my status. I really like the idea of reusing data or media that you have already worked hard on somewhere else (blog, photos, etc).
So, today I deleted the MySpace account permanently. No. Looking. Back.
Since we were just in San Antonio, Texas as part of our “Travel Adventures”, I thought I would share this classic pun with you.
“A tourist couple decides to eat in a café along the Riverwalk in downtown San Antonio as they finish up a day of people-watching and shopping. They order brisket and potatoes, and enjoy their meal while watching tour boats float by on the water.
When the waiter offers the dessert menu, they politely aquiesce and read through the list of cakes, bisques, and tartes. At the bottom of the menu, however, is the list of pies labeled ‘remember the à la mode’… ”
Posted March 17th, 2007 to humor ·
One nice thing about having a MacBook Pro, or any Intel-based Mac computer for that matter, is the ability to run multiple operating systems. Using the amazingly wonderful Parallels virtualization software I currently run Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Ubuntu-flavored Linux (all at the same time).
Last night I loaded the latest Ubuntu release and was up and surfing the web within 10 minutes with the Firefox browser within Ubuntu. Email, image editing with GIMP, you can do it all right there.
Then I came across a hilarious cartoon on xkcd.com, and had to link to it here. Hilarious!
Sometimes the words to a song can fill up my heart. Beauty of the Days Gone By by Van Morrison does just that every time:
When I recall just how it felt
When I went walking down by the take
My soul was free, my heart awake
When I walked down into the town
The mountain air was fresh and clear
The sun was up behind the hill
It felt so good to be alive
On that morning in spring
I want to sing this song for you
I want to lift your spirits high
And in my soul I want to feel
The beauty of the days gone by
The beauty of the days gone by
It brings a longing to my soul
To contemplate my own true self
And keep me young as I grow old
The beauty of the days gone by
The music that we used to play
So lift your glass and raise it high
To the beauty of the days gone by
I'll sing it from the mountain top
Down to the valley down below
Because my cup doth overflow
With the beauty of the days gone by
The mountain glen
Where we used to roam
The gardens there
By the railroad track
Oh my memory it does not lie
Of the beauty of the days gone by
The beauty of the days gone by
It brings a longing to my soul
To contemplate my own true self
And keep me young as I grow old
Listen to this song on Amazon (go to “Listen to Samples” #10).
It’s been quiet around here. I’ve been way too busy for anything! Work, work, and more work. The silence is almost over—I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Oh, and I am living in an RV now.
I do want to say that I finally finished the last book in the Baroque Cycle, Neal Stephenson’s master work. The last book, System of the World was my favorite. It took me a few months to complete, mainly because I don’t have much time to read. It was well worth it, though. By the way, it’s not considered a trilogy even though it’s published in three volumes.
“Why Baroque? Because it is set in the Baroque, and it is baroque. Why Cycle? Because I am trying to avoid the T-word (“trilogy”). In my mind this work is something like 7 or 8 connected novels. These have been lumped together into three volumes because it is more convenient from a publishing standpoint, but they could just as well have been put all together in a single immense volume or separated into 7 or 8 separate volumes. So to slap the word “trilogy” on it would be to saddle it with a designation that is essentially bogus. Having said that, I know everyone’s going to call it a trilogy anyway.” — Neal Stephenson
If you were frustrated by either of the first two books in the series, press on and read the last book. It’s a gem. It brings all the loose ends together, and even provides strange and crazy ties to Neal’s wonderful book Cryptonomicon. If you are wondering whether it’s worth it, I would say yes enthusiastically.
I’m actually kind of sorry I finished it, since now I have to look for a new masterpiece to read. Oh well.
I posted a short entry about God’s Debris in mid-December. My intention was to read the book and then share my impressions here. The reason it’s be such a long delay is that I decided to read the book again. I felt it was necessary to pay better attention to the various themes in the book in order to explain my reactions and thoughts.
The book is interesting in that it has different levels within the story. The gist of the story is a conversation between a very old man and a young man that arrives at his door. Their conversation makes up most of the book and creates situations that the author intended to make us think about ourselves and our world.
The superficial level in the book is the main characters’ experience as they interact. It is fantastical, yet believable, and weaves the other two levels together. The book wouldn’t quite work without the story line; but it would also be worthless without the thought experiment held within.
The second level involves practical advice for living. The young man gets solid counseling from the old man regarding love, relationships, friendships, luck, and success in life. This level is interesting, engaging, and useful for anyone that reads it. It is still not the main focus of the dialog, however.
Finally, the deepest of the three levels or themes is driven by the old man’s teaching of how the world works. Throughout the book the story line jumps between levels one and two but often gets injected with number three. This third and most important theme is a philosophical commentary about faulty, human-centric world views. The old man covers science, religion, culture, and many other issues within this commentary.
After the second reading of the book, I started to separate these streams into their own sub-books and ideas. This helped me to take away the good ideas and leave behind what I thought wasn’t as valuable.
The best part of the book, in my opinion, is that third and most profound level. It’s an analysis into our cultural framework that mirrors the thinking and reading that have guided my spiritual, mental, and emotional journey in the last four to five years. This thought experiment really caught me off-guard with how much it related to my own development.
For that reason alone I would recommend this book to anyone. Be prepared to see through the story and the practical advice, though, in order to seize the grains of cultural analysis that lie below. Adams’ purpose in writing the book is to cause the reader to think, and it did just that for me.
Read God’s Debris (free PDF download).
Posted February 24th, 2006 to ideas ·
“TROUBLEMAKERS” by Malcolm Gladwell is an interesting read. If you’ve enjoyed Blink or The Tipping Point, then go read this New Yorker article. It delves into human psychology much like those two best-sellers do.
The tagline for Gladwell’s piece is “What pit bulls can teach us about profiling.” Dogs, pit bulls in this case, often get a very bad reputation through no fault of their own. In most cases it’s the negligence or purposeful intent of the owners that causes the dogs’ bad behavior.
The article explores the reasons behind aggressive dog behavior and why it has led to large-scale generalization and profiling of certain dog breeds. This in turn provides a great example of how we come to profile any manner of object, person, or animal.
Like I said, it’s a good read; it will make you think. I’ve already started to look at dogs in a different way.
Visit site.
[Tip: if you go to the Printable version of the article, it really helps with its readability.]
Posted February 23rd, 2006 to ideas ·
