“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” 

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

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What the hell do I do all day?

Ok, it starts with me saying, “Ahhhhh…. Not a thing to do today!” and I amble into the kitchen.  I ask (self-sabotaging my peaceful day) if the ladies need any help with breakfast.  They say, “No gracias!”

Whew!  I walk next door to fill up a water bottle and the owner of the hostel asks me if I want to make and sell pizzas tonight to earn some money.  I say, “I’ll think about it.”  After buying yeast and flour, I drop off the groceries and get my stuff together for a coffee shop blog post.  On the way, one of the ladies asks if I want to go on a coffee date at 3:ooPM.  Sure.

So from 8:00am – 10:00pm I am once again busy, but it’s cool.  Thirty minute yoga, thirty minute morning writing, eat the hostel breakfast (eggs, refried beans, avocado, toast, orange juice), buy groceries, work on blog for a couple hours, visit a friend, buy gourmet cheese for the pizza, make the dough, bake the pizzas, clean up.

After dinner, my job is to sell beer to anyone playing pool and hanging out.  Afterward, I read, listen to youtube, and go to sleep.

I was selling biscuits, but not many people share my passion for those savory, flaky, buttery, fluffy little golden nuggets.  To hustle, you have to hustle.  It’s fun though.

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 “Hundreds and hundreds of people are running after success and none of them know what it is!” -Alan Watts

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Mango Mouth

My upper lip is usually smaller than my lower.  Lips are sensitive and I’m typically a whiny little bitch, so this is extra painful for me.  It’s called “mango mouth”.  Mango is in the same family as Poison Ivy, along with cashew, sumac, and pistachio.  Someone in Roatan showed me how to eat them when they fall off the tree.  It never bothered me until almost a month later.  Hostel Barakah in Copan Ruinas has two trees and they are falling like crazy.  Itchy.

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Mike Rowe gives a Ted Talk about what he learned from 4 years hosting the show Dirty Jobs.  For one, he said the people he met had a sense of peace and balance that no other group he knows maintains.  Hard work is good for the soul.  He also pointed out that we are at war with work.  This is the revolution of this generation.  There was the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, the Social Revolution of the 60’s, Suffrage, Civil Rights, several others, and now the Anti-labor Revolution.  As a participant of this revolution, I am not going to argue whether or not it exists.  What I am curious about, is to see what comes from this revolution.

Robotic labor will be later on because there are still vast differences in currency values.  Outsourcing labor will accelerate as skilled labor (welders, electricians, carpenters, etc.) are not replenished by citizens of westernized cultures.  From this, I can see two positive results: cultural-exposure increases and currency-value buffering.

By more and more labor being demanded and filled by foreign labor, strange cultures will be experienced, second-hand, by citizens of the country not willing to do it’s dirty work.  This initially induces xenophobia (fear/hate of foreigners), but eventually this fades away as the population transforms.

An average per capita income for 2013 was estimated at $1,570.  In the United States, in 2008 it was $26,964.  Buying power will also homogenize with each generation of global labor shifting.  This is not a move toward socialism.  Rich businessmen in India will exist side by side with rich American businessmen.  It is happening without effort because it is natural.  As countries become more familiar with one another, the public is harder to trick into going to war.

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“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” 

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

market-ing = going to the market (the United States’ national past-time)

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Hostel Peace

I really enjoy these late nights when the hostel is almost empty.  The other night a bus dropped off about 15 backpackers and the hostel has been full the past couple days.  I just chilled in a hammock and watched 2 hours of Joe Rogan stuff.  The interview with George St. Pierre is awesome.  

Now it’s midnight, but I feel wide awake.  Normally I’m too hard on myself, always trying to finish reading a serious book, or working on a story, or drilling Spanish verbs.  Trying, working, drilling.  Always striving to get better.  Tonight I walk through the silent hostel on the clean tile floor, run my fingers on the unlit pool table and stroll out on the porch to listen to crickets.  This valley is peaceful.  No wonder they chose it to build the Mayan pyramids and temples.  It’s at a high elevation so it doesn’t get too hot during the day and at night you can comfortably sleep in one of the hammocks outside.

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This is me:

“We have all met those who are trying very hard to be real persons, … ranging from students of arcane wisdom to the audiences of popular speakers on pep and personality, selling yourself and making your life a success. I have never yet met anyone who tried to become a real person with success … So many modern religions and psychologies make this fundamental mistake of trying to make the tail wag the dog, which is what the quest for personality amounts to.” Alan Watts

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“It’s hard to prove genocide,” said Hall. “If some Biafrans survive, then genocide hasn’t been committed. If no Biafrans survive, who will complain?” – Leonard Hall to Kurt Vonnegut in Biafra: A People Betrayed

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Feel the breeze.  Trees in the sneeze.  Peace comes cool to break the rays.  Days roll on and summer is long here where the ocean meets the bays.  Blue and green and blue and white.  Coral grows deep like a pelican’s flight.  Warm and dark and white at night.  The beach covered mountains grow leaves for light.  Take what you will, what you need from me.  It’s now or tomorrow and all I’ll just be.  Each morning of the future is waste.  Instead I’ll walk uphill, no haste.  Just keep on the fountain’s edge and avoid drops.  The coins are a trick and cost more than the sops.  Bring puppies and kittens and raisons and treats.  Leave drinks and breads for others who sleep.  Dip cookies in milk and laugh to yourself.  This dream they call real is as sharp as a knife.  This sleep they call awake will give and take life.  When it’s all said and seen, walk in circles to save time.  You can live on gold and you can dance with rhyme.  Disobey but be kind.  Avoid bullets for your mind.  Keep a book and a heart and mind in your pile of unopened boxes under the sweet pine.  Look left when in the West before deciding to cross.  Forget the fancy restaurant.  Try to grow before you’re lost.  Forget the rules, just observe the first laws.

Watch the sun without your eyes.  Take each breath with great surprise.  Keep a totem in your heart to keep you company in the dark.  Wear no shoes on top your bag because it holds your back at sag.  Nothing gives us like we have.  Nothing tries to take it back.  Winter is a chance to bake and a chance to avoid the great mistake.  Keep a phonebook in your pants to use in rain and great romance.  I’m talking to you , O’ winner of the games.  Only the world doesn’t know your name.  Because names are silly and change all the time.  The only constant is the frame of your mind.  It’s never changed so let it all go.  Be who you were in six inches of snow.  Take in the soup, give back the change.  Stare at a lake or a homeless dog’s mange.  Pick up a stone and ask if it cares to be called ten thousand times nothing the same.  Walk every morning, every evening at night.  The slower you move, the harder the fight.  Shade is your ally, but water can kill.  See if there’s a mailbox inside of that pill.  I can’t say I tried and Charles would be pleased to see me in shambles falling through my own knees.  There never was an ending, so how could it shine like golden palm fronds at the end of my mind?  I’ll keep up this nonsense for it beats the alternative: to simply be happily avoiding the truth.