traybucket




I'm doing 40 things
 

traybucket's Life List

  1. 1. lose weight
    4 entries . 4 cheers
    35,276 people
  2. 2. get in shape
    1 entry . 3 cheers
    9,070 people
  3. 3. implement GTD
    1 entry . 6 cheers
    456 people
  4. 4. learn how to drive stick-shift
    1 entry . 16 cheers
    4,425 people
  5. 5. start a blog
    6 cheers
    913 people
  6. 6. read Agile Web Development with Rails
    4 entries . 2 cheers
    136 people
  7. 7. spend more time outdoors
    14 cheers
    919 people
  8. 8. Read War & Peace
    2 entries . 3 cheers
    53 people
  9. 9. read harry potter
    6 cheers
    80 people
  10. 10. learn guitar
    1 entry . 6 cheers
    2,980 people
  11. 11. master TextMate
    4 people
  12. 12. Learn a martial art
    3 cheers
    1,412 people
  13. 13. set up an aquarium
    1 entry . 5 cheers
    13 people
  14. 14. Read "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
    9 cheers
    536 people
  15. 15. read every book I own
    1 entry . 4 cheers
    2,077 people
  16. 16. travel to every continent
    4 cheers
    1,397 people
  17. 17. finish unpacking
    1 entry . 2 cheers
    115 people
  18. 18. read the Chronicles of Narnia
    2 entries . 3 cheers
    219 people
  19. 19. Make new friends
    4 cheers
    12,239 people
  20. 20. write a book and have it published
    4 cheers
    2,664 people
  21. 21. Finish Reading The Fountainhead
    1 cheer
    6 people
  22. 22. Contribute to an open source software project
    1 entry . 2 cheers
    807 people
  23. 23. See Cirque du Soleil
    6 cheers
    250 people
  24. 24. Learn Spanish
    1 entry . 5 cheers
    14,882 people
  25. 25. Do 100 sit-ups daily for 100 consecutive days
    2 entries
    203 people
  26. 26. develop a sensible disaster plan and survival kit
    2 cheers
    40 people
  27. 27. Reduce Paper Clutter in My Home
    3 entries . 7 cheers
    5 people
  28. 28. get promoted
    1 entry . 2 cheers
    279 people
  29. 29. Climb Mt. Kilimanjaro
    3 cheers
    431 people
  30. 30. visit all 50 states
    3 entries . 1 cheer
    6,892 people
  31. 31. hike the appalachian trail
    2 team members . 5 cheers
    1,583 people
  32. 32. get rid of all my clutter
    2 cheers
    1,131 people
  33. 33. write a book
    2 cheers
    24,976 people
  34. 34. master Ruby
    1 cheer
    176 people
  35. 35. Learn Objective-C
    107 people
  36. 36. Go mushroom hunting
    1 cheer
    23 people
  37. 37. see the northern lights
    2 cheers
    16,412 people
  38. 38. learn to ski
    3 entries . 6 cheers
    803 people
  39. 39. Do the Couch to 5k running plan
    4 cheers
    305 people
  40. 40. Write a will
    1 cheer
    762 people

How I did it
How to eat more locally grown food
It took me
1 year
It made me
Smarter about food.


Recent entries
read 20 books in 2007 (read all 7 entries…)
#5 Vagabonding 22 months ago

Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts

This book is so short (203 pages, but a lot of it is references) that it scarcely qualifies as a book, but I’m behind in my quest for 20 so I’ll count it.

This is a book about both the hows and whys of long-term, low-budget international travel. “Vagabonding” is the term that Potts uses for this kind of travel, which he separates from “vacationing”. To Potts, vacationing is about escape—vagabonding is more about curiosity and discovery.

Potts spends much of the book exploding the myth that long-term international travel is the exclusive domain of the wealthy—before becoming a writer, Potts himself traveled Asia for over a year and a half financed entirely by doing landscaping work and teaching English in Korea for 2 years. According to Potts, not only is it possible for normal people to travel the world, but by keeping the budget and baggage low, normal people can have deeper, more fulfilling travel experiences than the rich people staying at the Hilton.

Potts offers many good pointers on the hows of travel—language, money, safety, health, etc, but it’s when he’s talking about the philosophy and attitude of travel that this book goes from good to brilliant. He talks about how the naive quest for authenticity leads many to pay large amounts of money for synthetic culture. He talks about ridiculous “anti-tourists” who show their superiority by visiting far-away places and refusing to go anyplace that mere “tourists” go. He talks about how travel is fundamentally a personal experience, not a status symbol.

This is book is one of the most intelligent, insightful books I’ve ever read. It was also extremely well-written and easy to read, so much so that I got it from the library yesterday and finished it today. It is also inspirational—so much so that I’m wondering how I can NOT take some time off to see the world for myself.



finish unpacking
Actually doing something about this now. 23 months ago

I opened up the boxes of books that I hadn’t unpacked since the move 2 years ago. I was half-tempted just to take the boxes to the used bookstore without opening them first (hey, I’ve gotten along without those books for 2 years, haven’t I?), but I did open them up and was glad—because I decided to keep about two-thirds of them.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the shelf space to shelve all of them right now, so they’re not technically unpacked yet.



Reduce Paper Clutter in My Home (read all 3 entries…)
Quite a bit of progress here. 23 months ago

I worked through my “old mail” pile the last two weekends, shredding and filing as I went. There is still plenty of loose stuff to work through (and files to purge and organize after that), but I’m much better off now than I was 2 weeks ago.



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