Life Update

After spending the past few months uming and ahing over what to do after Korea, we seem to have reached some sort of consensus. The plan, as it stands, is to visit the US for a couple of months then on to teach in Costa Rica. We've got flights booked to LAX and on from their to Wisconsin but nothing else is set yet.
We're planning on spending a week in LA with Courtney's sister before flying up to her parents at Lake Geneva, WI. From there the idea is to pick up her car and follow Route 66 back to her sister's place. Since her parents use her car, we'll probably have to drive it all the way back again, probably along a different route.
Once we've had our fun in the States we'll fly down to Costa Rica. We plan on traveling about a bit to find work. Courtney wants to be back in the States for her sister's first baby so she'll head back once I've found work.
There's a lot of unknowns in this equation but we're both pretty jazzed about the plan in general. We hoping that we've learned from our mistakes in Thailand and so will be able to make this a much smoother transition. I think I should take some Spanish lessons sooner rather than later.
Hasta Luego.

Photography Competitions

I've just submitted two photos to a National Geographic competition. You can help me out by voting for them. Click on the photos to vote.

Thank's for helping me out!

Alamy

I've just had my initial submission accepted by Alamy stock image library. I've read a fair amount of bad news about the state of the stock image market, but I've got over 20,000 images in my own library, a few of which have a much better chance of making me money in somewhere like Alamy rather than a couple of hard-drives hidden in a drawer where my images currently reside.
We'll see if I actually make any money out of this venture.

Trying A Different Direction

I've started a new blog about ways to stay calm in the face of adversity. I still want to keep this one running as a digital tale of my international exploits. The other blog is an attempt to get started on maybe becoming location independent. There's a whole community about being able to get an income that doesn't require one to be in a certain place. A good way to start is to create a blog that will foster a large readership.
It's great to have a fresh project to work on. It's also nice to have homework to do. I have a little notebook that I spend a lot of time furiously scribbling in, researching my ideas. Maybe I just miss university, maybe I just haven't really had a creative outlet to focus on for a while, but now I've got something cool to pour my creative juices into!

Working LIfe

Personally, I have nothing against work, particularly when performed, quietly and unobtrusively, by someone else. I just don't happen to think it's an appropriate subject for an "ethic."

-Barbara Ehrenreich

Might just be that it's Monday, and it's raining, but this whole work malarkey is a bit of a bum deal in my eyes and I don't even work all that hard! Looking into ways to get self-employed...

Thoughts of a Bohemian: Become Who You Are

I think this is a great idea:

So stop sending press release about how low your prices are, how you can have 3 images for the price of 2, how your company can out price any competition. Leave that to the Wal Mart’s ( Corbis and Getty)  and other discounters. Value your work. Value what you do for a living. Be proud, be expensive, be exclusive, be valuable.  Leave the crowd, become an individual.  Because at the end, you are how you present yourself.

If the lights went out

The recent eruption of Eyjafjallajökull and subsequent grounding of flights in the UK and other parts of Europe has led many to comment on the fragility of our existence in the face of natural phenomena. It's an interesting premise. Despite what we like to think, we have very little control over what goes on here on Earth. A while back, Discover Magazine did an article on ways the world could end, a little extreme, but a reminder of how fragile our existence is here.
Coming back to less apocalyptic thinking, many have commented on how the disruptions caused by the volcanic ash have been, in a way, beneficial. The CO2 emissions saved by grounding flights has vastly overshadowed the amount produced by the volcano. (200 million tonnes saved from flights vs. the 15 thousand tonnes pumped out a day from Eyjafjallajökull). Also, it's served as a wake up call to the wonder of cheap air travel. I fly a lot, but don't particularly like to. I'd very much like to travel at a slower pace, but the convenience and low cost of air travel has repeatedly pulled me away from other forms of transport. (Although 24 hours on a train from one end of Thailand to the other did remove a lot of the glamour of over-land travel for me).
On a more personal level, I'm using this to further justify my recent bushcraft interest. Just this weekend I managed to start a fire with my firesteel. Had to promptly extinguish the fire as open fires apparently aren't allowed in the area, but we got another fire going (using a lighter this time) in my hobo stove on our balcony. It had a slightly less than bushcrafty purpose: we made s'mores. Still, I feel as though greater independence from things that I cannot produce myself can only be beneficial, especially when coronal mass ejection could knock out our power grids with little or no warning.
Guess I'd better make sure all my batteries are fully charged.