random musings

So I landed yesterday in Guatemala. Shelled out $150 for a one-way ticket a couple weeks ago. Travel — it’s been in the back of my mind somewhere for years. Occasionally reignited by something i hear, something i read, or a visit to my sister in mexico, But often squelched by reality. I read Tim Ferriss’ ‘Four Hour Work Week’. I started speaking a trip into my plans. Not with any certainty, and halfway in jest, but leaving some flex in the calendar, just in case. It ignited a passion within me. I reread the book later in the same year, and i started to see that this was already more plausible than I thought it was.

2010 was great for business. I have a healthy balance between recurring revenue (sell something once, and it keeps paying you for the lifetime of the account), and revenue from what I put my hands to (or rather, what I put the team’s hands to). The point is, revenue comes in, and it doesn’t matter where I am (in theory, at least!).

The other side of the coin is expenses. The condo. A vehicle and a motorcycle — what to do with those? And galavanting across the world can’t be cheap, right? Five days later, a creative interpretation of a lease document, and an $80/mo storage unit (imagine two people trying to fit a full-size motorcycle into an elevator to get it to the unit on the fourth floor!), and assets are covered.

My expenses in Guatemala? $100/wk for room and board in a quaint little Central American home, thanks to a kindly woman named Juanita. I’m paying a little more than that per week in tuition at one of the fine Conversational Spanish language schools in Antigua, blocks from where I’m staying. My monthly expenses will be less here (tuition included) than they are at home, living on a budget that flexes with my mood and my craving for sushi.

I’m starting my tenure at La Union (http://www.launion.edu.gt/), a somewhat large and well-known school in the area, and may spend some time at Don Pedro de Alvarado (http://www.donpedrospanishschool.com/) — supposedly attended by Mel Gibson, Kevin Costner and Hillary Clinton, wheeee — and have a couple other self-assigned errands before coming back.

I’m not sure where this trip is taking me: a mission to heal the world, or just to brush on on ye lode espanol to be able to communicate better with people in my neighborhood. But I’m pursuing this until I hit a dead end, or feel that I’ve accomplished my purpose. Or until I get tired of burritos — like that could ever happen…

If you think of me, please pray for safety and fun, that i’ll get done what i need done, and that business here will continue to flourish in spite of my diminished hands-on involvement.

Peace, love and tacos.

i don’t know why i thought this was so funny, but had to share…

from my sister, Aimee

ok, sometimes random thoughts occur to me and i must get them out of my head onto “paper” quickly before i forget. no time to process or validate, so don’t jump down my throat yet. but here goes…

so i was reading a little from tozer today, and came across something that made me think. he often does. here’s an excerpt:

Sometimes preachers get carried away and start sermonizing on the great calamaties posed by communism and secularism and materialism. But our greatest calamity is the closed heaven, the silent heaven. God meant for us to be in fellowship with Him. When the heaves are closed, men are left to themselves. They are without God.

tozer’s paragraph was inspired by his reading the opening paragraph in the book of ezekiel. and i was struck, not by the sunday school picture of hell that i’ve had in my mind from youth — a dungeon of fire, people screaming, and for some reason an oversized worm, but by the sunday school definition of hell: a place without God.

it makes sense that hell would be a place without God. but let’s face it; we focus more on the temporal, the tangible, than we do the spiritual, don’t we? our prayers focus on the gifts of God, the blessings of God, moreso than God Himself. could this play in our concept of spiritual negatives as well as it does the positives? could hell be more about the absence of God than it is the presence of things that harm?

if that’s so, then we could literally experience hell on earth, simply by closing ourselves to God. think about it. if we attempt to buffer ourselves from God, and He is apt to let us choose our own direction, then our “hell” could be seeing the fruition of the natural consequences of our own self-centered (as opposed to God-centered) actions, and the self-centered actions of others. the earth being replete with self-centered people (among whom am i, i might add), the culmination of all our actions brings about real calamity. wars. violence. broken hearts. hurt feelings. starvation. homelessness. broken homes. and there’s a piece of every one of us that is affected by some of these.

if that’s plausible, then i suppose it’s also plausible to conversely experience heaven on earth by the inclusion of God. by partaking of the things of his nature.

again, this is writing off the cuff, i haven’t taken time to vet the concept theologically, and i’m not trying to portray an actions-based faith, because we’d all be sunk. i’m just simply provoking the thought that maybe we can experience the spiritual eternal, here in the temporary. and that may impact the manner in which i behave today.

ok, i admit, i was a trekkie in high school. while my friends were out doing who knows what on friday nights, i was at home with a domino’s pizza watching james t. kirk pontificate a syncopated sililoquy. partly because it satisfied that curiosity about what was out there, where no man had boldly gone before. partly because of the gadgets. they had the coolest toys!

so within the past couple of weeks, i’ve seen star trek technology demonstrated right in front of me. i’m not talking about flying cars, jetpacks or microwave ovens that will hydrate my dinner in nanoseconds, but this is nice. first, #1 – a video phone. yeah, those have been out for a while. but the handheld, wifi device i saw last week will hit mainstream within a year or two. #2 – security cameras that, upon sensing motion, will hit you with an sms (text message) and a link to watch the video stream. impressive.

but today, my technological brook bubbleth over. check out this new technology that will change the face of reading as we know it: http://vook.com/vook.php

pretty cool, huh? it brings potential excitement to my bathroom reading. looking forward to it.

We’ve learned more about the human mind in recent years than ever recorded in history. We know which portions of our brain perform calculations, which portions store memories, which portions control involuntary functions, etc. Here’s an insightful post from Seth Godin, marketing extraordinaire, about the practicality of these different portions of our mind, and how they relate to everyday life.

Multiple Minds