Motivated.

Often, just when we are in greatest need of motivation or inspiration, it comes suddenly and without warning. For me, these last few weeks have been marked with anxiety about my future, annoyance with my present, and a general ping-ponging between frustration and fatigue, feeling over-burdened and over-committed.

Enter Chris Guillebeau's 279 Days to Overnight Success, a succinct, engaging guide to establishing yourself as a full-time artist and/or social media guru, offered free-of-charge on his amazing site, The Art of Non-conformity. Having been profiled in The New York Times, on MSNBC, and here on Fly Brother, Guillebeau outlines his quest to hit every country on Earth by the age of 35 and to make the world a better place in the process. In his encouraging manifesto, which I read in a little under two hours, he discusses his successes and failures as a full-time writer, the expectations to succeed but not to receive much front-end financial gain, self-discipline and prioritization, the extreme importance of maintaining an accessible connection with your readers, and, above all, remaining true to your own voice to attract the right audience for you.

Amidst the chaos of increasing work and life pressures, reading this guide today was a needed splash of cold water, underscoring the intermittent messages I've been receiving from the varied reaches of the cosmos in one orienting, 79-page stroke. In forty-two days, I'll be done with high school teaching and Colombia, at least for a while. Between now and then, there's nothing to do but buckle down, prioritize, and get the documenting, grading, blogging, reading, writing, working-out, planning, and packing done. Over the next few weeks, I'll be making the necessary changes that reflect my commitment to my readers and my writing, giving voice to an under-heard perspective of international travel at Fly Brother and other venues, and I'll be utilizing many of the techniques outlined by Guillebeau and other young, successful, full-time writers who are doing exactly what I want to be doing—making a living while doing exactly what they want to be doing. And I urge anyone who's interested in that lifestyle choice to read 279 Days to Overnight Success.

Today, children, I leave you with three quotes that came to mind as I wrote this post:

From the aforementioned manifesto -
"[Y]ou have to find a way to keep making art during the not-so-fun times."

A very shaky paraphrase of a sermon I heard a few years ago by Rebm, Jr. at Bethel Baptist Institutional in Jacksonville, Florida - "Sometimes, you cain't be waitin' on nobody else. You gotta hold your own hand up."

And something deceptively simple, profound, and oft-said to me, most recently by São Paulo trailblazer Kevin of Club Whirled -
"You can do anything you want."

Stay tuned.



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Fly Brother Profiled at Travellious.com

The good people at Travellious.com, "advocates for the art of travel," interviewed me this month about some of my opinions, thoughts, feelings, and experiences while exploring Earth. Their mission, like mine, is to try and debunk some of the mystique of travel that keeps it conceptually out of many people's reach. "Travel like a rebel," Travellious encourages, and entices readers with sumptuous photography and intriguing profiles of independent globetrotters like...me. ;-)

In case you didn't get the hint, click here to see my interview. Then, click here to vote for Travellious as the 2009 Bloggie Awards' "Best Travel Weblog." Then smile because you've done something good for humanity.

Generation Fly - For Fly Students

LUFTHANSA
Originally uploaded by Payuta Louro

A few months ago, über-chic German airline Lufthansa unveiled its plucky, student-oriented travel website, Generation Fly, which offers special student (and faculty) fares out of New York and other gateways on their expansive global route system. Now, they've upped the ante and are offering the chance to meet and interact with fellow young and nubile collegiate travelers via their slick new social networking site, GenFly Lounge. To keep random dirty old men from defiling the co-eds, an email address with the suffix .edu is required to become a member. Any of my university-affiliated readers willing to join and review the site? The panoramic photos on the homepage make me want to dive through the computer screen. Why didn't these bastids have this thing up and running back when I was in school?

"Why Should White Guys Have All The Fun?"

According to the short bio in the back of his best-selling "self-help" tome, The Four-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, Tim Ferriss "speaks six languages, runs a multinational firm from wireless locations worldwide, and has been a world-record holder in tango, a national champion in Chinese kickboxing, and an actor on a hit television series in Hong Kong." Dude is my age. Damn.

Fundamentally, Ferriss is all about "lifestyle design," which includes personal outsourcing, information management, and mini-retirements that maximize personal free time (to be filled with things you want to do, not have to do). On his blog this week, Ferriss interviews one of his own inspirations, Rolf Potts, writer and professional vagabond who just released his second book, Marco Polo Didn't Go There, "a philosophical book about seeing time as wealth and using travel to actualize that wealth." Now, many folks might not be all that into philosophy, but picking up and traveling, leaving our comfort zones, experiencing the unfamiliar all require a philosophic leap of faith that both Ferriss and Potts try to encourage through their books and websites.

Granted, looking at them - young, Abercrombie-esque, "affluent" white guys - a person of color with a possible interest in international travel might not exactly see themselves reflected in the life experiences of these guys. In fact, the dearth of recorded, comparable experiences by colored folks is the reason for this blog. But these two gentlemen have inspired me to take their advice, borrow some of their techniques, and use their knowledge and experience, plus the seemingly-inexhaustable positive energy reflected in their writing, in planning my life journey.

I've certainly encountered racism in my travels and would never assume that the same open arms extended to Nordic-looking Tim Ferriss by the TV producers in Hong Kong would be extended to Caribbean-looking me. But that doesn't mean I couldn't get on a show in Germany. It doesn't mean I couldn't write my own show and have it produced in Venezuela (or Hong Kong, for that matter). I also know that there are streets I can walk down in Latin America and not get a second look as an easy tourist target, while Tim Ferriss wouldn't last ten seconds without being swarmed by screaming multitudes hawking native trinkets, blood emeralds, overpriced designer knock-offs, or underaged girls. But it's not about comparing myself to these guys with an attitude of disdain or jealousy. On the contrary; right now, I'm trying to do what they're doing - traveling and writing professionally - and damn if I'm not going to learn a thing or two from these intrepid lads. As deceased black muti-billionaire Reginald Lewis once asked, "why should white guys have all the fun?"

There's plenty of fun to go around.

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Two more short but excellent interviews with Rolf Potts about his new book and the art of long-term travel can be found on World Hum and Vagabondish.