11 - Float On

Here’s an interesting thought. If you could step back from ‘you’ and play yourself as a Sim or SecondLife character, what would your life look like? If you could optimize your life, your actions and your decisions from the outside, how much different would that be than your current life? What would you do differently if your only goal was to define and then adapt an ideal lifestyle? Take a minute and think about it.

Life, of course, doesn’t work quite like that. You can direct your Sim to study every night in order to get an ideal career, eat healthy and make breakfast for the kids in the morning, but in real life it would be difficult to make those investments every day. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting and useful exercise. Identifying leverage points – simple changes that can make a much bigger difference – is a good start. For me, it also re-emphasizes what I believe is your real wealth – your time.

It can also be more difficult than it seems to define exactly what your ideal life would look like. Would you really want to relax on a hammock in Jamaica every day? Or, on the other side, would you really want to be a CEO or the president of the country? I can’t figure out at all where on the scale I would fit.

I’ve had plenty of time to chew on stuff like that lately, being stuck here in El Calafate, criminally killing time until Friday morning. I’ve had to change hostels every day for the past four days, and there’s not much to do in a town where the main attraction is 40 miles upstream. And of course, 24 hours after I bought my flight back to the starting gate, the Chileans decided to stop striking. At least the gut-bomb fallout is finally clearing up.

Side note: Grocery shopping the other day, I thought it was strange that they didn’t bag my food at the checkout. I noticed everyone else had bags with them, and then I saw a sign that said ‘As of April 2007, all non-biodegradable bags are banned following law ###’. Props to Argentina. Another reason your cities are so clean.

Personal side note: Sitting here in a new and cool foreign country, torqued off and wishing I was back in AA. What??? I need to stop re-reading 1000 Dollars and an Idea. I suppose running around to find the new and cool only works for so long. I realized I need to be in the process of BUILDING something to enjoy the moment. Makes sense why I like both engineering and business. I’m glad travelling can help teach new things about yourself as well as the world, even if they are seemingly obvious.

Quote of the Day: ‘No kidding. You’re already the third group from that hostel in Buenos Aires that I have re-met again elsewhere in Argentina.’