Apr 16

Tipping Etiquette Around The World

Posted by T.W. Anderson | Live Like a Local, Quality of Life, Traveling Tips | 11 Comments

Growing up in the United States, I was brought up with the custom of tipping a minimum of 15% any time we went out to eat at a restaurant other than a fast food joint. And while I always resonated with the opening scene from Reservoir Dogs, it wasn’t until I began traveling that the world opened up to me and I discovered that mandatory tipping was largely only practiced in The West. And it definitely wasn’t until I traveled to Eastern Europe and The Mediterranean extensively – eventually living in Bulgaria for over two and a half years – that I learned the vast majority of the developed world does not tip “just because”, and promptly became a staunch “tip when it’s for excellent service, not simply because they are doing the job their employer paid them to do” Mr. Pink type of individual. Read More

Apr 14

Travel blogging is about more than numbers

Posted by T.W. Anderson | Live Like a Local, Passive Income, Quality of Life, Social Media, Traveling Tips | 22 Comments

The following post was written in mid-2012. It was meant to be posted around October, but I held off because I felt it would push too many buttons, offend too many of my peers…many of whose blogs I no longer follow because of the issues laid out below. I shared it with a few friends, such as Ryan from Jets Like Taxis, and I broke it down into a much longer chapter for Beyond Borders – The Social Revolution discussing the importance of “being everywhere” and how numbers don’t mean squat, but it wasn’t until I came across a recent post by Nora from The Professional Hobo discussing the evolution of travel blogging that I felt inspired to go ahead and push this live to the blog.

So. You want to be a travel blogger. You have aspirations of traveling the world, taking pictures of your travels, writing stories about them, and making money from your time invested.

In the old days, you would have had to jump through hoops and find your way past the gatekeepers of the publishing industry to make it into the print market to find readers. But in the modern era the availability of global technology, crowdfunding, social media, passive income, video chat and live streaming, the old way of doing things have thankfully gone the way of the dodo. Now, anyone with access to the Internet and a story to tell can find an audience for their adventures, without needing to prostrate themselves before someone.

That’s an important element in the evolution of the species. Equality. Sharing. Freedom of information and access to an equal level of opportunities. Working together to achieve common goals without superiority We are moving closer and closer to a global consciousness and as technology advances we are only becoming more and more powerful at making personal connections across great distances, without the need for someone standing in the way giving us permission or denying us.

In other words, it’s incredibly easy to make a living writing about traveling. It is not a difficult job, especially if you love traveling, exploring and having adventures. I was long an Indiana Jones fan as a child, and I always wanted to be an archaeologist, and I think everyone has their own version of inspiration. Now, with the ability to travel around the world and see the sights of old and document them for others’ enjoyment…well, it’s pretty darn close to what I always wanted to do growing up.

One of the first steps to blogging for a living and using social media as a platform for passive income generation is creating an engaging environment for your blog, with depth of information that goes above and beyond and an atmosphere of equality that benefits everyone equally, as opposed to The Greedy Bastard Syndrome.The karmic principles of sharing equally with everyone builds trust, which eventually leads to profit. It’s also important, as far as travel blogging is concerned, to talk about the culture, the people and the places, and portray them from a realistic viewpoint…not merely from the consumption-based adventure travel point of view.

Unfortunately, too often in the modern era of travel blogging there is a penchant by many “travel bloggers” to pride themselves on one thing more than anything else: numbers.

The Lie of Numbers

In browsing many travel blogger websites over the past few years as I’ve developed my own brand and following of fellow expats and digital nomads, one trend has begun to emerge which in my mind completely detracts from what travel blogging is about in the first place: an obsession with Google Analytics and “top blog” contests.

While it’s certainly important from a marketing standpoint when you are looking to organize a press trip to another country while traveling on someone else’s dime to promote a hotel, airline, country, or when lining up advertising and negotiating publicity deals, do your readers really need to know how many views per month your website gets, how many followers you have, what your page rank in Google is or how many times you’ve been featured in X, Y or Z publication?

Bragging rights are all well and good, and we all want to be proud of our achievements as travelers and writers, but I sometimes feel as though there is an obsession with chest-beating that completely detracts from what travel blogs are really about: showcasing the various elements of a country, its people, the culture and the adventure of travel itself. Unfortunately, these days it seems that the majority of travel bloggers are more interested in promoting their page rank, Analytics numbers and number of followers, ranking on Klout, current press trip and how successful their Kickstarter campaign is rather than actually providing any real, valuable information to their readers. The same readers who, by the way, got them to the point where they could land press trips in the first place.

Travel blogging is about more than chest-thumping. It’s our responsibility as writers, photographers and journalists to provide an insiders’ view on what it means to travel, live and explore another country, city or culture. The primary focus of our writing should be about the stories of the people and the culture of a region and how to integrate with and experience that culture…not an advertising billboard for a hotel chain or a restaurant catering to the tourist crowd.

Often when you go to a travel blogger’s website you are spammed with a pop-up from the moment you get to the website talking about “look at how many followers I have on Facebook” or “We get 50,000 visitors per month; why aren’t you one of them?” or “Check us out, because we are a PR5 website and that means we are important!” The actual information is left by the wayside in favor of promoting the numbers as a way to achieve funding, sponsors, selling advertising space and driving sales of products related to the press trips the bloggers in question are taking.

What average readers don’t know is that these numbers don’t actually mean anything. First of all, you can buy views on places like Fiverr, which means while a person might have 20,000 followers on Facebook or Twitter…you have no idea of knowing how many of those followers are actually active, real, live people, and how many are just purchased accounts to beef up a person’s profile to make it appear as though they are actually super important. They might actually only have 500 followers who are actively engaged in their content on a regular basis while the rest are just fluff for appearance’s sake. In short, numbers are never the best nor are they the only way to judge a blog.

With that being said, a certain amount of numbers for visibility can be helpful in establishing credibility and helping to build trust. It’s the domino effect: people are more likely to read along and listen to what you have to say if they know that others are doing the same. And there’s nothing wrong with a little subtle promotion of it, such as a counter on your website or even a separate page (not a popup) or section in your About page which details your personal statistics, away from the front page and the actual content and instead in the background, where it deserves to be.

Not to mention, bloggers with smaller, more loyal audiences can trump the bigger blogs every day of the week, at least in terms of interaction. Traffic is not the only determining factor in whether or not your blog is reaching your targeted demographic; it’s also important to look at the level of interaction, sales percentages, click-throughs and beyond. A perfect example of what I’m talking about can be found at the official TBEX Blog, with a guest post written by William Bakker of Think! Social Media, talking about the 9 Criteria for Getting Invited on a Travel Blog Trip.

Specifically, there are three things in this particular article which are of vital importance to you as a blogger, even if you have nothing to do with the travel industry: your actual “reach” compared to the size of your audience, your actual authority within your niche, and your connection to other movers and shakers of your industry/niche.

While reach is an important metric, it is not as important as you might think – at least, not in terms of your power to influence readers. A blogger who has a smaller audience might very well have a higher influence than someone who has ten times the followers. For example, a blogger with only 2,000 Twitter followers may be of more value than one with 50,000 if those 2,000 people are passionate, engaged and more likely to be influenced by the person they follow.

Tools like Compete.com, Quantcast and Alexa allow a far more realistic view of a blogger’s reach (as well as for analyzing your own data) than merely using Analytics alone, because remember, since people can buy Facebook likes, Twitter followers and beyond, raw numbers on a page don’t necessarily mean squat.

The other thing to think about is the fact that the blog itself is only one small aspect of your overall social media outreach. Consider this: while Marginal Boundaries the website has X views per day, I’m replicating that over numerous different places (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Google+, etc.), which means overall traffic is far larger than what Google Analytics alone is providing me with data on…and overall interactivity must be taken into account.

The website is only 1/6th of my overall traffic…and many of my Facebook readers don’t visit the website, or my YouTube, or the G+ page, and so forth, but only ever interact with my videos or buy products on Amazon…which means Analytics is a finite tool that only tracks a very small portion of my overall reach with the brand. I have users on social media outlets who only ever interact with me there and only ever buy products through the social media platforms…they never reach the actual website itself.

The Bottom Line

I personally feel that as a writer and travel blogger I have a responsibility to provide information about culture and travel, not a life of consumption and certainly not about how many hits per month my website gets or how many followers I have or the breakfast I’m eating from the balcony of X hotel or the bedroom with the Egyptian cotton sheets and the Jacuzzi in the bathroom. It almost seems to me that the generation of income bloggers are more interested in getting the next free press trip to X destination rather than providing actual, useful and pertinent information regarding a culture.

Instead of seeing stories about the people or the regions of a place, many travel blogs are full of sponsored blog posts on restaurants and hotels. Instead of learning about a culture or its people or the destination itself, we are forced to read yet another review of a hotel balcony view, the poolside bar, the restaurant, or one of the tourist hotspots promoted by the government/agency who paid for the trip.

Or worst…a blog post that is nothing more than an Instagram collage of food pictures or shots of adventure activities, such as zip-lining, cave tours, snorkeling, scuba diving, skiing, kayaking and beyond. There’s nothing of actual value to the article/post other than visual appeal. Sure, it’s fun to look at, and the photos certainly convey a sense of adventure and excitement, but where is the cultural appreciation? Where is the actual story about the people, the culture, the country and its ins and outs?

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m finding myself reading fewer and fewer blogs these days because it seems that as the industry of travel blogging matures the real stories of travel are being left behind in favor of “whatever someone is paying me to write about”. And while it’s true that we all need to earn a nut to keep food on our table and fund our travels, it seems to me that some bloggers are less about actually exploring, writing about and sharing a destination or helping others with actionable advise on how to travel full time, and more about simply scoring a free trip. And as a result the real stories of culture and people and adventure and excitement are left behind in favor of virtual bragging and leveraging big-name brands who are cutting bloggers a paycheck.

I don’t want to read about your page rank. I don’t care if you have 50 followers or 50,000 followers. I could give two shits about the view from your balcony or the pool or the free mojitos or the suite with its king-sized bed. What matters to me is if you are providing me with valuable, usable content.

I want to know about traveling, not about your press kits and your Analytics numbers. I want to hear your stories about what it’s like to eat fried caterpillars in some African backwater, I want to know about the kid from Indonesia who went from being a gutter rat to a full-time traveler by learning how to design websites and make a living online. I want to read about adventures in the hidden caverns and canyons and cities and villages of a country, not about a sponsored trip to Stonehenge or the pyramids in Egypt where all you talk about is how X company or government flew you in while you promote the hotels and restaurants where you’ve racked up free meals as a result of your trip.

Tell me a story about culture. Show me the living conditions of the local people. I want to learn about the off-the-beaten path places. I want to know what it means to go to a country and live there. I want to read about immersion in a culture, how to live there and be part of the people, make local connections and do more than simply talk about numbers.

While I understand that for some travel bloggers their gig is scoring as much free stuff as possible, it has soured my view of the travel blogging industry as a whole. Perhaps it’s a personal thing, but I am much more interested in people who are actually exploring cultures and people and helping make the world a better place through exploration and sharing the Human Experience rather than read about yet another travel blogger beating their chest regarding how many free trips they took this year or who is sponsoring their next hotel stay.

When advertising trumps your content, you are no longer a travel writer; you are a puppet on a string.

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Apr 09

When Economic Crises Hit, Expats and Entrepreneurs Thrive

Posted by T.W. Anderson | Live Like a Local, Passive Income, Quality of Life, Social Media, Traveling Tips | 2 Comments

When Tony Wagner, the Harvard education specialist, describes his job today, he says he’s “a translator between two hostile tribes” — the education world and the business world, the people who teach our kids and the people who give them jobs. Wagner’s argument in his book “Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World” is that our K-12 and college tracks are not consistently “adding the value and teaching the skills that matter most in the marketplace.

This is dangerous at a time when there is increasingly no such thing as a high-wage, middle-skilled job — the thing that sustained the middle class in the last generation. Now there is only a high-wage, high-skilled job. Every middle-class job today is being pulled up, out or down faster than ever. That is, it either requires more skill or can be done by more people around the world or is being buried — made obsolete — faster than ever. Which is why the goal of education today, argues Wagner, should not be to make every child “college ready” but “innovation ready” — ready to add value to whatever they do.

Today,” Wagner said via e-mail, “because knowledge is available on every Internet-connected device, what you know matters far less than what you can do with what you know. The capacity to innovate — the ability to solve problems creatively or bring new possibilities to life — and skills like critical thinking, communication and collaboration are far more important than academic knowledge.”

Read the full article over at The New York Times, courtesy of Thomas L. Friedman.

One of my personal favorite moments from the article was when the author, Friedman, discussed the current state of affairs. “My generation had it easy. We got to “find” a job. But, more than ever, our kids will have to ‘invent’ a job. (Fortunately, in today’s world, that’s easier and cheaper than ever before.) Sure, the lucky ones will find their first job, but, given the pace of change today, they will have to reinvent, re-engineer and reimagine that job much more often than their parents if they want to advance in it.”

In the age of free information, ignorance is a choice. The ability to innovate, to adapt, to evolve with the times, is crucial to your continued success on a global scale. While there are still a handful of brick-and-mortar examples that continue to hold steady (albeit in very specific, tight niches), the vast majority of jobs have moved into the digital era, which means they are available to anyone on a global basis. The above photo is accurate beyond a shadow of a doubt: information that you previously had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to have access to is now available freely on the Internet, which means higher education is largely irrelevant in the modern era.

That’s not to say that there aren’t jobs which still require specialized knowledge. Dentistry, for example. Quantum physics. Neuroscience. But these are nothing more than a handful of degrees that require the use of a dedicated education system. The vast majority of other degrees (such as the world’s most over-marketed and least useful, the Masters of Business Administration) are available completely for free online.

Not only that, but there are jobs today which did not exist even as few as five years ago. Social media managers, for example. To this day, the vast majority of universities do not have a degree program for social media, nor do they have a university program for self-publishing books or blogging for a living or creating a YouTube channel and building up a brand. These are jobs which have been created out of the ether that is Virtual Reality, the digital era that we are now living in.

Automobiles. Airplanes. Telephone. Computers. Internet. WiFi. Crowd funding. Faster and faster. Onward and upward. Human ingenuity knows no bounds, for we are the children of the universe: infinite in our potential for expansion and growth.

Our understanding and growth have exponentially increased at every turn. Leaps and bounds are happening within a matter of months now, rather than decades apart. Just as the Mayans predicted with their endless cycles of compounded and sped-up cycles as things progressively begin to vibrate faster and faster and faster until we reached the end of the last era and entered into the endless possibility stage and moved into the great beyond, the infinite universe.

With the power of free information on a global scale, with global communication, comes the ability to advance the entire race forward at the same time. No more “my country versus your country”. No more nationalist beliefs holding people back from working side by side over a misguided notion that because someone was born somewhere else they are inferior. No more 99% versus 1%. No more reliance on a system of control telling you how to think, how to work, how to live. There is only the Human Experience as the entire planet works together to achieve the same goals.

We have the ability to create infinite realities merely through thought and will. To create something in a digital space and have that extend outwards into the physical realm. Blogs. Websites. YouTube videos. Digital eBooks and other products. We understand, finally, the symbiotic nature of it all, and the planet is moving away from capitalist and selfish systems of personal gratification and into a global community of sharing, networking and outward expansion and understanding.

In the words of Alvin Toffler, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

In short, those who cannot adapt to the times, those who refuse to evolve with the digital era, those who cannot comprehend the vastness of the universe and their own infinite potential, will be left behind.

Evolution does not wait for the weak, the slow, the ignorant. It is survival of the fittest, and only those who have the desire to educate themselves, to unplug from The Matrix, who will mature into the next stage of The Human Experience.

The only people suffering from the so-called “global crisis” are those who have put their faith in credit systems, in governments, in the so-called “higher education” system and their so-called “required” degrees. The only ones currently sitting around without any work and living third-world lives, even in first-world countries, are those who choose to be ignorant, such as this poor sap who went from a $75,000 a year job as an architect to making less than poverty-level income (according to U.S. standards) with the snap of a finger.

He has submitted more than 3,000 resumes in a period of three years, which have only generated a half-dozen interviews…and a mere $10,000 per year for his efforts, and yet despite all of this, despite thousands of hours of wasted time and energy, despite three years of watching his life savings drain away, despite the the fact that the jobs he once thrived on no longer exist, he still prefers to stay plugged into The Matrix and live within the illusion.

He cannot comprehend the changes the world is going through because he refuses to unplug, to wake up, to enlighten himself. He is, as Alvin Toffler described, one of the illiterate of the 21st century. A man living in the dark, choosing to remain ignorant when there is a world of free information at his fingertips, freely available and freely accessible to anyone, anywhere, regardless of language, birthplace, religion or color of skin.

We are living in a time of infinite possibilities. That is what the new era represents. A time of change. A time of growth. With our understanding of the universal truths, we realize that we don’t have to do things the way they have been done before. The credit system or the banking system or the so-called global crisis are nothing more than peripheral. Our focus is on the future, on the new way of doing things, on the global consciousness of the entire planet working towards common goals and expanding our knowledge of science and technology to unlock the rest of the mysteries of the universe.

The journey is far from over, my friends. The best is certainly yet to come.

With over 1,500 copies sold, our flagship 568-page eBook is what started it all. Learn how to travel the world like I do: without a budget, with no plans, funded completely by your website and online ventures.

Get Your Copy Today!

Unplug from The System, cure yourself of The Greedy Bastard Syndrome, tap into your universal potential and create your own reality. Build a brand, travel the world and realize your cosmic consciousness.

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Mar 11

A Riviera Maya Adventure

Posted by T.W. Anderson | 30 Ways in 30 Days, Live Like a Local, Mexico, Passive Income, Quality of Life, Social Media, Traveling Tips | No Comments

We are hip-deep in the Spring Destination Freedom retreat. If you haven’t been paying attention to the Facebook and Google+ pages or the YouTube channel, there have been plenty of photos + videos going up of the classes. And things aren’t slowing down here!

Not only have we been busy getting everyone’s brands built up (the next two weeks are specifically dedicated to content creation at their websites + interviews coming to the YouTube channel), but Wandering Earl guest-spoke for a couple of nights, and we have a group dinner out with him and his tour in Playa del Carmen this evening, along with foXnoMad, since he’s helping Earl with his Mexico tour.

While the presentation for the Summer Destination Freedom event is coming down the pipeline later this week (early access for our loyal newsletter subscribers before we go public at the end of March), we also have a special tour I’d like to announce to the Marginal Boundaries community.

In June, in between the Spring and Summer Destination Freedom retreats, we are putting together an 8 day/8 night Riviera Maya adventure tour for those of you who want to come down to Mexico and hang out with Cris and myself while we take people around some of the local hangouts where we live.

For more information, check out the photos below, and if you think you might be interested in coming, send us an email at frontdesk@marginalboundaries.com.

With over 1,500 copies sold, our flagship 568-page eBook is what started it all. Learn how to travel the world like I do: without a budget, with no plans, funded completely by your website and online ventures.

Get Your Copy Today!

Unplug from The System, cure yourself of The Greedy Bastard Syndrome, tap into your universal potential and create your own reality. Build a brand, travel the world and realize your cosmic consciousness.

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Feb 12

Language, Economic Growth and Getting Left Behind

Posted by T.W. Anderson | 30 Ways in 30 Days, Live Like a Local, Passive Income, Quality of Life, Social Media, Traveling Tips | 2 Comments

Every day the news in the United States, the United Kingdom and much of Western Europe is filled with economic woe. Hundreds of millions of unemployed. People living in tent cities, hostels, on the streets, in their cars. Families whose parents have lost their jobs, spent their entire life savings over the course of two to five years while attempting to support their families as they send out dozens…hundreds…thousands…of job applications, all to no avail. Third world living conditions in what were previously first-world countries.

But while the vast majority of sheeple are still soundly asleep, plugged into the warm hum of The Matrix that keeps them lulled in their state of perpetual slumber, there are those around the world who are wide awake, unplugged and aware of the current changes that are spreading around the planet like a giant wave crashing over shore after shore.

They are The Enlightened. The Modern Elite. The Socially Aware. Individuals who have seen the light and understand that we no longer live in a world of closed borders and solitary languages, but instead an entire planet where news and information is shared freely and instantly across the entire globe in an instant. People who speak more than one language, who call more than one country home, and who understand that in order to thrive in the current era they must adapt and maintain a global viewpoint as opposed to the prehistoric concept of “local”.

A perfect example of this can be found in Europe, where the latest wave of European migrants are riding the digital wave and completely avoiding the so-called global crisis. The “how” is easy; they speak multiple languages and rather than sit around and pray and hope for a change that will never come, they are instead choosing to take matters into their own hands and migrate to countries where economies are booming, where opportunities are limitless, and where they can go from barely surviving to financially and creatively thriving.

Spain is a singular example. With one of the worst unemployment rates in the world (an estimated 60% of the population are without jobs), its people are proving to be incredibly resilient despite it all. Rather than rely on the broken system and hope for change from their government, the people are taking actions into their own hands and using their unlimited human potential to create their own realities as entrepreneurs.

They have unlocked their true human potential and are exploring the wonder and amazement that is The Human Experience, unplugged and completely aware of their surroundings and the universal truths that each and every one of us holds within our DNA and our very souls: unlimited possibilities and infinite realities.

Instead of waiting around for federal handouts and sending in thousands of job applications to no avail, modern entrepreneurs are choosing to ride the digital wave of social evolution. They are learning other languages. Moving to other countries. Getting out of the brick-and-mortar industries and into the virtual world of websites and social media platforms and cloud funding and beyond.

On the flip side of the coin, you can take a close look at those who are still plugged into The Matrix, like this poor sap who went from a $75,000 a year job as an architect to making less than poverty-level income (according to U.S. standards). Not only has he been barely scrapping after seeing his salary reduced to a mere pittance in comparison to before, he has also submitted more than 3,000 resumes in a period of three years, which have only generated a half-dozen interviews…and a mere $10,000 per year for his efforts.

Despite all of this, despite thousands of hours of wasted effort, despite three years of watching his life savings drain away, despite year after year of the door being slammed in his face due to the fact that the jobs he once thrived on no longer exist, he still prefers to stay plugged into The Matrix and live within the illusion. According to the article, he still feels like a job could be just around the corner. “I don’t want to lose who I am and what I spent all these years and all this money to become and just fade into oblivion.”

He cannot comprehend the changes the world is going through because he refuses to unplug, to wake up, to enlighten himself.

In other words, he would rather continue with the illusion rather than face the reality that the world as he knew it has changed. Jobs which existed even as short of a time period as five years ago are no longer available…nor are they coming back. Degrees that you would pay $150,000 and six years of your life ten years ago to obtain not only no longer matter…they can be taught and earned completely for free online. They have been eradicated by the rapidly evolving social changes on Planet Earth, of The Human Experience.

Meanwhile, the social evolution continues. The world still turns, and more and more people are waking up to the reality of modern living. They are learning new languages. Moving to other countries. Migrating and going where the jobs are so that they can put food on the table and not only “just get by”, but actually live successful lives with high-paying jobs, either in countries as expats where the opportunities exist, or on their own as digital entrepreneurs utilizing social media and passive income to create their own realities.

Rather than fall prey to the propaganda of government-controlled media outlets which attempt to paint developing countries as “poverty stricken cesspools”, the modern generation of globally-aware and enlightened human beings are using the power of The Internet and free information to educate themselves to the fact that third world living conditions now only exist in the previously first world countries, and the previously scoffed-at developing countries now have the greatest levels of equality and opportunity on a global scale.

Countries like Uruguay, Venezuela, El Salvador, Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina and Costa Rica are far ahead of The West in terms of equality and modern living conditions. High speed Internet exists in all corners of the globe. First class medical care exists in every country, and rather than charge you an arm and a leg, it is incredibly affordable, such as in Mexico where a mid-30s adult can get universal healthcare for around $300 USD a year…with unlimited prescription medication to boot.

Or countries like Bulgaria, where pregnant mothers receive a staggering 410 days of maternity leave paid out at 90% salary, and can claim an additional year at a reduced salary. That’s in comparison to the U.S. where you are lucky if you can get 12 weeks off work to care for your newborn child, and good luck trying to get that time paid for by your company.

You have a choice. You can choose to live in poverty. You can choose to send in thousands of job applications over a period of time that lasts for years. You can choose to spend your life savings waiting and “hoping” that your government will swoop in and save you and provide you with jobs and wealth and opportunity. And you will continue to go deeper and deeper into debt, sink deeper and deeper into depression and eventually end up like my brother, who committed suicide in December of 2012 at the age of 30 after a similar period of three years of unemployment and thousands of job applications sent in to no avail.

Or you can choose to be one of the modern elite. The expats of the world who are choosing to learn additional languages, move to other countries and seek out opportunities where they exist. Rather than rely on false hope for a return to the “good old days”, you can unplug from The Matrix and realize that Earth has changed. We are no longer living in a world where college degrees and credit system and resumes matter. Instead, we are living in a world where opportunities abound for those who are willing to stretch out their hand and take them. People who decide to swim rather than sink. People who decide they want to live life on their own terms as opposed to waiting for something that is never going to happen.

Create your own reality. The entire planet is your home, your playground, your sandbox. Explore. Discover. Live.