Junto Partner?

I like to be able to look at different times of my life and see the things that I’ve accomplished. I just don’t feel like I’ve accomplished a whole lot over these last two years of my life. That second summer of summer sales really made me think upon my life and realize I was working really hard and trying to get places to fast. Unfortunately, that thinking led me to do the opposite, and do really do much at all. I mean, if I started partying a lot more and going on tons of trips and what not, that’s one thing. But I didn’t even really do that. So, I eliminated a lot of the hard work and ambition from my life, and I didn’t really replace it with anything else. I look at these last two years of my life, and I have some regrets. I don’t really know how to define them. When I think of those years and the idea of my nomadic trip, the words of someone I respect come into my mind when he is describing my age group as “twenty something peter pans”. Or whatever it is that he says. He talks about how people in this age group are postponing the responsibilities of marriage and family.

I don’t want to be like that. Next year, I want to be able to look back at this past year and see all the things I have accomplished. I want to be proud of what I’ve done. As far as my trip is concerned, it’s not completely off the table, but I think going on the trip will only perpetuate that feeling I have. I do have a desire to go travel and I love seeing places and hitch hiking and what not. However, I also know that when I go on a weekend trip or something, it satisfies my desire for a little while. I remember when I was working at Qualtrics, I was really wanting to just travel the country and do my thing. Well, after I went on the trip to San Francisco with Ty, it quieted that part inside of me that wanted to do that. I was content for a while after the trip to just work.

Also, when I didn’t have a job or much money, there were some opportunities that I missed out on because I didn’t have any money. My cousins went to Havasupai, which I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. I couldn’t go because I had no dough. I also had a friend invite me to go with him and some friends to Hawaii for a week. I would have loved to, but again, I had no money. So, I think that if I have a job and a fairly steady source of income, I’ll be able to afford to go on trips and see places. I also will be able to look back at my life and see the experiences I’ve gained and what I’ve learned in the workplace. I really think the next job I have I’ll be able to stay at for a while.

The diversity of experiences I’ve had have come to show me where my interests are. I think the two main reasons I had a hard time sticking to jobs were because I wasn’t sure what else I was missing out on, and I wasn’t content staying in Provo. Now, with me moving, and having had quite a few jobs, I don’t think I’ll have the same problem. Now, I know that I need to stay at a job for a while in order to learn as much as I can. I need to become a master at what I do before I ever decide to move on. For a while I convinced myself that maybe I just wasn’t interested in the internet or technology businesses. I also don’t think this is true. I still have plenty of interest in these businesses, and I’d love to learn how to be good at B2B sales.

I’ve decided now that I’m just going to apply to every job I hear about that sounds interesting at all. I don’t need to stress about it, but I’ll just apply when a job sounds like it might be a good fit. Then, I’ll wait and see who I get offers from. At that point, I’ll decide what job offer to take. If I don’t get any job offers by January, then I’ll go on my trip. I’m not staying in Provo, so if I don’t have something else to do, I’m not going to sit around and wait for a job. That’s when I’ll travel around the country, networking, sightseeing, and making lots of friends in different places.

I don’t know why, but now I almost kind of want to stay in Utah. Well, I kind of know why. I know there are great entrepreneurial opportunities in other places, and maybe once I move to a place like that, I’d be interested in staying. But, Utah has so many startups and companies that I’m interested in working for. I’m mostly interested in working for startups or small companies, and I don’t think that I have to work for a company to become proficient in sales. I feel like it’s one of the best places to work and live in order to get in on a great startup that I can get passionate about. If I get an offer that I really like that is someplace else, then great. If not, I think I’ll probably move to somewhere in the Salt Lake Valley. Another reason I kind of want to stay in Salt Lake is because I really would like to do the Junto Partners program. It’s basically a free entrepreneur training course that lasts 6 weeks or so. At the end of the six weeks, they pick 5 of the 20 participants to become Junto Partners. I’m not completely clear on what a Junto partner is, but it sounds like you become involved in a group that is designed to help people start businesses. Access to capital, entrepreneurial coaching and mentoring, among other things are involved. I want to be Junto Partner next sumer.

The Budgeted Nomad?

Well, I’m sick. I’m a little surprised by that, because I don’t remember the last time I was seriously sick. It was before my mission sometime. I think part of the reason I may be sick is because I haven’t been exercising as regularly as I usually do, and I’ve stopped being quite as diligent in my eating habits. I guess it could also be that I just got a virus. I guess I shouldn’t expect to never get sick no matter how healthy I keep myself.

I continue to mull around in my head the idea of this nomadic trip. I would really like to make a decision, but I just want to make sure I’m going to commit to whatever I decide to do. On Sunday I went to personal finance class that our Stake wants to be taught to every ward. I really enjoyed it, and I learned a lot. When I was listening to it, I realized that I really need to start saving and putting money away. I guess you could say, I need to start planning for my future and being financially prepared for it. That’s one of the bigger doubts that I’m having now. I mean, I’m almost 25, and I have nothing saved away. Nothing. A lot of people my age are in debt, but that’s not really an excuse.

So, if I go on this trip, it will probably only delay the amount of time until I start making money and putting it away for long-term plans and goals. See, there is one part of me that is starting to realize all the lessons that I’ve learned from my many different post-graduation jobs. The reason I kept getting new jobs is because I wanted to find something that I loved doing. I kept telling myself that the money isn’t important, and that if I find something I love, the money will follow. Well, I’m starting to realize that is true in a sense, but if doing what you love doesn’t pay enough to satisfy your daily wants and needs, then it taints the activity and you start not to enjoy it as much. I’ve been so concerned on finding exactly what I’d like to do, that I haven’t been consistent with anything. I think that a better plan is to find a job I enjoy that pays well, but that still gives me the time and freedom to explore other options at the same time. See, I could have had a part-time sales job during all of these different adventures I’ve had. Then, since I wouldn’t have financial necessity to worry about, I could more fully analyze how much I enjoy the different projects I get involved in.

I’m an entrepreneur by heart. I see opportunities, and I always get excited about trying something new. Although having money isn’t necessary to make businesses successful, it sure makes them a lot easier. There are some ideas that I’ve had that I just couldn’t pursue because I didn’t have the financial resources to pursue them.

For example, with RateMySummerSalesJob.com, I got sick of going through the website and trying to search for problems that needed to be fixed. If I could just hire someone to do the beta testing for me, I could be off and running on the project. So, although starting a business is a great and worthy goal, I need to have a job that pays well while I explore different business options. That way, I won’t even consider myself to be finicky. I’ll have a job that I do regularly, but I can just consider my different business adventures as hobbies. And that’s completely fine to me if I have lots of different hobbies.

Also, to me it’s not necessarily just the excitement of working on my own ideas that intrigues me about entrepreneurship. I think it’s the idea of taking nothing to something that sounds so fun, whether it be my idea or not. In the Utah Valley, there are a lot of startup companies, and I would love to get in on the ground floor of many of them. However, I need to have a specialty that I can bring to the table. Although I consider myself really good at fixing problems, being very organized, and having an eye for opportunity, those aren’t the kinds of skills you sell yourself on. I need to have a specialty that will make me a valuable asset to any company, especially startups. I think the best thing for me to become specialized in is sales. I like sales, and that’s the lifeblood of any company, especially startups.

So, I guess my concern is if I go on this trip, I’m just delaying making money and starting my life. However, I can still go on this trip, make money, and put it away like anything else. In fact, if I don’t have to pay for housing, my expenses will be lower, although my food expense will increase, and my travel expenses could increase as well. But, I could set up a very specific budget for my trip that I need to stay under, while still working and making money through my sales job. I’ve been feeling more and more how I need to set a very specific budget. I want to live for about $1000 a month as far as my living expenses are concerned. That seems like it would be rather easy to stay under while traveling on the road, and I could make a budget specific to my nomadic lifestyle. Once I want to return to a “normal life”, I can just readjust my budget to the different expenses that will be associated with how I live.

Explore the lives of others

I’m kind of feeling sick right now and so I don’t feel like writing in this blog too much. I’m not too sure how long this will be, but I’ll do my best.

I was having some doubts about the trip this morning, but now I’m feeling pretty good about it. I think that I should have two main purposes of this trip. First, I want to use it as career exploration. That means, I want to talk to as many different people as I can about what they do and the skills that are useful in their occupation. I was actually thinking about requiring myself to write in my blog every night about a different occupation. So, that could mean that I need to either jobshadow or interview somebody every day about their occupation. Second, I want to see more places, and decide on where I would like to move to next. I think if I have those as my main purposes, it will be a lot easier for me to focus on and get something out of the trip.

That means, I don’t want to have to worry about money so much on my trip. I’d like to be able to make enough from my job in the next few weeks, or be able to work during my trip doing sales. At least I want enough to start out my trip so that I don’t have to worry about money for the first little bit. Maybe once I’m out on the road I’ll see different opportunities for jobs and what not, and it might not be so bad to run out. But, in the beginning, I’d like to have enough to not have to worry about it.

I think one reason I’m feeling really good about it right now is because I was surfing around on the CouchSurfing website. All of the experiences that people share help me to see how it would be a great experience because I’ll be able to meet lots of different people. I could stay with a different person every night and get a glimpse into their life and their lifestyle. That will help me explore occupations and how people live even more.

Commitment Issues

I talked to my little brother Matt today on the phone and he asked me to be his best man. I’m pretty excited about that. I’m not sure why, but I hadn’t even thought about the fact that I would probably be his best man. Anyway, we started talking, and I told him about my plans to be a nomad. It was kind of funny because he sounded SO nervous for me. He didn’t say a whole lot, and I knew that meant he was thinking this in his mind: “Whoa, what’s wrong with Aaron? He’s going A-wall. He’s never going to get married with the path he’s taking. I don’t feel so good about his plans.”

His silence basically came off like the same response that I got from my Mom. Worried that I’m throwing my life away and running away from something. Well, I’d probably think that if I was somebody else. I mean, usually when I hear somebody is doing something kind of different, I am jealous of them. But, I think most of my siblings are just wondering what my long-term plans are. I don’t blame them for worrying, but I just think it’s a waste of their worry muscles. Worrying never does anybody any good.

While I was talking to him though, he brought up kind of a good point about what I’m doing. I was telling him how I just lose interest in things pretty quickly, and it seems like I have an interest in something, but then I lose interest, and I move on to something else. He mentioned how that was kind of like my Dad. That was something that bothered me about my Dad growing up. He would get interested in something, spend a bunch of money on that hobbie, but then it just wouldn’t last. I always thought the use of money on the Hobbie was a waste if you weren’t going to stick with it. Well, I see the same kind of patterns happening in my own life. It’s not even the fact that I lose interest completely, I guess I just get bored and I’m ready to move onto something new.

For example, I remember when I wanted to learn the guitar. So, I got a guitar, I learned a few songs, and then I lost interest. I mean, I still like to play the guitar once in a while, but now that I basically learned it good enough so that I can learn a song whenever I want to, I just don’t enjoy it enough to pull it out every day. See, the question is how that tendency will translate to my professional life. Am I just going to need to switch jobs every year to keep things interesting?

Well, after thinking about it a while, I’ve realized it’s not all that bad. I mean, I have an eye for opportunity. I really think I do. I have a few entrepreneurial friends who just feel like once they get a good enough idea, they’ll be able to start their own company. For me, I feel like I have pretty good ideas fairly regularly. So, for me it’s not about having the idea, it’s about execution of the idea. I love having a new idea and trying to go after it. I could see myself being a serial entrepreneur, but I need to pursue my ideas further, until they are successful. So, this kind of goes back to what I wrote about before: I should never drop something before I am successful at it.

After thinking about all this, I’m wondering if my travel idea is just one more of those ideas that I need to get out of my system so that I can move onto the next one. I wonder if once I get out and I’m on the road traveling around, I lose interest, and I only travel for like 2 weeks before feeling like I’m done doing that. I could see that happening, and I wouldn’t put it past me. That’s why I need to make the decision right now, that whatever I decide to do, I need to stick with it.

If I decide to travel around and have a blog and what-not, I shouldn’t be done with my trip until I have created a successful blog and I’ve seen some of the things that I want to see.

I also wonder if my desire to move has affected my ability to finish some of the ideas I’ve had. If I know that my location isn’t permanent, and that I don’t want to stay in a place for much longer, then it doesn’t make sense for me to start any sort of sustainable business. Like RateMySummerSalesJob.com, I would probably want to stay around in Utah somewhere to make that a success. If when I’m working on that project, I have a feeling that I don’t really want to stay in Utah for much longer, it might be hard to actually push through on the project, because I know it’s something that just won’t last. I think that’s also true about the other jobs that I had. When I worked at Qualtrics, I knew that I would need to be there for at least a year if I wanted to be a successful B2B salesman. Well, I didn’t really want to stick around in Provo long enough to be successful there, so that’s probably what led to me quitting my job.

It seems that my desire to live in a certain place is strongly connected with my ability to see things through to the end. The more I can plan on living someplace long-term, the more I will be able to start businesses that will endure. So, it seems that for me to be able to find a place that I can see myself living long-term for, one of three things needs to happen. First, I get married. Then, I make a decision with somebody else involving where we want to settle down. Second, I just make a conscious decision about where I would like to live for a year or two. Third, I make some sort of long-term commitment in a location where I feel obligated to fulfill my commitment. I guess this would be like a job or something.

Basically, this analysis has helped me to see that I do think it would be beneficial for me to travel, because I think it can help me to make a decision about where I want to live next. Once I have made that decision, I think it will help me buckle down and follow through on the ideas that I have. Besides, if I don’t follow through on this travel idea, it will be perpetuating my bad habit of having a great idea but never following through with it.

Work or not to Work?

I’ve been thinking some more about my trip, and analyzing the different options that I have and what would be the best. I’ve been thinking more about how to make money on the trip. By going on the trip without money, I’m making the trip a very entrepreneurial venture. I’m forcing myself to be creative, scrappy, and to find ways to make money along the way. Those are things that I really like about that option. But, is that too much to worry about every day? Even if I have enough money in the bank for food every day, that still leaves me plenty of things to worry about. How am I going to get to my next location? Where am I going to stay? etc.

So, the other option, which I’m really liking right now, is trying to do my sales job while I travel. Right now, I’m working 4 hours a day doing phone sales. Everything I use to sell the service, I have access to online. Even the phone calls I make are on a business Skype account. It would be very easy for me to bring my laptop around with me, and to sell remotely. Well, it might still be a struggle because I’d have to find good Wi-Fi in a location where I could talk out loud on my phone. I also don’t even know if this would be a possibility for me. I’m not going to talk to the company about this possibility until I’ve been there for a while, and once I really start doing well with the sales. Once I’m really good, I’m sure they’d be willing to work something out with me.

Anyway, that option appeals to me because money would be something I wouldn’t have to worry about. It would be easier for me to travel more frequently and to see more sites, because I wouldn’t be dependent on my ability to make money. Also, if I have no money on the trip, I might end up getting really crappy jobs that kind of suck to have. I mean, since I graduated, I have kind of been scraping by and doing some random jobs that really haven’t been that great. Although having to use my imagination to find jobs would give me lots of experiences I wouldn’t have otherwise, I’m not sure those are the experiences I want to have. For example, let’s say I get to Cali and I want to go to Hawaii. Although it would interesting to try and find out ways to make enough money to get to Hawaii. What if it takes me a month to get enough money for a plane ticket? Then, I’m in California for a month, and I might get sick of it. Whereas, if I’m working daily, and I have money to travel when I want, it might be more interesting and fun.

I’m not sure which option I would like better. In reality, I’m not even sure doing phone sales remotely is an option. But, there are good and bad things about both options. It really just boils down to what reasons are the most important to me for this trip. If my main reason is to get out of Utah, see and experience as many new places as possible, then it would be better to have a job and money. But, if my main reason is to face all of my fears, learn as much as possible from my experience, then going penniless is the best option.

Another thing I just thought about is how me having to worry about making money every day might actually not be the most entrepreneurial way to go. On this trip, I plan on creating a blog and trying to get as many people to follow it as possible. I can learn a ton from the whole process of creating and maintaining a blog. I’ll want to write good content every day, continue to adapt the blog to meet the wants of my growing number of readers, learn better ways of monetizing it, figure out new ideas to market the blog, etc. If I have to worry about money every day, then I might not be able to spend as much time figuring out how to make my blog a success. Some of the travel blogs I have found have turned into full-time jobs for the writers.

As I was thinking of any new ideas I could use for my blog today, I gained some inspiration from a blog I was visiting called WhereTheHeckIsMatt? The guy does a little jig at all of the different places that he visits. I mean, it’s kind of funny, but the cool thing is how his little jig became viral, and people started telling others to watch the goofy guy dancing. Well, somehow, Stride gum ended up getting a copy of one of his dance videos. So, they paid for him to travel around the world and do dance videos, twice. Anyway, as I was thinking about something unique I could do, I thought of doing music videos. I don’t know exactly what I could do, but I was thinking of just making music videos about different portions of my trip. The would be parodies on existing songs, and then I would just post them on my blog and online. My first idea is to make a parody of the song by Miley Cyrus, Party in the USA:

Instead of Party in the USA, I would make the song be “Couchsurfing in the USA”. And let’s admit it, Miley Cyrus songs and music videos are perfect to do parodies of. So, I’m not exactly sure how my music videos would turn out, but I think it would be fun to do parody music videos about certain aspects of my trip. If I do a somewhat decent job, that might be something that could go viral. So, I might have to learn some video editing skills before I go.

The Doubts Start

Well, I started having some doubts today about my trip. I was actually surprised that I felt so good about everything so far, so, I guess I kind of expected myself to have doubts. I mean, I still haven’t made my mind up for sure about the whole thing, so it’s understandable that I’ll have doubts. I think I’m just starting to fear some things.

First off, I’m a little nervous about the cold. Even though my plan is to start in Arizona and then head off to CA, it’s still the winter time. During the winter, it’s cold outside, and so I’m not sure if I’ll want to be outside all the time in the cold. This is actually probably one of my biggest fears of the whole trip: timing. Would it be better to go at another time?

Second off, money. I know facing my fears is one of the points of the trip, so it’s natural to have a fear that I won’t have enough money. I just wonder if I’ll get caught some where, unable to raise the funds I need. I just might end up doing crappy jobs just to get by, where, I could just work for money here, and then go on more trips. I was also thinking today of the possibility of keeping my sales job, and just working remotely. That way I could pay for all of my expenses with my job, but I could just travel around while I’m doing it.

So, I think those are my biggest concerns right now. I’m still very optimistic about the trip, but I’m just not feeling as sure as I was. I’ve been doing a lot of reading about travel blogs and stuff online, and it has been educational to see all of the different blogs that are out there and crazy things that people do. I really do want to get out and see more parts of the country, but is the best way to do that penniless? That’s the question to be answered I guess.

On another thought, I’m kind of surprised at how accepted dishonesty is in the sales profession. I like my sales job right now, but I’m just surprised at how comfortable people are with bending the truth. I don’t ever want to make anything up or be dishonest, but other people don’t seem to mind the means, as long as the person understands what they are getting into in the end. I just don’t agree with that.

Reasons Behind the Madness

The more I’ve thought and talked to people about my trip, the better it continues to sound to me. I talked to my Dad about it today, and I kept telling a bunch of other people about it. I also talked real long to my cousin Julia Boyce about it. I thought of a couple more reasons why I think this trip would be good for me.

1. Career Exploration – Knocking doors gave me more exposure to people’s lives and occupations than anything else I’ve ever done. I think this trip will be the same. I’ll be in contact with so many different people every day, that I’ll be able to learn a lot about what jobs are out there and what kind of things I might enjoy doing.

2. Overcoming Fear – When I go on a trip like this, I’ll be facing fears that all my most basic necessities won’t be met. I will worry about not having a place to stay, not having enough money to buy food, not having any friends or loved ones around me, etc. Those are some basic necessities that I need, and I’m exposing myself to the fear that will come when those things aren’t readily available. Once I can overcome that fear, I think it will build a lot of confidence in myself. I’ll feel like I can do anything. I won’t ever have fear of going broke or losing my job again in my life, because I know what it will be like to have nothing. I’ll have overcome that, and so then nothing will scare me. I also think that when I make it a daily habit of overcoming my fear, that other things I fear also won’t be so scary for me. I really think that fear will become much less of an issue in my life if I face all of my fears head on in this trip.

3. Getting to Know Myself – This is really close to career exploration, but I think I’ll get to know my strengths really well on this trip. I’m going to be racking my brain trying to think of ways to make money. This will help my greatest strengths stand out to me, and I’ll continually use those strengths to keep myself afloat.

I also think I could use this trip to learn a lot about business and entrepreneurship. I think a trip like this is very hippie-ish. It sounds like something some dude would do that drives a VW Van and has long hair. That’s why I think it’s a little funny to tell people about my plan, because most of them are probably wondering why a guy like me would do it. Well, I think the trip is very entrepreneurial. I’m taking a very big risk by going on this trip, and I’ll have to take risks every day. Nothing is guaranteed. I could definitely not find enough work to buy food, and I might not be able to find places to stay all the time. Those are risks that I’m willing to take. Also, I’m going to have to use my own ingenuity and creativity to figure out ways to make money. Both of these are skills I’m going to need as an entrepreneur, but I’ll be learning them in a very cheap way. I think a lot of entrepreneurs learn similar skills by making big money mistakes. Hopefully I can learn a lot of the skills I’ll need as an entrepreneur while traveling around homeless and penniless.

I want to start a blog, and I really think I could get a good following. I thought of some ideas for a name today. I’m having a tough time deciding which name to use. I’m teetering between recentgradtonomad.com or fromrecentgradtonomad.com. The only difference is with the use of “from” in the second one. I think the second one sounds a little better, but I want to make it memorable and not too long. When I named my website www.ratemysummersalesjob.com, I thought it sounded better with the “job” at the end. After time, and having told people the URL, I’ve realized that most people forget the “job” part of the URL. They ask me how my ratemysummersales site is going. So, I don’t want to make the same mistake with my blog URL. Maybe I’ll start to tell people the name of my blog is “FromRecentGradToNomad.com” and I can see what they say when they repeat it back to me. I plan on telling every single person on my trip that I come in contact with about my blog. I think I might even have some business cards printed up so that I can give them to everybody. I’m also thinking about having shirts made, or maybe just putting the URL on my backpack. I would like to advertise for it and see how good of a following I can get. I’ll probably try to make money with it, but that really isn’t my main objective. It would just be cool to see how many different people I could get to follow me.

Go by foot or car?

The more I’ve thought about traveling, the more confused I’ve become as to whether or not it will really solve the problem. In reality, I just want to feel fulfilled and happy, and I just haven’t felt that way since I’ve graduated. I look back at these last few months, and they have kind of been a waste. I haven’t really done a whole lot, and I just have not been happy with any of the jobs I have. Upon further reflection of this unsatisfied feeling, I’m wondering if a lot of it has to do with the fact that I’m in Provo. I have loved Provo for the last couple of years, but now that I’m graduated, I just don’t feel like I fit here anymore. I think it’s time for me to move on.

So, it may not even be the fact that I’ve hated the jobs I’ve had, although I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed all of them. It could be more that I’m just restless and ready to move on, and I won’t be completely happy with what I’m doing until I pick up and go.

I also think that my feeling of satisfaction has a lot to do with my social life. That is something that is really struggling here in Provo. It’s weird, but for me, the longer I am in one place, the less social I am. When I’m new, I’m extremely outgoing and much less shy. The more comfortable I get and the longer I live in one place, the more reserved I become. It’s like I have that feeling in the beginning that I really don’t care what people think, but then the longer I’m in a place, I care more and more what people think. So, for my social life, it actually might be the best thing for me to go move somewhere else.

After thinking about all these things, I really do think it would be in my best interest to move in December. Now, it’s deciding how I want to move. Do I want to just drop off all my stuff at my parent’s house and be a wanderer on my own with no money? Or, do I decide where I want to move to and drive there and start my life there. Well, one problem is that I really haven’t been to many places in the country, so I don’t really have any specific place in mind that I’d like to live. There is a company in Salt Lake that I’d like to work for, but, I don’t know, that just seems so uneventful. I wonder if I’ll still feel the same restless feeling if I’m living in Salt Lake.

I’ve also been thinking about all the experiences I’ve had that have contributed to my growing desire to get out and see more of the country. My very first experience was in the MTC, when one of my teachers was talking about how he worked for an airline, and every weekend he would just fly to a country and hang out there for a few days. I thought that sounded so fun and so I wanted to do the same thing when I got back. Then, last summer Josh Pratt mentioned how he would like to hitchhike across the country. Once again, I thought that sounded so much fun and I was completely down for the idea. Then, there were some trips that I went on that made me realize how much I love going on trips and just having to figure things out. When I went to a national park with Josh Pratt and Chelsea that we didn’t plan on going to. Then, there was the time I was going to Disneyland, but because of a car crash I ended up spending the weekend in Cedar City. Those trips were so much fun because I didn’t know how things were going to be when I went on the trip.

In conclusion, I’ve pretty much decided that I need to move somewhere. But the questions still remains whether or not I want to move with my car and possessions somewhere, or if I want to completely rough it, and just kind of wander and explore the country. Hmmm, I’ll have to reflect more on this…

Core Values

While I was driving home from Vegas yesterday I was listening to this self-help book on CD. I did one of the exercises that is supposed to help you find your core values. Well, after doing the exercise, this is what I came up with as my four main core values:

Achieve
Influence
Learn
To Experience

I think those core values really show what’s most important to me. I love learning, and I’m happy when I continue to learn and progress. I also want a job or vocation where I can influence others for good. It isn’t just enough for me to make lots of money. I’d like to actually make a difference in this world. By being an entrepreneur, I feel like I can have an influence on society and others. Another thing that is important for me is achievement. When I look back at my life, I want to say that I’ve achieved my goals. I want to accomplish certain things, and a life full of achievement is a life well lived. The last core value is one that I’ve thought more and more about. I want to experience life. That means that I want to take full advantage of all the opportunities that I have, and I don’t ever want to regret my decisions or actions. This is the part of me that screams out at me to go after my dreams, no matter how silly or irrational they might sound. This is also the value that tells me to go explore and see the world while I’m young and single.

I just started my new job today with Spintek Marketing, and one of my fellow co-workers inspired me. Him and a friend decided to go on a trip and try to make it from USC, (The Colliseum) to the Colliseum in Rome, Italy without any money. Well, he said that his friend wimped out and went home, but he wanted to go through with it. He had a lot of different, random jobs along the way, but he was successful with it. He spent time in Spain, New York, and a bunch of other places.

While he was telling me that story, it re-awoke the desire in me to go travel and see the world while I still can. Ever since graduating I’ve had a desire to go places and do something, to experience life. I’ve thought of just packing everything up in my car and driving until I find a place that I would like to live. Then, I can live there for a while until I’m interested in moving on. Or, I can do what this friend did, his name is David, and just try to make it with no money or anything. See if I can survive and pay for my trip from getting random jobs along the way. I’m not sure exactly what I want to do, but I really think that I have to listen to this part of me that wants to go off on a trip. It’ll be hard for me to settle down and get serious about my life until I feel like I’ve done all that I want to do as a single guy. So, here are some of the places and things that I’d like to go and see.

Hawaii
New York
Washington D.C.
Florida beaches
Australia
Eiffel Tower
Niagara Falls
Northern Lights

Hmm, it’s actually really hard to decide where I would like to go. But, that’s the great thing about it, I don’t have to have my whole trip thought out. I only have to have one destination in mind as to where I would like to go. Then, once I make it there, I can start thinking about where else I would like to go. Really, I mostly want to see what this country has to offer. I have seen so little of my own country. I don’t have as big of a desire as some people to travel the world, because I really haven’t seen the cool places in this country. I think my first destination is Hawaii, and then once I get there, I can figure out where else I want to go.

New Job

Well, I ended up getting that job with Spintek Marketing. It sounds like it’ll be a good fit for me. The thing that I like about it is that I’ll be able to work around 20 hours a week, and make $500-$1000 a week. That’s not too bad. Their top producers are making more than $1,000 a week, and that’s from being on the phone for around 20 hours. So, I think that job can be what I use to make enough money to help fuel whatever else I want to do. That’s plenty of money for me to live on, and I’ll have plenty left over to save and to get things I want. Then, with all my extra time and money, I can work on lots of other projects. It should be really sweet. I’m excited to not have to worry about money any more. Even though I think it took a lot of courage for me to go this long without seeking out a job for necessity, it has kind of sucked. It has been really hard to not buy anything. However, once I do start making money again, I want to create a very specific and strict budget. I always just buy what I think is absolutely necessary. Now, it’ll only be necessary if I can fit it in my budget. I mean, I bought a two-year membership to 24-hour fitness, total immersion DVD, and took a trip to the Kokopelli tri, all while I didn’t have any money. None of those were necessary, but I felt like they were. So, I need to budget my money out very specifically, and I plan on budgeting out $1,000 a month. So, that should be plenty of money to spend on dating, travel, and triathlon. Anything I make above and beyond $1000 I want to use for investments and education. I want to put some money in the stock market and start playing around and learning a little bit more about that. I also want to get some different certifications and stuff. So, that’s my plan at this point.