Day 72 without hitting the road:

Spirits remain high on this side of the world. Ever so slowly, I’m weening myself off the addictive thrill of novelty—the thrill of transitioning from city to city, country to country, reinventing myself time and time again like a player being spawned always in a different level of a video game.

I’m finding new thrills in my permanence. Piecing together bus routes on disconnected backroads and haggling for the cheapest street eat have been replaced with piecing together a social life in a city with limitless opportunities and shopping around for a decent-priced cut of beef. Forging stronger foreign language capacity has given way to forging stronger relationships. Perhaps this is the novel experience left unsatisfied by my nomadic chapters. There’s still work to do though.

I’m still a recovering vagabond.

Justice for Café Rio

I spent an afternoon at the MALBA art museum. As a fledgling art connoisseur, I quickly fell into the routine of reading the titles of the works before giving the piece much of a glance, treating the MALBA as little more than a 3D textbook.

I caught myself halfway through this visit to the MALBA and decided to flip the script. I wouldn’t look at the title until I had made up my own title and story for it. By simply taking the time to experience the artwork before letting the title fill in the gaps, my MALBA experience was transformed from then on.

Upon exiting the museum, I realized that reading before experiencing is not relegated to art collections—it’s a 21st-century battle we face daily.

Let’s take back some territory on the crowdsourced reviews landscape and start forming firsthand opinions instead of relying on secondhand dribble.

Do the Right Thing

It’s remarkable how often we actually know what the “right” thing to do is and still consciously choose the wrong:

Get up and move.

Stop hitting snooze.

Call your Mom.

Don’t look at that.

Put your phone down.

Treat everyone with respect (even when they don’t deserve it).

Life is straightforward in many respects—our choices and impulses are what complicates it.

Gone Fishing (for Kicks)

There comes an inevitable chapter in every vagabond’s story arc when they start deeming themselves too savvy to stoop to the level of tours. This point can be dangerous and draws a thin line between seeking serendipitous experiences and being flat-out jaded.

The jaded vagabond—the one that can’t help turning his nose up at a “tourist” activity—is the same vagabond that would be better off shopping for a flight home than shopping for another cheap meal to keep his diminishing novel thrills alive.

If a vagabond manages to avoid this pitfall though, he or she will mindfully turn down pre-packaged experiences with assured outcomes. They will instead dig a bit deeper for an experience with unassured outcomes but with assured learning opportunities.

Here’s a story about that dichotomy:

Thanks for reading Ferg’s Focus! My goal is to use uncomfortable experiences to learn and in turn share meaningful lessons and insights about the world beyond the small bubble of predictability at home.

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Until the next,

-Ferg