Bit of radio silence on here recently, I know. Haven’t written anything since—whoa—is that last post from July?!
I’m going to share the MOST topical stuff upfront, and if you want to hang around, I go into more depth below about life in general below.
Learn more about the show in 38 seconds…
Personally, I think that looks freakin’ awesome! And I’m allowed to say that because I didn’t do the work (beside the VO). Ha! :)
Win a Meal for 2 – Restaurant Twitter Contest
To celebrate the launch of TET, I’ve teamed up with restaurants all across the USA (and in Canada) to award 12 lucky winners a free meal at awesome places that I’ve been to!!
Click here for more details and to enter (or just follow the directions on the image).
We’ve got a new site up!
Check it out at www.traveleatthrive.com
LOTS more to add, but the bones are there! :)
Ok…what’s been going on, Nathan?
Yeah, I made a decision to focus more strongly on two items: generating income, and the show Travel. Eat. Thrive. The first because, well, I have nearly run out of money twice this year (not fun times!), and the other because I’m launching the pilot October 15th and sh*t needs to get done!
One of the things that needed to fall by the wayside (at least for now) was this blog: it wasn’t essential to either of those two items.
“Leaving” this blog brought up both guilt and relief. Guilt because I have SO MUCH I want to share (dozens of pages worth of blog posts, ideas, and notes)—it kills me that I’m not “doing” anything with all this stuff I’ve learned/acquired, but what I’m missing is that I may still use it someday, in a book perhaps, or something else. Life can be long and there’s lots more I can do.
Relief hit because I didn’t feel beholden to do anything—I didn’t have to spend time thinking about what I’d post this week, or what photos to take, or what would be a good story, or how am I documenting everything
See, even after 3+ years of working on this site, writing is still not a zone of genius for me: it takes a lot of energy, it doesn’t come naturally, and I *definitely* don’t lose track of time doing it. I kinda wish things were different, in that I see many of my good friends and people I admire who are fantastic writers, like this guy, this guy, this guy and even this guy.
Sometimes I wish I had their ability, but it’s been more of a process realizing that I have different gifts than them, and for me to be happiest and to share the most, I need to focus energy on *my* gifts: things like being on camera, sharing info about food/nutrition/traveling, working on the show—even if I think some parts of this work might be “uncool,” I need to face up to the fact that this is who I am and that this stuff really does fire me up. I can’t deny it.
It was like a realization I had earlier this year: I’m a huge freakin’ nerd. I like doing online work (websites/newsletters, etc.) and I’m damn good at it. There should be no shame in marketing myself with those skills, because people need this stuff done, and I bring a lot to the table.
Of course I wish sometimes that I could only be working on the show, traveling the world, eating amazing food, and supporting others in bringing health to their lives, but that just ain’t my reality right now. It’s a great goal to work towards, though—and that’s what I want to do.
Now it hasn’t been all introspection; I’ve had fun, been productive, and reached some milestones over the past few months, too…
- Amazing experience volunteering in Ecuador with those kids, and then spent nearly a month in Colombia between Bogota and Medellin
- Celebrated 1000 days of travel on 7/31/2013 in Ecuador (flew to Colombia the next day!)
- Published my audio narration of A Brief Guide to World Domination
- Led a successful “Healthy Portland” outing, including a hike, outdoor meditation, and a fantastic dinner at Higgins.
Two more items!!
1) The cookbook is now available on both and the (you can still get the complete packages here).
2) How I travel for nearly free… this card is one of my personal favorites (I currently have it), and it’s a great card for first-timers: the Chase Sapphire Preferred.
You get 40K points after spending $3K in 3 months (just do your regular expenses on the card!). Then, use those points within Chase or transfer to one of their partners, which opens up just about every airline out there.
Most domestic round-trip flights are around 25K points; you could also use these points to get out to Hawaii! :)
**Full D: those are affiliate links for the cookbook, and I get a 5K point bonus if you are approved for the credit card and make a purchase. That’s a good deal with Chase. In fact, get the card and get your own referral link!
Remember: the pilot drops on October 15th!
From Portland…
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