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Border trip to Panama
It’s a nice excuse for a day trip, and it’s exactly the sort of bureaucratic bobbing and weaving that is essential to living in a socialized country. Today, we bought bus tickets that we will never use, from Costa Rica’s border town of San Vito to Panama, for 90 days from now. These will replace the plane tickets that we will not use in two weeks, and allow us to stay in the country for another 90 days. Sounds confusing? [...]
I’m a lucky bastard.
Any list of personal gratitudes could potentially be very long, for any living person: having eyes, having a mind that allows you to think, a heart that gives you desires, and the fulfillment of even tiny desires - these are all gratitudes that are available to any of us. Sometimes, life puts us in the blessed position of having great big obvious gratitudes, making it exceptionally easy to feel thankful. I am now in one of those positions. I live [...]
Shhh…don’t tell anyone. I’m not getting upset.
I’m broke. Or nearly so, anyway. I came to Costa Rica with a few hundred dollars and a couple of clients. It’s been six weeks, I’ve finished all the client work, and used up all my cash. At the Feria the other day, the weekly farmers market where we buy our groceries, I had to bring my ’emergency’ cash – $200 in US dollars that was for ‘just in case.’ ‘Just In Case’ happened when I had [...]
Dream job? Check.
I’ve got my dream job. Ramit Sethi asked in this post about people who have successfully achieved their dream job, and my comment on the post got lots of responses. So I realized it’s time for me to describe it on my own blog. I design websites while living in Costa Rica. It took me some time to find what my ‘dream job’ even entailed; I was stuck in a miserable 60+ hour a week job, learning great [...]
Family Dinner Redux
By far, one of the greatest blessings of our new life is having family dinner together. Our house is small and cozy, making it easier to corral the chaos that is our children around a table for a meal. Every day, we sit around our small wooden table, and say grace, and eat dinner together. In Portland, our kitchen was big, and open, and also served as a hallway. The energy was constantly being flushed out into the school, and [...]
Paving the Digital Highway in Central America
Do they really need websites here? I ask myself this question, a LOT. In Costa Rica, it's much different than America, where most of my clients live. This is a rural mountain community. In Perez Zeledon, the southern zone of Costa Rica where I live, you find things by asking friends. If you need to know something, ask around until you find out. (This process can take some time.) In America, everybody finds information online. On their smartphones. On their [...]