Traveling By Land, Sea and Air Copyright 2020 Hotel @nyware|Design by Best Blogger Template Hotel @nyware: December 2018

Hotel @nyware

EdReif.Com

Archive for December 2018

- - -- by Hotel @nyware»
A Post Without Image


16.9 miles of hiking from Bognor Regis to Goring by Sea along the English Coastline.


I am a time Millionaire with no future, but what an awesome gift- that's why they call it The Present. You can get anywhere from here as long as you are HERE, which is what there is and all there is.

I was an early adaptor, embracing tech and the ipod in all its iterations...and here is an analogy-we spend a lot of time in fast forward worrying about the future, and in rewind cogitating on the past, but we rarely hit *PLAY and live in the present.

As I approached today's habit, a 17 mile trek along the English Channel coastline, i am reminded of John Muir, "Father of the America's National Parks", who said make sure some of the roads you go down are dirt, well in England you can add MUD, made sure of that.

The 3 P's Practice Practice Practice 

Practicing mindfulness. What? Yep.  Mindfulness can actually strengthen our muscle of attention and help us make better decisions. It also decreases the amount of time we spend mind wandering or judging ourselves, and setting unrealistic expectations. In other words, everyday you have to go "out" of your mind to come to your senses. If you are in your head, you're dead.

As a distance athlete Back in the '80s, if  I were to tell the "uninformed " I wanted to go running, they would have said 'Why? Is someone chasing you?..same with mindfulness and hiking in the English mud in December. Why? Why not!


*Alan Watts (who-get this-described himself as a spiritual entertainer) understood the concept of stepping back from all of the drama we create in life; he understood the cosmic humor of it all. He was devoted to PLAY. He would appreciate me being a "mudder" today just for the fun of it.


“This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.” -Watts (1977)
Through farmland, dirt paths, rocky beach shoreline, and the paved town of Littlehampton as the halfway point for  a rest, I put the headphones on, listened to.music and powered through the remaining 8 miles with an intensity I didnt know I still possessed.

The smaller the boat,the bigger the Captain 

The grass is greener where you water it

There is more to life than increasing its speed



We are all Time Millionaires, and when we who choose to "spend" this commodity, the less we put a cash value on travel, and the less we think that money is what we need to have an adventure and live, and the less we associate money with life in general.
I don't set goals. I have habits. Walking is part of my daily routine. 



Gotta draw the line somewhere-God your beauty is unparalleled...even with the quixotic windmills.
Love these sunrises(12 26 18)


- - -- by Hotel @nyware»
A Post Without Image

Fear is for folks who don’t get out much


Instant Gratification Takes To Long. It took me 20 years
to become an overnight success
After spending 8 months a year for the last 10 years living out of a suitcase, it is easy to reflect on the value of thoughtful travel. I call it "Taking Yourself With You". There is no such thing as work-life-vacation balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life. One rarely falls in love with people without being equally attracted to what is interestingly wrong with them.

Travel, at its best is creative destruction. In the wisdom of the moment,the power of a new language, food and culture and people are not problems to be solved but mysteries to be lived.

The whole exercise has to be one of reconciliation.Lowering, removing or shattering the walls of misunderstanding which unduly separate we human beings, one from another. It's not so much about being understood as understanding. A lot of times, it's not you it's U.S. winning  the geographic lottery being horn in the USA. Why go anywhere else, eh?

The Hunt For Happy- is the longing for repetition.


The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling our stories from the same facts. Pleasure is not happiness but the joy I have extracted from trips depends more on the mindset I travel with than on the destination I travel to. I don 't want to tell anyone where they ought to travel, but only how and why.

 My daughter Truddie recently came back from SE Asia. Dont follow my advice I told her. Follow my example. I am glad she is doing just that. Already booked another trip with her husband Joe in May for elsewhere.


In SE Asia in The early 90's
My dream-I haven’t been everywhere, but it is on my list, reveals I never quite get 'over' this travel-thing : it's all still in there somewhere. You have to be like someone to envy them- when you can't relate to somebody, you can’t 't envy them. Not too many people are doing what I’m doing. There is a randomness of #winning and losing, not any justice to it or divine right.. People make my experience vital-That's the mark of a good trip. I never heard a travel agent ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we want to go. Instead of bringing back 3000 refrigerator magnets, I return from my trips with a collection of small but life-enhancing/ extending thoughts...such as(read caption below)

The difference between me and this
Ferrari  is that I know I am not a Ferrari
"Stuff" is an identity crisis. We are not our
Stuff.

Empathy and Sympathy-A Big Distinction



FADE IN: Empathy: I see someone zoom past me in a tricked out  Ferrari  today—He  is  not  greedy or flashy  but  “incredibly vulnerable and in need of love”  I know because I drove one in Monaco. I was that guy.

At home we don't usually encounter our true and best  selves. 


The Things You Own End Up Owning You---but beds last longer than marriages


For instance, Sympathy: I see bitterness, the silent disease (mostly) of  domestic relationships take its toll---the habits and confinement of the ordinary, commuter  world where, once home, the furniture insists that we cannot change because it doesn't and debt keeps us tethered  and stuck to the mundane and profound.I feel that pain, and have an infinite(compassionate) smile for anyone who is grinding it out  because I embrace(d) that ennui  and burn(ed) it as fuel for my travels.  That  resignation is  like a spot on your shirt that never comes out-So Don't  just change your mind, change your shirt.

Rule of thumb is if I am not  embarrassed enough  by who I was and what I did  last year, I  probably am not learning enough!

Some Nostalgia- Pedaling Thoughts


The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.



In Copenhagen, I went for a bike ride in the center  of the city. …In one street lined with uniform apartment buildings, I stopped by a yellow building  and felt an intense longing to spend the rest of my life there.

Yet, it seems I may best be able to inhabit a place where I am not  faced with the additional challenge of having to be there all the time.


Born in NY, Neurons that fire together wire together. Considering how much inner  "nomad" is in each of us, in adulthood I gave myself permission to  LEAVE ASAP, and  imaginatively re-create(d) my  ID  in line with my  true allegiances of  a place noted for second chances, Venice Beach, California... 


My vibe would create my tribe.


MY LIFE, BASED ON A TRUE STORY is downright paranormal. How the hell did I get here? Whatever talent I possess(ed)  is on loan from some deity, some unimaginable source and force for some exquisite portion of  time, to be passed on when I am finished.

The most extraordinary aspects of my being didn't come from me. The spark(s) of epiphanies that I occasionally get are less about being a genius  and more about having a genie---Making  Wishes. Showing Up. Being T/Here.Fear is for folks who don't get out very much. Outdoors Is In!



"When you define me, you negate me'--so  let me tell my own idiosyncratic story. My autobiography gives dignity and meaning to me and the YOUniverse.

Life's Change Agent

When  I started  blogging about  my  own experiences at sea, and the blessings and  gifts of this unique life style, I  started to answer the question-What is the meaning of life? I Got One! Find What You Love And Let It Kill You. And you will be born again, in  a planet of  'new' inexperience(s). I'm not a renaissance man. I'm a Renaissance, man!

Don’t ask me to swallow the ocean.  I didn't do anything on my own--Serendipity and meaningful coincidences used to warp and distort my digital narcissism  into believing I had  everything to do with whatever was going on in my life, Yet one of the most  painful reconciliations  I had to  make after that sort of thinking is when reversals take place and  “the future just ain’t what it used to be”.  More than that, you can never plan the future by the past.

It’s hard to get back to back championships."The Sky's The Limit" vibe  is, paradoxically, problematic, in that it causes us to believe we can (and should) perpetually be succeeding more than we actually are, even if that hope is flatly unrealistic. Still it is in the AmeriCAN cultural DNA to be restless,and want to leave., and maintain a healthy but malignant optimism.

Those Who Do Not Move, Do Not Notice Their Chains


The ethos of mobility and individualism started when I become an idiot (a Greek word originally meaning non-citizen), not buying into the shared hallucination of mediocrity. You relax and lower your standards and question everything. You are no longer separate, isolated or alone. You are just like everyone else. The clock had  struck 13. What is deeply personal becomes  universal---this is the real internet and network---the collective unconsciousness.

15 lbs Lighter than last year!
Telling our own story is not something that we are  taught how to do. There  is a course called Life 101. The Earth school of hard knocks.Tuition is free, paid for with bad planning. Success is continued enthusiasm despite failure after failure; and nothing fails like excess.

Houston ,We have a Bunny!
The Earth school kills all of its students--It only ends once, everything else is just progress. Hopefully, you do things that get you out of your “jumping jack” default state of being-shopping and buying, and you go to the edges and profoundly  do your human homework.


The Invention Of The Ship Was Also The Invention Of The Shipwreck.


The word “blessing” actually comes from the French blessure, which means “wound.” So, a blessing always has that other side to it, My cruising obsession (this invisible wound) is like a private religion. It’s where the bulk of my spirit is actually invested. Yet I have been divinely compensated.The wisdom of this excess is that We die to the present tense
and are born again in future perfect the heroes of our own lives.Yet there is always the nostalgia, the homesickness for the East-West Coasts:


The winds of grace always blow for us
 but you have to raise your sails a
nd just go. 



Putting the He in Hero, all action/adventure films have the same moral: Perseverance pays. Of all the things I am not very content at doing,living on land is the most outstanding. I was an armchair sea dog, growing up on LAWNGUYLAND(L.I.) New York, dreaming of going places, but I never stepped foot even in a motor boat, never started and 
Therefore never failed.

My universe is made of stories, not atoms: land, air and sea travel and the power of now. If I wanted to be a multinational soul, I couldn't do it in cities where I taught English like New York or Los Angeles, Paris or Tokyo alone-I needed to get consecrated by sailing on the oceans. It's a wonderful thing to get rid of everything and everybody and just go some place where you don't know anyone; where, as Melville said,"God's one and only voice is Silence."


Sea Change
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.

Let The Orinoco Flow--There is no doubt about it, the exhilarating state of mind that travel can evoke, when everything seems suddenly fresh, vivid, intensely interesting, and memorable

Despite the undoubted camaraderie, the laughs, the jollies and the sense of tribalism that attends any cruising project, the profession remains a notoriously lonely one. Friendships are intense but brief; when the gig ends or the curtain runs down, you can soon find yourself back home staring at your cell phone and wondering if any of it really happened. Memories are short, time moves on, fame is transitory.

Nothing fails like excess- 6 times around the world does build confidence- It's not real life but an alibi. It is like going out of your mind everyday- in order to come to your senses.  It is a blessing:



6 Laps Around The World DOES Build Confidence, ie, trusting yourself, only then can you begin to live.


You can teach an old DOGma new tricks. 


 Neurons  that wire together fire together. I am not seeking a meaning to life, but the experience of being ALIVE. I am  longer hard-wired  per se for  cruise ships. My brain is plastic. The hunt for HAPPY is repetition. I enjoy the navel gazing concussions, the  Lakota-style sweat lodge ceremonies, the power of NEW and the power of NOW. That will never change.Life Extension: The "prescription" for  my happiness. I'm not going to the doctor or the mall, I'm  going on a trip.





Fade IN:  Leaving a ritual and habit of ordinary living,  I embarked  on an unplanned trip and became The  Accidental Sailor.  
For reasons of necessity rather than a sense of innate wanderlust, I am at sea because it gives  me something to do and a place to be. Magnetized and full of charisma, I always managed to stay on course, without realizing it. Sometimes I quip---Success at sea is continued enthusiasm despite failure after failure, because there are so many variables, but in the end, you don't quit jobs, you quit people. FunEmployment  has a limited lifespan. 

Never heard of FunEmployment? It's the person who quits his job or takes advantage of being out of a "job" to have the time of their life. Instead of punching a clock, you head for the beach. In my case, the high seas. 2012


2009


20,000 Leagues Into My Brain

Call it faith! A passion for the possible. I am full of it, and shooting from the hip that is to say, having an adventure is something more but nothing less than bad planning. Yet, if I had to plan it all, I probably wouldn't have done it.

I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how much I love being at sea. Maybe what matters is who I am when I’m  doing it. I’m my best self. 

  Character is doing what’s right when no one is looking. All of ones problems come from the inability to spend time quietly alone in ones "room". There is a lot of alone time.

cOPENhagen
As much as I detest   the travel (sometimes) —I love the writing and the introspection—the virtuous delights of organizing a disorganized country, itinerary or culture, and comparing it to my state of mind at that moment , stripping away the inessential and the second-rate, classifying all that remains in neat, terse blog posts, building a solid foundation with the bricks that these ports of call and at sea have thrown at me.

The winds of grace always blow for us  but you have to raise your sails and just go. 

Any port in a storm won't do. You need to be content with the weather of  the day-to-day-The whole secret  is to have NO FEAR. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Written on the gates of hell is abandon all hope" Written in the heart and mind of a Buddha " reject all help"  Only then  are you freed.
The cure for anything is salt water -
 sweat, tears, or the sea....

 Sure living at sea is hours of boredom tinged with moments of hysteria- sometimes the waters are so rough you get sea sick, but I never found these as excuses to remain ashore except for biking…and it’s lonely at times, but I call that solitude. Freedom is not free but it is not for sale and can't be purchased in a 7 day cruise. Sure it's fun- all the food and drink and music and noise; but pleasure is not  happiness. Happiness is balance and following your bliss, and connecting with the divine. The  sea is the place I house  my soul and access my higher self.

There are three sorts of people; those who are alive, those who are dead, and those who are at sea.
An I For An IslandLiving makes the whole world kind
Jean Paul Sartre, the French Existentialist said, 
Freedom is what you do to what has been done to you
 I would value-add that by saying ,Freedom is what you do to what has been done to you by your own thoughts, words and actions (See my blog post As Seen On TV).

- - -- by Hotel @nyware»
A Post Without Image

Don't Stop Believin'


“You should  write a book”  I rather  shoot a movie, with Sequels.  A  Show rather than Tell-All.

How can I compose a story big enough, deep enough and broad enough to encompass the reality of my life? When I’m at sea, immersed in action, I am the protagonist, You can't create experiences like this, you undergo them.

The power of narrative comes forth  when I am engaged in the telling.(or selling) of these accounts.

Michelangelo Effect
 There are 3 versions, First, the edited “inside version”,  Secondly, The story I tell the world, and Thirdly, my created self- or RL Real Life (story). Depending on my audience, my motive, or my mood at any given time. . . The countless possible versions of (my story) can vary widely.


Bucket Listed
“Whoever authors your story authorizes your actions.” When we tell our own story—and write our own autobiography, we truly begin to live more consciously and unfold our own myth---with  us as producer and director, going out to sea , in an infinity of hope, it's life's coming attraction, where we have final cut. There is, indeed, the uniqueness of inhabiting our own life when we follow our bliss and tell our own story. I think that the majority of people never get inside their own lives.   Read More Here


The Year Of
Magical Thinking
That is the difference between living mythically (The American Dream)  and living autobiographically (The  YOUniverse) where your wishbone becomes your backbone. 

"That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best – make it all up – but make it up so truly that later it will happen" Ernest Hemingway 
Read More Here

Write? Right!

One-Man-National Geographic on that everywhere trip.


Yangoon-One Hand Clapping
The earth school kills all of its students. Life is like rowing out to sea in a boat that has a hole in the bottom. Have as much joy and fun and  fulfillment- because success without fulfillment is failure. This is known as Present-Moment Hedonism; conservative risk-averse types call it PoiZen. Traveling, is like shaving my head-if I'm not doing it everyday I start to feel like a bum.  I use traveling  as a medicine to feel differently. Traveling is a drug that gives me  a fix when I'm  down and  turns feeling normal into a buzz 

Unlike retail therapy that  ends up  being  buyer's remorse, the cure  IS the poison, and  the  fool, who persists in his folly, becomes wise. The  pressure of modern life  (or as it's also known, being lucky enough to be born in the USA) seems tiny compared to some of the beauty in the world. Seeing it all at the slower  speed  of nautical miles, magnifies it 10x, to the nth degree.

Action Plan
Doing  the right thing at the wrong time equals pain- Someday, the busiest day of the week, is the wrong time. It is never about the claim to finite resources..."not enough time, money, opportunity". It's about resourcefulness.

Long Term Travel
If travel is your dream, then live your dream now, not your back up plan. I would recommend that everyone who wanted to travel, do it immediately. Sooner  rather than later. Gather no moss. Time Marches  on. Start Now.The winds of grace always blow for us but we  have to raise our sails and just go. Read More Here
Proust decided he’d done enough living by age 30 and decided to spend the rest of his life processing the life he’d lived in a book called Remembrance Of Things Past.  I do not suffer from the "dis-ease" of more, but I still see myself traveling by cruise ship in the present perfect tense- as in: "I will have booked another world cruise by age 60."



Hooked-My Life
Based On A True Story
The  reason why I haven't written a book, is because I'm still processing it all! Looking forward to the day when  I have more PAST than FUTURE, and my experience catches up to my imagination, as the quotidian, intimate and overlooked aspects of ordinary day  become more extraordinary.
Narrow Road to The Interior

Everyone's life is either a warning or an example, but nothing is so irritating as a good example.  Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the people. Hell is other people and you usually meet them on a cruise ship---I write my own rules for nautical success: continued enthusiasm despite failure after failure.  


The Accidental Sailor
Despite the undoubted camaraderie, the laughs, the jollies and the sense of tribalism that attends any cruise contract or  project, the profession remains a notoriously lonely one. FriendSHIPS are intense but brief; when the gig ends or the curtain comes  down, you can soon find yourself back home staring at your cell phone and wondering if any of it really happened. Memories are short, time moves on, "fame" is transitory.Read More Here


Everyday Epiphanies


You Do What On A Cruise Ship?

Los Angeles-To London in 110 Days-

 Let The Orinoco Flow- One Year @Sea

Tranquility Base-The Ego Has Landed

Further Up and Further In



“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now...Come further up, come further in!"    C.S. Lewis


- - -- by Hotel @nyware»
A Post Without Image






One day my life will flash before my eyes. I am making sure it’s worth watching. My life hasn't gotten better by chance; it’s gotten better by change. By changing nothing, nothing changes. When in doubt, I always have chosen change. All these changes, however, were preceded by chaos, and the bridges I burned, have lit the way.Yet, at what point is choice--the watermark  of individual freedom and self-determination that we so cherish--becomes a point of diminishing returns, a "problem" instead of a solution---That is the paradox of choice. 

There is no YES, in yesterday, and when you are sailing, you are what you are right there and then.  My  bizarre travel plans have been dancing lessons from God. As soon as anyone starts telling me to be realistic, I cross that person off my  invitation list. We are still friendly but no longer friends because they don’t get  IT that if you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much space.

There is wise and other wise--When my left brain is too  good at telling my right brain what to do, I am a normal man, adapting  to the world; otherwise I am  trying to adapt the world to myself.  So all my progress depends on being  a paranormal man.  After all, “normal” is the setting on a washing machine-you know the spin cycle-same old, been there done that.Para normal, on the other hand,is an art rather than a science and can't be easily explained or measured.

The test to find whether my Hero’s Journey on earth is finished is simple--If  I’m  alive, it isn't.  Remembering this is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking I have something to lose.. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

St Marteen-From Monk To (Time) Millionaire

That was Zen (Angkor Wat).
This Is Now (St Marteen)


The joy in the freedom of losing everything!



Every day you have to go out of your mind in order to come to your senses. Furthermore  a fool, who persists in his folly, becomes either wise or other wise.  

It has never been about resources, but more about resourcefulness.We're never too poor to buy our freedom. In fact, we are all “time millionaires ”and when we who choose to "spend" this commodity, the less we put a cash value on travel, and the less we think that money is what we need to have an adventure and live, and the less we associate money with life in general.

Whoever  put that thought virus or meme in my head--- the idea that my personal freedom was for sale, something I had to purchase, and that travelling took a lot of money was wrong. There is nothing more satisfying than saying---I TOLD YOU SO.

I’m living my dream of PT-Permanent Travel, also known as "Mini Retirements". I haven’t been everywhere, but it is on my list. As I document this adventure, this a round-the-world travelogue, I say to myself "Roam Sweet Roam". and Jai Ho!

Home is not where my heart is but where my computer is-


 I remain a digital nomad, where Anywhere becomes @nyware, location neutral, as there is no such thing as a bad piece of real estate when you use technology and social media.  Sailing in The Caribbean Ocean----I am  in the middle of nowhere, but the center of everything, thanks to a reliable high speed Internet connection. I am doing pretty much everything I would do in the USA, only with the economies of scale, at a less greater cost. Consequently, I call home a feeling not a place-I’ve never confused a street address for where I actually lived. My destinations have never been places , but new way of seeing things: the journeys themselves have been the destinations.

My life according to Bob Dylan Lyrics-Like A Rolling Stone and Quinn The Eskimo


Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people They're drinkin', thinkin' that they got it made Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things But you'd better lift your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it babe You used to be so amused At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal. How does it feel How does it feel To be on your own With no direction home Like a complete unknown Like a rolling stone?
 AND
Everybody's building ships and boatsSome are building monuments, Others jotting down notesEverybody's in despair, every girl and boy, But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here, Everybody's gonna jump for joy.
Come on without Come on within You'll not see nothing like the Mighty Quinn

Divine Compensation

Failure IS the option,, a necessary ingredient for success.The culture of perfectionism, however, won't make room for the uncomfortable subject. The failure factory begins in that ponzi scheme called higher education aka, College Tuition---, a means to prey on the poor, instead of pulling people up by their boot straps.
Doing what we love is our sanity. It fills us with a powerful charisma, enabling us to produce new ideas and new projects. The law of gravity is not just a "belief." It is true whether or not you believe it. The Tao of Hotel @nyware are not just beliefs, either; they are descriptions of how my consciousness operates.

 My cruising obsession is like a private religion, It’s where the bulk of my spirit is actually invested, for better or worse, and sometimes there are diminishing returns. The future is full of possibilities that you have to constantly shoot in the head-because if you want to sail around the world, you have to limit yourself to the vessel, and the terms and conditions of the contract.

6 times around the world builds confidence—it is the in to my sane, an organic field of energy that emerges from the deepest aspects of who I am.. It is the fulfillment of what God has created me to be and do, to make a dent in the user-friendly universe.

Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you want! Brick walls are there for a reason - they let us prove how badly we want things!

It is awesome to dwell in the miraculous universe---A miracle is a shift in thinking-for me, it has never been about hoping or dreaming or winning the lottery, it’s been about faith-I’m full of it. Faith activates and doubt deactivate the Law of Divine Compensation.

 I activate it with every loving thought. I deactivate it when I give more credence to the “reality” and power of the material world than to the reality and power of love. There is no point of diminishing returns or scarcity, or finite resources, in this freakonomics scenario.

 Time spent in "ritual space", and getting in touch with your  inner Wild Man Avatar renews  mojo and a sense of life as a quest. Super Bowl Sunday--the high holy day of masculinity for AmeriCANS is one way to do it. So is cruising to exotic ports of call.

FADE IN: Enya's Caribbean Blue  is  a  new-age  speed bump  in a 405- Los- Angry-Cars(LA)  traffic jam. Sail Away, her other hit,  is  navel gazing concussion  in a  Lakota-style sweat lodge ceremony . Regular or extra crispy, take your pick.

"Everything you can imagine is real"  Picasso



I write my own rules for nautical success: continued enthusiasm despite failure after failure. 

Ship Happens-Success without fulfillment=failure So what, Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Living on a ship, might be summed up as monotony tinged with hysteria. It's not real life but an alibi. It is like going out of your mind everyday- in order to come to your senses; and a fool who persists in his folly becomes wise.
Chief Reif and Crazy Horse

 After 11 ships, yes ELEVEN, I no longer want to cast doubt on perfection-America. “It’s not about the money” is the lesser known, I don’t have a dream speech. Wasn’t it Steve Jobs who said “Money is life’s report card. I've seen this kind of "success" as a drug of choice.More than that, success without fulfillment, is failure, yet, this kind of failure is going to get your best material.

As An Art Director and World Cruise Coordinator, the experiences at sea turned my can’t into cans and leveraged my dreams into serendipity a thousand unseen helping hands.

 Money isn't the root of all evil, boredom is the root of all evil, a spiritual anorexia- the despairing refusal to be oneself.

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are, once you let go of the life you have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for you.

Being born in America is like being kidnapped and sold into slavery and the shared hallucination of running on the treadmill of consumption and materialism. It's a mask that eats up the face. It's also like winning the lottery, a currency, and I wanted to spend it well. Yet, we value material, we ignore emotions.

 If I wanted to serve my country, I had to betray it. What was the blue chip idea worth betraying? What was the lie I told myself? The disease of more in a world of plenty where most of the developing world is starving. The lack of simplicity and the yearn for complexity was, and in many ways still is, my blind spot.

The most total opposite of pleasure is not pain but boredom. I was willing to risk pain ( culture shock) to make a boring life interesting and re framing (Home is a feeling not a place) travel as a verb and not a noun. You have to DO it.--- A 1 man National geographic on that everywhere trip. The good, the bad and the ugly American- Why be difficult when you can be impossible--Hell was about to be other people,other cultures, other languages, and the National Anthem of Hell, was Frank Sinatra's "I did it my way".

 I had to make the switch from tourist to traveler, and adapt, otherwise this journey would be Karaoke traveling, a cheap imitation of the best yet to come. Without risk, faith is an impossibility. My "leap of faith" to give up all things material was curiosity..The cure for my ennui and boredom was "Any place but here" and "I want to be surprised everyday".

There's nothing ethical about the work ethic on ships. I got paid in cash, visited nice places, had a hotel room and six all you can eat meals a day! If the passengers were behaving badly, there was always a new group every 7 or 14 days to keep my interest. Now that I didn't need Power Point to explain my job, how much was I worth now that I was no longer in the w2 world of 9 to 5. I was a time millionaire. It was going to be about resourcefulness and not resources.

 Let the Orinoco Flow

There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. It is a known fact that when it's rainy or snowy, you have to merely think of an island paradise, and you are transported to that" Happy Place". A day-dream is as rich and real as anything on Earth. Picasso was right. All you can dream about can become real. I have shoveled snow and now I am shoveling sunshine. i always wanted to be in warm places in winter, and now All I want for Christmas is a sun tan.

Sail Away... from the North to the South, Ebudæ into Khartoum, from the deep sea of Clouds to the island of the moon, carry me on the waves to the lands I've never been, carry me on the waves to the lands I've never seen.



“Long, long journey through the darkness Long, long way to go But what are miles across the ocean To the heart that's coming home?” ― Enya 

 I've Been to The Mountain Top(s)



The Promised Land Is Right Where You Are

when you are following your bliss



My universe is made of stories, not atoms: land, air and sea travel and the power of now. If I wanted to be a multinational soul, and monetize my best asset,me, I couldn't do it in cities where I lived like New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo or Paris  alone-I needed to get consecrated by sailing on the oceans.

It's a wonderful thing to get rid of everything and everybody and just go some place where you don't know anyone; where, as Melville said,"God's one and only voice is Silence."

The sceneries  paint  themselves.  I'm just the middleman.
 
You can't create experiences like this, you undergo them.

If a man speaks in the forest and there are
 no women around to hear it, is he still wrong?

Living on a ship, might be summed up as monotony tinged with hysteria.


 It's not real life but an alibi. It is like going out of your mind everyday- in order to come to your senses; and a fool who persists in his folly becomes wise.  If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it, After all, success doesn't come to you, you go to it. It's not easy getting a gig on a ship.The Only Easy Day  on board was Yesterday.


Ship/ Shift Happens

After 10 ships, yes TEN, I no longer want to cast doubt on perfection-America.“It’s not about the money” is the lesser known, I don’t have a dream speech. The Greeks invented the idea of nemesis to show how any single virtue, stubbornly maintained gradually changes into a destructive vice. Having a vague and abstract love for everybody and everything has its moments,  but by becoming passionate and vowing fidelity to concrete relationships, persons, institutions, and places are ideas whose time has come.


Fire In The Belly


Steve Jobs said “Money is life’s report card, Sam Keen, "Nice gets you a C+ in life" I've seen this kind of "success" as a drug of choice.More than that, success without fulfillment, is failure, yet, this kind of failure is going to get your best material.As An Art Director and World Cruise Coordinator, the experiences at sea turned my can’ts (no resources) into cans (resourcefulness) and leveraged my dreams (I haven't been everywhere but it is on my list) into serendipity a thousand unseen helping hands. As I stated in my Youtube channel bio--No matter how low the budget bar gets, I always manage to limbo my way under it. If you think about it, I am the Wilt Chamberlain of shoe-string travel.putting up #'s so unthinkable, mere normals will never, ever reach them.-300 ports in 38 months...

 Money isn't the root of all evil, boredom is the root of all evil, a spiritual anorexia- the despairing refusal to be oneself.

 The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are, once you let go of the life you have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for youI have  come to love this new self, not by being  a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly, and renewed with a sense of wonder about this.  It’s only by becoming intimately acquainted with these narratives that we can begin to live consciously and, as the Sufi poet Rumi said, “unfold our own myth.”  

We live  in a storytelling economy, and  gets paid for the stories we tell.

 I too am  constantly writing and re-writing my autobiography in this blog.(but I get paid in attention more than cash.).


Being born in America is like being kidnapped and sold into entrepreneurship



  •  the shared hallucination of running on the treadmill of consumption and materialism. It's a mask that eats up the face.  
  • ...It's also like winning the lottery, a currency, and I wanted to spend it well.Yet, we value material, we ignore emotions. If I wanted to serve my country, I had to betray it. 
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are -- if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time. See Video

What was the blue chip idea worth betraying? What was the lie I told myself? The disease of more in a world of plenty where most of the developing world is starving. The lack of simplicity and the yearn for complexity was, and in many ways still is, my blind spot.The most total opposite of pleasure is not pain but boredom. I was willing to risk pain ( culture shock) to make a boring life interesting and re framing (Home is a feeling not a place) travel as a verb and not a noun. You have to DO it.--- A 1 man National geographic on that everywhere trip.

The good, the bad and the ugly American- Why be difficult when you can be impossible--Hell was about to be other people,other cultures, other languages, and the National Anthem of Hell, was Frank Sinatra's "I did it my way". I had to make the switch from tourist to traveler, and adapt, otherwise this journey would be Karaoke traveling, a cheap imitation of the best yet to come.Without risk, faith is an impossibility. My "leap of faith" to give up all things material was curiosity.


The Power of NEW

The cure for my ennui and boredom was "Any place but here" and "I want to be surprised everyday". There's nothing ethical about the work ethic on ships. I got paid in cash, visited nice places, had a hotel room and six all you can eat meals a day! If the passengers were behaving badly, there was always a new group every 7 or 14 days to keep my interest.Now that I didn't need Power Point to explain my job, how much was I worth now that I was no longer in the w2 world of 9 to 5.


 I  am  a time millionaire. It is  going to be about resourcefulness and not resources.Who does not love the sea? The beach is a place of healing and joy. The salt cleanses us and the sun embraces us in its warmth. The ocean heals the heart, mind, and soul. life is different. Time doesn't move hour to hour but mood to moment.Yet, the sea has never been friendly to me. At most it has been the accomplice of my restlessness.So there is no cure for this curiosity.


TV is an eraser and Youtube and Blogger, a paint brush. My leap of faith to go on ships was recreation and re-creation and re-invention. There are second acts in American lives, and third and fourths.No Man Is An Island, yet after age 40, land is seldom seen and you can count your friends on one hand.I am an expat, yet not every country will do. I don't know why, some countries fill the gaps and others emphasize my expat-ness. In reality those that satisfy me are those who simply allow me to live with my ''idea of them." 

Life’s a beach in an ocean of ennui is the take away from places like Fiji, Tahiti and the Maldives, even Alaska, aka, The Big Alone., It is when laziness finds respectability.

 These "Islands" are extraordinary within their limits, but their limits are extraordinary. Yet if I do the math, an emotional algebra adds up to 1+1=infinity. It's a pristine place.This is no 9 to 5. You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. It is just a fraction of you. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating on a cruise ship, walking the painted line, where everything is nicely arranged--formal nights, shore excursions, shopping, bottled water.

When you’re perpetually cruising , you are what you are right there and then.

 People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yes in yesterdays on the road.I know both sides because I am both sides: a tourist who doesn't know where I've been; a traveller who doesn't know where he's going. I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list. 

I thought college was the longest vacation I ever took; but this Graduate School seamester is a kind of study abroad in Nomadic PursuitsI meet therefore I am- a multinational soul. I shrink therefore I am part of — and apart from American, European and Asian culture. and the countries I visit(ed) and live(d) in are as eclectic and restless as ports of call I "inhabit" for six hours or at most three daze. 

 Along with the displacement, and the associated "jet" lag" and culture shock, I am simply a fairly glib product of a movable feast, living and working in a world that is itself increasingly small and increasingly hybrid---a transit lounger, forever heading to the all "aboard" by 6PM gangway.The cult of the amateur wanderers is growing; global souls who haven't been everywhere but it is on their list; for whom home is a feeling, not a place in the soil but inside yourself. I am one of the privileged homeless. Is there a new kind of person being created by a new kind of life?


The elephant  represents good luck, longevity and peace and  strength;  and mostly here in SE Asia, joy. A laughing Buddha riding an elephant with children on his lap is an excellent symbol for happiness and prosperity in the family.
People say that what we are all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think this is what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive.~ The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell

This world cruise has been one  of the most rewarding forms of introspection. It is one stage of my “re-entry” in Hotel @nyware, continuing my extended break from Normal Life again to travel the world on board another cruise ship. I’m living my dream of PT-Permanent Travel, also known as "Mini Retirements". I haven’t been everywhere, but it is on my list.

As I document this adventure, this  a round-the-world travelogue, I say to myself "Roam Sweet Roam". Home is not where my heart is but where my computer is- I remain a digital nomad, where  Anywhere becomes @nyware, location neutral, as there is no such thing as a bad piece of real estate when you use technology and social media. As I make my way to Sri Lanka, in the middle of nowhere, but the center of everything, thanks to a reliable high speed Internet connection.  I am doing pretty much everything I would do in the USA, only with the economies of scale, at a less greater cost.

Consequently, I call home a feeling not a place-I’ve never confused  a street address for where I  actually lived. My destinations have  never been  places , but  new way of seeing things:  the journeys themselves have been the destinations.

It has never been about resources, but more about resourcefulness.We're never  too poor to buy our freedom.In fact,  we are  all “time millionaires ”and when we  who choose to use this commodity, the less  we put a cash value on travel, and  the less  we think that money is what we need to have an adventure  and live, and the less we associate money with life in general.

Surely it is the right wish that draws us to the right places. Nothing of importance happens accidentally in our life.


Hotel @nyware is  about choosing experiences and travel adventures over working away your life for material things.
It   is different from being a tourist- different from  buying  a package vacation to find a simpler life is kind of like using a mirror to see what you look like when you aren't looking into the mirror. Staging Authenticity and Encounters,The march of stupidity and the routines of tourism are even more monotonous than those of daily life.When you have taken enough of these tours, however,each additional one you may ever take again, is both unbearable and trifling. 
But beyond travel, Hotel @nyware is an outlook on life.  Hotel @nyware is not a lifestyle, It's just an uncommon way of looking at life — a value adjustment from which action naturally follows. And, as much as anything, Long term travel is about being deliberate. It has nothing to do with demographics — how old you are , what is your belief system, how much money  you make — and everything to do with attitude...and attitude affects altitude.


If I do nothing unexpected, nothing unexpected happens. Yet I’m not  simply seeking  interesting surroundings, but I am  continually interested in whatever surrounds me.




"I'm not really choosing between experiences,I am choosing  between memories of experiences. Even when I think about  future vacations, I don’t think of my future ports of call normally as experiences. I think of  my future vacations as anticipated memories."



Hotel @nyware- Rooms Available

Featured Clips