My Life -so far-; making a long story short:
I wrote my bucket list at the age of fourteen. I finished all its assignments before my thirtieth birthday. That was the time when I learned my first important lesson: don’t write your bucket list too early in your life. Wait at least until your first hangover.
EXPLORING THE WORLD:
I should have waited a while, not because my list had been short or easy -it was a convoluted frickin’ list of twenty inconsiderate assignments-, but because it drained me too early.
I don’t write bucket lists since.
I traveled to thirteen different countries with almost no money (I never spent one cent in airplane tickets). Sleeping in train stations and parks everywhere, drawing on sidewalks, meeting all kinds of people, having the time of my life.
Been there, done that…sort of.
The time of my life was exhausting. I was drained, and one day, when I was very far from home, eating dry bread and facing a beautiful scene, I suffered my first and only epiphany: I figured out what I wanted to do the rest of my life.
And so, my wandering times ended and my professional life began.
THE STRUGGLE:
I chose to fallow the road of science and two things made a big impression on me along the way. First: the unlimited potential of the human curiosity: I was really impressed. I was lucky enough to meet some of the brightest men in my field (oceanography). I felt the cravings for making it big.
The big was already made, and that was my second big impression.
A rather amusing struggling period began then, and I had to do some more traveling (again without spending a nickel in air tickets). While suffering this period, I meet my sweetheart and I married her; and out of nowhere, when I was about to quit and change my mind, my dreamed job occurred.
WORKING AS A PROFESSIONAL EXPLORER:
I can’t complain. My job was exactly as planned and even better. Thank God for that because my planning turned out to be lousy. It resulted poorly informed and it tended to overrate most of the accessories.
So, I have been working on this Island for fifteen years now. I love the place, I love the job, I love to make things differently and l love to be respectful with the environment.
But,
This is a rural, rather wilder island we are talking about. You can’t find a SPA hotel here; you can’t even find streets, electrical or water supplies. You don’t have TV or air conditioning. All you can find here is mangroves, a thousand of flying species like stilts, flamingos and mosquitoes, a lot of crustaceans and mollusks and hundreds of thousands stars at night.
And I have to admit that after the first ten years I started to feel (how can I put it) a little bit bored. That was the time when I learned my second lesson in life: be careful with what you dream because it might become true.
Ok, it’s a common tagline, but it’s true.
It’s a funny thing how we never include the desired time period in our dreams. We never say, for instance: “I wish I had a 5-bedroom house for three and a half years and then sell it when the real state market is in its peak…” or “I wish I could spend more time with my toddler child, but no more than twenty minutes every day, an hour on weekends…”
We should include, at least, the ending date in our dreams, I think. Most of the time, we don’t want to keep living the same dream over and over, forever. There are a few important exceptions, of course; some decadent thoughts come to my mind as examples.
Ten years ago I realized that I wanted to keep my job -by that time I kind of owned a small part of the frickin’ business so, there was not much to think about- and I decided to learn how to bear boredom instead.
And that’s the time when I learned my third important life lesson: when properly managed boredom can be very productive.
Now, I found out what my legacy is to be: I'm giving away everything I have learn about exploring. You can learn more about this in my blog;