How To Go On An Urban Vision Quest
American Indians, and other indigenous peoples, would head off into the forest all by themselves where they would spend time alone, searching for a vision to help them attain a new level of understanding. Some might go on a vision quest as a right of passage, other might go on a vision quest because a change must happen and a vision quest can force that change to occur. The length of time can be anywhere from a single evening, to a week, to much longer.
In the world we inhabit, spending time alone in the forest is not an option for most. It can certainly be tried but the likely outcomes can be 1) Being arrested for vagrancy 2) Dying from ingesting poisonous berries or 3) You obtain your vision. In this post we will go over an Urban Vision Quest.
An Urban Vision Quest is a quest one takes in a city or other populated area rather than spend time alone in an unpopulated piece of nature. An urban vision quest can be had anywhere except for the city you live in. It must be an unfamiliar place where you know not a single soul. It can be the next city closest to you, it can be in the next State closest to you, it can be in the next Country closest to you. As anyone who has ever lived in a densely populated megapolis knows, walking through a crowded city can be every bit as lonesome as being in the forest. To go on an urban vision quest you only need to be alone with your thoughts, it matters not how many people are around.
The amount of time is up to you. You can choose to spend a single evening in a new city, a few days in a new city, a week, or months. The rules are simple: pack as light as possible. Only bring necessities like a few pieces of clothing, toiletries, and money. Arrive at your destination with no plans whatsoever. End up wherever you end up. Just let yourself be guided. The very likely outcome is that you have a brand new appreciation for what you have. You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. Spending a night alone in an alien city is a surefire way to make you thankful for everything great you have in your life.
If one is only doing one-day, mini excursions then one will not be enough. Going on a mini vision quest once per month is ideal. Take the time to get away from all the nonsense of the daily grind, live life anew, if only for an evening, and return with a new sense of appreciation.
A week in a foreign place is great. Perhaps the greatest thing a one week vacation can do is help you realize you have been slaving away like a racing dog for this one week vacation per year when you could have a vacation like this all the time. Spend a week on the beach in Thailand and then go back to work Monday morning and pretend you don’t want to yell “I QUIT” at the top of your lungs. This could light a fire under your ass and motivate you to start your own gig where you are making money for yourself and, more importantly, have more of your most precious commodity - time.
The most extreme option, and, therefore, my favorite, go live in a completely foreign place for 6 months to a year. A few months of savings in a western country can equal 6 months to a year of living in a 2nd or 3rd world country. After living in a foreign country you can never be the same person you were before. Whether good or bad, a change will occur. In this authors humble opinion, everyone should spend at minimum 6 months abroad to live life in a different way and obtain your vision.
If a change is needed, an urban vision quest is the answer. Get going because time is wasting.
“I’m a thousand miles from nowhere, time don’t matter to me.
I’m a thousand miles from nowhere and there’s no place I wanna be.”
-Dwight Yoakam, A Thousand Miles From Nowhere
Adventure! Spartan Camping
Friday is the universal last day of the work week. Saturday and Sunday is upon you. What do you do?
Watch tvGo shopping at home depotSpend all weekend online
Forget all that nonsense. It’s time for ADVENTURE! It’s time to get out of dodge. It’s time to get away from your computer, your phone, your tv. It’s time to spend a night under the stars and hear the wolves howlin’ and the owls screachin’. It’s time to sit around a campfire grilling some hot dogs and burgers and drinking some beer.
It’s time to go CAMPING.
Camping is one of the funnest things you can do. Camping gives you all the ease of modern civilized living but with a primitive thrill. As a bonus it requires very little preparation and can be done almost anytime.
Steps to Camping:
1) Find a campsite. This is as easy as googling ‘your state campsites’. There are reserved campsites in every single state. These sites give you a little piece of solitude without really being alone - there will be other campers around you. Find a campsite, call to make sure they have room, reserve a spot. Now you are done with the hard part.
Go here to find a campground near you: http://www.greatcampingspots.com/Directory/Search.asp
2) Find some friends to go. Hopefully you have some adventure prone friends. If not, it’s time to make some new ones. Call up your closest friendsand invite them. Invite your girlfriend to go along. Invite your brother to go along. Bring your dog along. Go alone. It doesn’t matter who goes with you, just go. There is hardly anything tougher than sleeping out in a tent all by yourself, that will build character.
3) Find a tent. Call all your buddies and see if they have a tent available for you to borrow. Call anyone you know who may have a tent. No point in buying one unless you have to. As a last resort you can go buy a cheap one, shouldn’t cost more than about $40 and it will be ok for, at minimum, several camping trips.
4) Fill a cooler. Hopefully you already own a cooler, if not call your buddies yet again and borrow one. As a last resort go buy one. FYI - Coolers always come in handy so keep your eyes out for a cheap one. I got mine at an Estate Sale for $4. Fill your cooler with water, beer, hamburger beef, hot dogs, ice, and whatever else strikes your fancy (Marshmallows). Bring some charcoal to grill your food and keep a fire going. Don’t forget to bring a lighter or matches.
5) Pack up your vehicle and hit the road. It’s easy enough to find a campsite within one and 1/2 hours drive from wherever you are. Pack up your vehicle with:
- tent
- cooler and food
- some chairs
- blankets and a pillow
- charcoal
- lighter/matches
- some warm clothes to sleep in (it will get cold at night)
- toilet paper and/or napkins
- whatever else you want to bring
Make sure you have everything you need, hop in the car and hit the road.
6) Arrive at your campsite, pay for your spot, set up your tent, make a fire. Your tent should have instructions, but if you’re a man you don’t need instructions. There will be a fire pit at your campsite for you to make a fire with. If you have questions ask one of the park rangers. Your campsite will also have a grill for you to cook on. Cook directly on the grill at your own risk. I usually bring tin foil to cook on.
7) Enjoy yourself. Your tent is set up. You’ve got a fire going. You’re cooking some burgesr and hot dogs. Crack open a beer and marvel at nature. Sit around and bullshit with your friends. Think about your life and what you’ve accomplished and what you must accomplish. Make a plan for yourself. It’s these times in life when we are the most reflective and aware of what we must do. Enjoy it. Relax. Come Monday it’s time to get your ass in gear.
Going camping right now could be the best thing you ever did.
Unconventional Advice for Young Men
As a young man you have the whole world and an entire lifetime in front of you. Now is the time to take advantage. Of all the regrets you may have later in life, wasted time will be the most heartbreaking of them all. Do not follow the path that has been laid out for you, do not do as everyone else you know. Unless you are average. During your schooling you have been led to believe that you must follow this order: go to college, get a job to pay back your student loans, get married, consume as much as possible, save for retirement at which point you can live life, and then die having accomplished nothing other than being a good boy and doing what you were told. Everything you have been sold in high school is a complete lie. If you find this unbelievable just ask anyone in their late twenties to mid thirties who followed this path and see how happy they truly are. They may lie with their words but their soul-less eyes cannot tell a lie.
Looking back on how I used to live my life I see a lot of wasted time that could have been used to build something magnificent. I didn’t wake up until after my mid twenties. If I could go back and slap some sense into my 15 year old self this is what I would advise:
1) Lift Weights - I definitely would have convinced my teenaged self to start hitting the weights with a fury. I look back on all those wasted years and think of how I could be so much stronger if I had started hitting the weights at around 14 or 15 years old. Lifting gives you a sense of pride and accomplishment that a skinny person or a fat person will never know or understand. As a teen you are in the primetime for developing some serious strength and a great physique. You have all that natural testosterone pulsing through your bodies. The ladies melt for a guy with a great physique too.
2) Play a sport, especially wrestling - I used to laugh at all the “dumb preppy jocks” in my school. What I didn’t know is how competitive sports like wrestling developed strength, courage, discipline, and pride - things that I very sorely lacked until much later and things that are lacking in all the youngsters I see who don’t compete, spending all their time on the computer or other useless time-wasters.
3) Don’t bother going to college - This may be the hardest pill to swallow but college is a colossal waste of time and money. I could have saved myself endless boredom had I chosen a different path. As it was, I didn’t even know other paths existed. I learned absolutely nothing useful in college and what I did learn was downright detrimental and that is because nothing is actually taught in college. You don’t go there to learn, you go there to further your indoctrination and emasculate you even more. Anyone and everyone go to college now and because of this colleges and universities are filled with monumentally stupid people who have no earthly business at an institute of higher learning. As you will learn later a college degree means absolutely nothing when you go your own way and do not follow the path that everyone else will follow. A college degree does not guarantee a “good” job. A “good” job does not guarantee safety. The only safety guaranteed is what you do for yourself. There is no safety relying on other people.
If you must go to college you should go later in life. I hear people say “Oh, I’ll travel in a few years when I have time. Oh, I’ll start my business in a few years when I have time”. If you must go to college, go after a few years of real education in the real world. If you go, you had better get a technical degree (engineering etc..), something you can’t learn on your own. Arts, psychology or anything ending in “studies” degrees are completely useless in the job market. Not that you should want to get a job.
FYI - You do not have to go to college to get drunk, party and hook up. That can be done anywhere at anytime.
4) Travel often - I would have told myself to skip college and instead immediately start traveling abroad, backpacking Asia, or Europe, or South America. Get a part time job while in High School and save your money. When you graduate high school you should head abroad for an eye-opening experience you will never forget or regret. I would have learned more in a year of traveling than I learned in 7 years of college (or 4, or however long it was). Hell, I lived in Texas for 10 years and I never even went to Mexico. I would have slapped that little bastard (me) in the mouth and told him to travel often and everywhere.
5) Turn off the TV - You can’t pick a bigger waste of time than TV watching. Same for video games and other mindless internet usage.
6) Don’t work full time - I used to manage a blockbuster video while going to school full time. What a waste of a young mans life. I would have convinced myself to not work at all and work instead on an entrepreneurial venture. I always had the desire but I never had the courage to just dive right in until several years later. You should be of the mindset of never having a real job or wanting a real job. The only way you will ever get rich is to build a business yourself. The only way you will have security is to build a business yourself. The only way you will have freedom is to build a business yourself. Do you really want to go 50 years asking permission from a lowly middle management executive for a one week vacation per year? The only job you should ever have is one that provides you only with the bare necessities and leaves you hungry for more, one that gives you time to pursue other ventures. When you have a full time job that pays you enough to buy all the stupid worthless shit you see on TV you will get lazy and you will NEVER DO ANYTHING WORTHWHILE UNTIL YOU QUIT. Don’t fall into that trap. Live as cheaply as you possibly can.
7) Do not go into debt for any reason - Do not acquire school loans, do not use credit cards, do not get auto loans. That’s how they entrap young people into debt slavery. “Oh, I can’t go travel I’m in school debt up to my eyeballs“. You go into debt for your “education” and then you pay for it the rest of your life. This is a waste of your prime years. If you can’t pay cash for it, don’t buy it.
8) Don’t listen to anybody - Advice given to you will be, without question, terrible. It will be the same thing over and over “Go to school, get a good job. You can do all that other stuff later.” You can respond “Oh, really? Is that what you did? Went to school, got a job and then fulfilled your dreams later?” and see the look of regret in their eyes. People who fell for the joke want you to fall for the same joke, it’s a part of human nature for people not to want others to succeed where they failed. Conventional advice is to be ignored, always. You are better off doing the opposite.
As a young man you think you have all the time in the world. You don’t. You have only a brief time on this Earth. Use that to your advantage. Never for one second think “I can do all that fun stuff later” because you can’t and you won’t. Now is the time. You are in your prime and if you don’t take advantage you will waste away like all the people you see who are dead inside. The same people who are waiting for retirement, pretending they are going to go and do the things you will do right now.
Go forth young man and live your life. Real education is not in a classroom. It’s in the world around you.
Is It Worth It?
Is your stuffy job worth it? Working 50 hours a week with people you hate just so you can make someone else rich?
Are your two cars and the two car payments and the two insurance premiums worth it?
Is your 30 year mortgage worth it? Are your yearly property taxes worth it?
Is your 50 inch flat screen tv with 500 channels of indoctrination worth it?
Is your useless 4 year degree with your insurmountable student loans worth it?
Is it worth going into massive credit card debt just to get the new iphone?
Is it worth saving for your far-off retirement so you can finally live like you should now?
Is constantly buying useless shit worth the sacrifice you make to work at a shitty job?
Places like this exist. It takes less money to get there than the amount you spend every month.
Is it worth it?
4 Unusual Ways to Break Out of the Usual Routine
Unless you have the same disease as Benjamin Button you are not getting any younger. All the adventures you daydream about will never happen UNLESS you take action, get off your ass, and go do them! Which do you think you will regret more when you die: not working enough or never doing the adventures you dreamt of? I have never died before but I’m certain that while on my death bed I will not regret deciding to be a free man and not a wage slave and I will always be happy that I took chances and had adventures. Can you say the same?
For the less creative readers here are 4 unusual ways to break out of the usual routine, have a great time, and have some eye opening experiences.
1) Move to a Foreign Country and Teach English as a 2nd Language
What is a greater adventure than moving to a 2nd or 3rd world country? Nothing! The benefits to doing this are many..
1) It’s an adventure living in a whole other world from what we are used to.
2) You are usually provided free housing and enough money to live very well, better than most locals.
3) It is an eye opening experience to see how people live in a way that is quite different from life in America.
4) It is a way to get a visa. In some countries it is quite hard to stay for an extended period of time, teaching English will provide you with 6 months to a year and can be renewed every year.
5) You don’t have to be a genius to teach. Just about the only qualification is being a native English speaker, though some countries will require a College degree or a TEFL certificate.
6) You usually work 10-20 hours per week, leaving plenty of free time for exploration and adventure.
2) Take a Cross Country Camping Trip
Just pack some clothes, a cooler, a tent, get in your car and drive into the great unknown. Much cheaper than taking a cross country trip and staying in hotels or hostels and you get to see more of America than by staying in some drab hotel room ordering room service and watching $10 movies. Grill some steaks every night for dinner, sit underneath the stars, explore the woods, live like man was intended. If you think you’ll feel lonely, don’t! You will meet many, many interesting people along the way. Or you can bring a friend or a dog along.
3) Take a Plane, Train, or Bus Somewhere You Have Never Been
There is somewhere you have always wanted to go. Take a few days (or more) off from everything, book a ticket and go! Go experience it. Who knows, maybe you will hate it or maybe you will love it so much you never come back. One thing is for certain, it will be an experience you won’t forget.
4) Get in Your Car and Start Driving
There is no way I am the only one who has ever wanted to just get in my car and start driving. Well, I never got the chance to. I sold my car and moved abroad, but that just means that if someone else does it they have more courage than I. Next time you’re sitting in rush hour traffic, dreading work at the soul-stealing hell-hole you think you have to endure, what if you just turn the car in the other direction and start driving? What’s the worst thing that can possibly happen? You’re gone for a few days and you lose your job. Easy fix, you just get a job at the next hell-hole. But what is the best thing that can happen? You learn what it’s like to live free.
Change your life today. Tomorrow might be too late.
Take an Unplanned Road Trip
Well….you can sit at home wondering what’s out there or you can go pack some clothes, pack a cooler, get in your car and start driving. It doesn’t matter where you go, it’s the experience, not the destination that counts. Pick some place you’ve never been that you want to to go to and head that way. Be sure and stop anywhere along the way that grabs your attention. You could plan the trip but that would take all the energy and spontaneity out of the trip. Have only some brief guidelines to follow and you will have an adventure of a lifetime.
Several months ago I was leaving the gym, I had that euphoric feeling I always have after a brutal workout. I called up a buddy and said “Let’s take a road trip”. He said “When”. I said “Tomorrow early afternoon”. He said “Let’s do it”. He invited his brother along and we all left Dallas around 2 the next afternoon. We decided to go to Florida by way of Savannah, GA (to see the trees). The first night we ended up at a motel outside of New Orleans, LA. The next day we spent a bit of time in N’awleans and headed for Georgia. We hit Savannah late that night and rented a room. We spent the next morning checking out Savannah.
Later that day we headed down the Atlantic coast of Florida and ended up on Miami Beach. After endlessly searching for a hotel room on the beach we finally got one (and the bathroom door had a giant, and I mean GIANT, peephole into it!). We headed out to get some dinner and drinks (costing us around $250) and we went to some club right on the beach with a whole bunch of other travellers, many from abroad. After a couple drinks we went back to the hotel and jumped in the pool, realized the ocean was a mere few hundred feet away, and went in jumped in the ocean in the middle of the night.
We left the next day for Key West, our goal destination. We drove down through all the keys and I have to say it really is a breathtaking view. We get to Key West, the southernmost point of the continental US, found a nice place to rent, rented a golf cart for the rest of the stay and we had a fucking blast down there. We ended up doing all kinds of fun shit that never would have happened if we had stayed home.
We came home by way of the gulf coast of Florida, stopping to see some Alligators along the way. We spent a couple more nights on the Florida beach, spent a night in New Orleans, and finally hit home.
All in all it was a 9 day trip and it was a blast. It cost a bit of money but we all had a bit to spare. If money is an object I would suggest camping out. That sounds even better to me than staying in some posh resort.
For you, I have two questions…
1) Where have you always wanted to go?
2) When are you leaving?
When you make up your mind to do it, do it soon! You don’t want the excitement to die down. If it dies you may not go.
Decide to go and then go! Have an unplanned adventure of a lifetime!
Go Cliff Jumping
There really is nothing like jumping off a 45 foot cliff into a body of water. You walk up to the ledge, unsure of yourself. You look down, you see it’s a long drop, you get scared, your heart starts beating faster. You’re determined to jump. Not because everyone else that has jumped before you, you’re going to jump precisely because it frightens you a little. You aren’t going to let that fear in. You are going to conquer that fear. You are going to conquer that ledge. And you are going to conquer that lake.
You jump. Your heart is pounding as you freefall. You hit the water, you plunge down and swim back up and take that first breath of air. The adrenaline is soaring through your body. Not only did you conquer the fear but the jump was fun. You can’t wait to climb up and do it again. Because now you’re alive. You’re more alive than you were yesterday when you sat in front of the boob tube watching stupid celebrities do stupid things.
The are only 2 rules when it comes to cliff-jumping:
1) Know how to swim. This should be obvious.
2) Jump the biggest cliff first. Face the tallest, baddest, meanest jump you can find and take the plunge. If you take the small ones first you will just amplify the fear of the big boy jump. Do it, get it over with, and have some fun. And it really will be fun.
Nick
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