#esavestheworld

So, 2013 has been pretty good to me. You see, I’ve been working full time (or more) since I was 17, and - with the exception of a 3-month stint of extreeeemely stressful unemployment back in 2005 - this year is the first occasion in my life when I’ve been able to take time out to focus on the question “what can I do next that will make me really, really, REALLY happy?”

It’s an opportunity that many people don’t get. So many of us are driven by forces beyond our control. Family, the necessity of a job (even if it’s the wrong one), societal expectations, children… there are an infinite number of factors that make it difficult for us to step back and determine if our life’s path truly brings us joy.

Recently, I had lunch with the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S, Annie Longsworth, who gifted me with a fantastic idea that I’ve decided to incorporate into the exploration of my next life chapter. She noted how much satisfaction I get from bringing happiness to other people (seriously - it really does give me annoyingly gleeful butterflies of giddiness in my stomach to bring joy into other people’s lives), and suggested that I take this opportunity to do some research into the concept of happiness and further develop my knowledge base on the subject. Essentially, she suggested: become the expert on Happiness.

Never before have I found a challenge more appealing.
(Well besides those “All You Can Eat 10 Pound Steak” challenges… those are pretty darn appealing.)

While there is a ton of information out there on the subject (Harvard Business Review dedicated an entire issue to happiness last year), but I think I am specifically interested in exploring… well… to be honest, I don’t know!

Do I want to explore how to be more happy myself? How to bring others more joy? How to help others find happiness for themselves? How businesses can promote happiness to their employees? Or their consumers? The idea of Gross National Happiness? Happiness versus fulfillment? Why we think certain things will make us happy, but they don’t? Patterns of joy over a lifespan? Whether money brings happiness? Whether other people can make us happy, or whether we just have to find it ourselves? UNhappiness…?

All of these topics are richly documented and extremely fascinating, and I’m simply going to let my pursuit of knowledge lead the way. And - of course - I plan on bringing this blog along for the ride.

The idea of #esavestheworld comes from my dream of living in a world filled with people who experience true happiness and love on a daily basis. I truly believe that by promoting these values on a global scale, we can create a world that is shockingly less complicated, violent, and heart-rending to live in. It’s my own nod to the naive, wide-eyed girl I used to be. An insistence in the belief that, if we mind the golden rule and we shamelessly exude love, the world as a whole would be a far happier place.

More to come over the upcoming days and weeks… 

Happily yours,
erin

TODAY - Wednesday June 5th, I’m hosting BINGO NIGHT at The Sycamore in SF! Come join us at 7:30pm for all the fun that can be had… with bingo cards that is. See you there!!

De San Jose a Playa Uvita
1.1-2.2013

Do you ever have those moments in life when you go to look at your phone at the exact same moment that your best friend calls you? Or you think about someone you haven’t thought of in weeks, just to run into them around the next corner? Or you add a new acquaintance on Facebook just to discover that they went to the same college in Australia as your old office-mate and they’re dating your ex-girlfriend’s half-brother that they met at that same seminar in London that you went to in 2009?

OK I’m totally making that last one up, but that’s kind of what it felt like when I started talking to the first girl I met in Costa Rica. Her name is Annie and I instantly felt comfortable with her – she reminded me of a friendlier version of myself. Just kidding – we all know that’s nearly impossible, but she did put me at ease pretty much instantly with her amiable personality.

As I naturally fell into [what I’m discovering is] the standard travelers’ introductory line of questioning*, I found out from Annie that she was from Athens, Ohio – the same town that both my father and her father went to college in. Intrigued, I questioned further – turns out they were also born in the same year. So we’re all like – “Wow! What a coincidence that is… wouldn’t it be just crazy if our dads went to college together?” And I shoot an email to my dad and wander off with my new friends to do my first grocery shopping in Costa Rica.

One pastel de carne, some gallo pinto, and half an avocado later, I do a last check of my email to find a response from my father that says (and I quote… hence the quotation marks),” STFU!” After getting over the amusement of my dad knowing the phrase “STFU,” I went on to read that, not only did he know Annie’s dad, but they played rugby together nearly 40 years ago on the same team at Ohio University!

So – just to sum it up – the first girl I meet in San Jose, Costa Rica (my first jaunt out of America) just happens to be the daughter of my dad’s college rugby buddy who he hasn’t seen in 40 years. Crazy.

The other highlight of my time at Casa del Parque was meeting a lovely young woman from Australia, Steph, who became my traveling companion to Playa Uvita the next morning. Steph, Annie and I spent a great evening hanging out with a quiet but pleasant Frenchman, and a trio of Aussies – one of whom was the very obvious third wheel. (Been there girl… it’s never fun.) But we made a night of it with food and drink and the sharing of life stories. A couple rounds of shots of Costa Rican rum marked the end of the night, and I quietly climbed the curved stairs for my first night in a hostel dorm– with my alarm set for 5am to catch the 6am bus to Playa Uvita.

For the record, I seriously hate 5 o’clock when there’s an “am” attached to it.

*The travelers’ line of questioning: “<Insert your greeting here>, I’m <insert your name here>, what’s your name? Good to meet you <their name, which you will promptly forget 5 minutes later and have to ask again>, where are you from? Oh! <Insert anecdote about how you’ve been to/lived in/had a friend visit/heard of/not heard of/love/hate their place of residence here.> How long have you been in <insert country you’re currently in here>? Ah! How long are you staying? Just traveling? Cool… It’s so <insert appropriate adjective for your location here> here, right? Yeah. <If applicable, re-ask them their name and explain the fact that you never remember anyone’s name and always have to hear it twice.> So, where have you been so far?…”

San Jose, Costa Rica
1.1.2013

Coming from the airport, I felt rather proud of myself for navigating the way to the bus station using my first attempts at Spanish, as well as paying the correct amount of colones to the bus driver. The bus was the far less costly option – amounting to around $1 USD versus a $30-40 USD cab ride. I half expected them to charge me an extra fare for the human-sized beast of a bag I was lugging along with me.

As I settled onto the bus, it occurred to me: with no international phone plan, I had zero cell phone service. Which was – to my general way of thinking – AWESOME, but as I automatically went to orient myself on the map, I realized I couldn’t lean on my GPS crutch to figure out my location or stop. I tried to orient myself by the sun (yes, seriously I do this – my good friends are shaking their heads and smiling as they read this) when I remembered my compass and Lonely Planet map. (Thank goodness for my obsession with Boy Scout manuals as a girl!) After I figured out that the streets were even-numbered in the western half of the city and odd in the eastern half, everything clicked in place.

San Jose is an intense mix of small crooked houses with tin roofs overshadowed by randomly placed luxe condominiums, complete with streets filled with slightly crazy drivers. The last stop on the bus was several blocks from my hostel and my 40-pound pack was weighing heavily on my shoulders (and hips), but I decided to walk in order to save money and see a bit the city. I AM an unemployed budget traveler after all. Man, it was HOT. I was quickly sweating while navigating through a pedestrian thoroughfare lined with friend chicken joints and filled with clusters of Ticos (the term by which Costa Ricans self-identify) selling counterfeit DVDs and eyeing me with a disinterested curiosity. “Awesome,” I thought a bit sarcastically, “so far it’s exactly like the Fulton Street Mall in Brooklyn.”

After about a mile and a couple of brief breaks, I made it to Casa del Parque – my home for the night. The hostel came highly recommended by my Lonely Planet guide, was in a central location, and happily toed the line between being budget-friendly and NOT having pictures filled with 18-year-old, gap-year European students on their website (not that there’s anything wrong with that – but there’s a time and a place). Casa del Parque is situated in an old San Jose mansion at the edge of the beautiful Nacional Parque on the western side of San Jose. I reached up to ring the doorbell (apparently designed for giants) and was greeted by the smiling face and firm handshake of Roger, one of the Casa’s friendly staff people. Instantly I felt at home.

I arrived at the airport by way of a cheery East-African taxi driver who assured me that “you have a very friendly personality and you will be just fine in Costa Rica.” With ALL my nervousness assuaged at this, I loaded up and clipped myself into my pack, and launched myself into the airport with all the confidence of a mountain goat. (Random analogy, I know.)

Upon checking out the departures board I noted – with no surprise, due to my research into Craptastic Airline’s craptastic delays – that my flight to San Juan was delayed from 10:20 to 12:30. Grabbing an overly hot coffee I settled in to kill time (with mimosas planned after the ten o’clock hour – hey… I’m on vacation). After a solid ten minutes of blowing on my coffee in an attempt to cool it down to a drinkable temperature, it hit me… I’m not going to SAN JUAN!!

Checking the board again I promptly dumped my minimally drank coffee in the garbage (I DID momentarily consider offering it to a father and son in front of me to avoid waste, before realizing that this would probably result in a very uncomfortable level of disgust directed my way) and booked it to security to attempt to catching my very-much-on-time flight to SAN JOSE.

Reaching the gate in time I had my first real bout of nervousness as the announcer spoke quick and meaningless [to me] Spanish to the crowd. Really? A language barrier so soon? Understanding nothing but “uno, dos, tres” - I remembered that Craptastic Airlines boards their planes in three zones, so I placed myself in the ridiculously slow moving line and waited to see if someone would tell me that I was in the wrong place.

The flight was uneventful and I semi-enjoyed my view-less aisle seat accompanied by two margaritas and a hard-won game of Risk on my iPhone. (I have recently become addicted to the global domination strategy game Risk - you should really check it out and play against me sometime.) And tequila for the nerves, of course…

My heart jumped as the plane touched down in San Jose – on a small airstrip surrounded by empty fields and a collection of small tin-roofed houses. I had checked my large backpack in LGA to cut costs (and weight) and had packed all my vitals into a small backpack and messenger bag because I was 1,000% convinced that Craptastic Airlines would lose my luggage in the connection. After making my way through immigration, I got to the baggage claim and waited. And waited. And waited.

I forced myself to think positive thoughts. “Nope, my bag is totally going to be there. There are still a lot of people waiting. OK, there are still half of the people waiting. Hey, there are still a few people from the flight waiting. Yours is just at the end of the line. Everything is going to be ok. Seriously. Relax.” FINALLY the deep red of my backpack peeked out of the conveyor and made its way back to its very, very relieved owner. After a quick stop through currency exchange (a tip: if you exchange $250 or more you will get a better rate of exchange on the Costa Rican colones… BAM), I repacked my bag, got it checked by customs to be sure I wasn’t smuggling any random animals or plants into the country, and walked outside into a melee of shouting taxi drivers and the warm Costa Rican air.

New Years Eve 2012 found me in an empty Fort Lauderdale sports bar
attached to an airport motel on the first leg of my journey to Costa
Rica. At the stroke of midnight I exchange whiskey shots with an old
trucker and the two girls tending a near empty bar, and I was struck
by the bizarreness of my present moment. Two months before this I had
no idea that in the first hours of 2013 I would be leaving the United
States for the first time. I never would have figured I’d be able to
afford it, on one hand, and Costa Rica had little significance to me
as anything more a semi-far away place that was lush with rainforests
and teaming with sloths.

I had been feeling stagnant in San Francisco (I like to call it
“funfulfilled”). I wasn’t living healthily, I was struggling with
occasional bouts of melancholy and regular bouts of amnesia, and I
felt disconnected from my career. On the flip side, I was surrounded
by an incredible network of beloved friends; I’d been spending time
with an amazing guy, was nursing a burgeoning musical project, and had
a home city that inspired wonder in my heart every time I left the
house. Despite all the amazingness, I’d been having a difficult time
motivating myself and I found myself slipping into terrible habits and
jovial self-medication.

Around this time my manager left to found an awesome new start-up. My
instinct insisted on showing me the writing on the wall, and I began
to consider whether I wanted to explore a new chapter of my career
myself.  After seven years in a great company who had helped me find
an entirely new career path, what would come next? How could I find a
future that inspired me AND feed my needs as an employee, team member,
and as a healthy human being?

Going into the meeting where I’d intended to voice my plans, I
found out that our program would be now managed out of London and my
position would be eliminated. The company gifted me an inordinate
freedom that I’d never before been given: a severance package. With
the same thoughtful abandon (yes – I am oxymoronic) in which I made my
decision two years before to leave New York City for San Francisco, I
decided that was it - I was leaving the goddamn country.

The decision process was bound in practicalities; flights to Europe
and Asia were too expensive – taking up an uncomfortable percentage of
my upcoming paychecks, I already spoke the tiniest bit of Spanish –
but was confident in my ability to learn more (and quickly), and after
some interviews with my world traveling friends, Costa Rica came
highly recommended as a beautiful, sustainably-oriented,
socially-stable, gringa-friendly, first-time foreign country. Voila!
Decision made.

I had been raised on a farm working with horses, and I felt this
desperate need to get back to my roots – so looking for a farm stay
through WWOOF was another easy decision. And more than one friend
insisted determinedly that I stay for a minimum of six weeks. I
already had a two-week long trip to the east coast for the holidays
planned, so I dove into a hurried month of research and began to wrap
up the loose ends of my life in SF. I would be leaving for two months…
and I think I had at least 3 going away parties.

So there I was in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after booking an insanely
inexpensive flight on the most craptastic airline in the world. My
connection flight to San Jose was leaving the morning of January 1st.
I had a 40-pound backpack filled with the most basic of essentials (ok
– maybe five or six items of clothing more that I absolutely needed –
but come on… I packed away four extra large suitcases filled with
clothes and shoes, the 20-odd items of clothing that I did bring were
hard enough to whittle down to!) I had a hostel reservation in San
Jose, Casa Del Parque, housed in a beautiful old mansion attached to
the city’s Parque Nacional. And I had a plan to head to Playa Uvita on
the southwest Pacific Coast to stay for five days in the Flutterby
House, made up of a half-dozen big tree-houses and a few small
cabinas. Then I’d be off for a month in my farm stay at Establo San
Rafael, located about 20 minutes outside of the tiny town of Puriscal,
deep in the Costa Rican mountains, about an hour west of San Jose. And
finally, a loose plan of two weeks visiting the towns of Montezuma,
Playa del Coco, and La Fortuna – as well as checking out Volcan Arenal.

But, as many a true traveler can attest, you cannot plan a journey –
you can only arrive and see what happens next.

Up next: FLL – SJO.

Besos
e

Costa Rica is amazing. Staying at the Flutterby House, a tree house hostel; wiped out far too many times during my first surfing lesson. Snorkeling and whale watching tomorrow. Farm stay starts Monday. Till then, pura vida. #etravelstheworld (at Flutterby House)

sustainablesurf:

ECOBOARD Project LAUNCH PARTY

A Fundraiser for Sustainable Surf

Come party with leaders of the surfing and green business worlds, see the future of high-performance eco-friendly surfboards, and discover how surfing and surfers can lead the world in environmental change.

Tickets sold online…

(Source: sustainablesurf.org)

RT motherjones:

Want lower crime rates? Plant tomatoes. A growing body of research shows that urban farms reduce violence.

hawaiisavese:

As a kid I never even thought to dream of a Hawaiian getaway.

The idea of it was so far away - so prohibitively expensive - so foreign to anything a girl growing up on a small farm in Jarrettsville, Maryland could comprehend, that even now I can barely wrap my head around the adventure I’m about…

Follow my new microblog “Hawaii Saves E!” - documenting my upcoming half-month-long adventures in Hawaii!! Sure to be great stories and even better photos. Also check #HawaiiSavesE on Instagram and Twitter. (And while you’re there - follow me @esavestheworld.) :)

whenobamaendorsed:

… Joe, Hillary and Michelle were all ORANGE MOCHA FRAPUCCINOS???

Relax And Enjoy Life #besthoodieever (Taken with instagram)

my new post on the Saatchi S blog - my walk to work, viewed through instagram

You are a force of nature; spring forward. #HappySpring (Taken with instagram)

e saves the world (Taken with instagram)