Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I have a Monday ritual. I pick through the recycle bin of my apartment complex and retrieve the Sunday New York Times. The tenant who actually pays to receive the Times has never actually admitted that he knows I do this, but he frequently leaves me notes pointing to articles he thinks I should read.
Today his note said, FANTASIC! with bright yellow arrows pointing to this article.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/opin ... d=all&_r=0

Haha, cool neighbor, most would probably passive aggressively hint you should pay 50% of their subscription for what they throw out.

Hehe, that's fun Ego, love it.
I'm in Singapore which is the land of consumption, these people go on holiday to go shopping. They go to the mall to go out for a business dinner. Great to read this in the AM.
He mentions media which is one of the things I really struggle with. We've gotten rid of about 75% of our books over the last year relying on local libraries. It was quite difficult but well advised.
We have a pretty large DVD collection. A decade ago we canceled cable, and were tending to rent a movie a week. I noticed one day of late fees made it cost more than buying the movie, so we started buying used movies rather than renting and we now have over 400. It's not hard to build a media center out of an old PC, but selling off the DVDs would violate my interpretation of media rights. We could do NF streaming, but then my Mrs would have the TV on more. We have the covers boxed/stored but they're still in closets. Dunno on this one.
Why do people believe traveling the world is necessary for self-actualization? I believed this old saw to be a truth and made travel a priority in my 20's. My experience has been travel will help you become self-actualized if you expect it to...but it's not the travel that does it, it's the seeking of it to begin with.

"The tenant who actually pays to receive the Times has never actually admitted that he knows I do this, but he frequently leaves me notes pointing to articles he thinks I should read."
Wow, sounds like an awesome guy--I'd offer to buy him a beer!
Interesting article; I never knew that about the guy who started treehugger.com, who I emailed like 10 years ago and who emailed me back a very nice, friendly letter. Good for him.

>>Why do people believe traveling the world is necessary for self-actualization?
Figuring out who you are is hard for a lot of people. Some people are easily influenced by their surroundings (people and places). It might be because they have low self-esteem, or maybe they're introverts <ahem> and don't bother to stand up to the crowd.
When you travel, you get out from under those influences. If you travel often enough, you can see what remains the same no matter where you go--that's you. I don't think that's always easy to see when you're entrenched in roles defined by other people like son, daughter, mom, dad, sibling, etc.
I think it's the same reason people buy all of that stuff. They are trying on/trying out different things to see what fits and what makes them happy. It can be the same search for self as traveling. The difference with traveling (or any experience) is that it doesn't clutter up your home after you try it out.

I've travelled a lot and spent a decade living outside of America. That experience really shaped my point of view and has made it difficult for me to relate to Americans or have much patience with many of the taboos and trends specific to the U.S. It has, on the other hand, made me appreciate a lot of good things about America that aren't true of other countries.
However, there's a big difference between VISITING a place and LIVING IN a place. I don't think spending a couple weeks in a place affects you all that much--rather, it's you projecting a stereotype on the place in most cases. You get this a lot with the backpackers in Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Great article. I think he summed it up best at the end:
"My space is small. My life is big."

Even smaller, in Hong Kong: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housin ... bove/4780/
Made me feel like never complaining again about having too much stuff in a small space in my (small) house.
On the travel tangent, for a while I felt bad about not really being interested in travel. Beyond the anxiety I tend to feel about traveling, I tend to not enjoy the experience of standing out as a (comparatively) wealthy white person in a strange place. If I go some place far away, so much of my interaction with it is going to be colored by who I am in relation to the people who live there. Maybe this is why I tend to mostly like traveling for big cities (architecture) and nature.

Ego,
I think that's very cool of your neighbor. If it was me and I could figure out who was reading my paper afterwards I'd offer to leave it on your doorstep.

He is a character.
Carlos, I suspect he would do that but he doesn't want to put me in the uncomfortable position where I would feel obligated to pay him for it. So he hands it anonymously through the recycle bin. A doubly generous touch. Even more so considering he is really struggling financially. That fact bothers me a bit...

@Icouldbethewalrus - those "apartments"... I couldn't live in there, it would drive me nuts. I don't think I need much, but that was just too little. I've seen a documentary where people lived in a bed encircled by a cage, with a locker for their belongings. Four or six persons per room. I would feel worthless there.
I once took the smallest room in a B&B, was already warned it had no windows. It had room for a bed for one person, and then one foot of space next to that to be able to walk in and out. I imagine it used to be a storage room. Never again, I felt so locked-in.

Seneca, ditto your comment on Sinagpore. I was trying to characterize *the* Singapore pastime to a foreign friend. I came up with shopping, which was doubly sad.

@Jenny- I don't argue with what you're saying on how it acts as a catalyst. As I said, if you go traveling looking for it, you'll find it. Before my post I hadn't seen this, but Jacob did a post on this that allows me to be lazy in describing what I had in mind. I think it's mostly a function of marketing, not necessity-
http://earlyretirementextreme.com/trave ... th-it.html
@SW- Frankly, travel has made me less open minded to other systems. It annoyes the hell out of some of my friends when they ask me about this becase it is "supposed" to be the opposite according to the funny papers. (Largely because as you say, people experience what they believe they should experience on their travel) I see the things people tend to argue are "trivialities- you'd understand if you had traveled the world like me" to be at the very core of the power of the US.

@Timothy- Well, it's not just Singapore! A friend of mine moved to the SF Bay Area from Taipei. Recently we were chatting and he told me his vacation this winter was to Korea. I asked him why, and he told me shopping, they have special Asian markets his wife wanted to go to. I felt bad, my shock made him very defensive. heh.

Improvement is the result of adaptation. Adaptation atrophies if it is unused. Hardship, discomfort, change and difficulty provoke adaptation. Too much hardship does damage, too little fails to provoke.
The act of living in a foreign land demands adaptation. It exercises the adaptive ability. Travel invites calamity. Disaster is virtue's opportunity.

@Ego- agree with everything you're saying.
Travel is one of many ways to move out of your comfort zone and exercise your abilities at adaptation. It's just not the only one, nor is it the cheapest one (for many).

Seneca, that's true. I should have written that adaptation is the reason I travel.

FWIW, that's kinda what a cruising yacht looks from the inside.
It all depends on your perspective and how you perceive your domicile. Is it a vehicle for the interesting life you live ... or is it a refuge from your job?

BTW ... I should probably rename that travel post: "Tourism in not worth it".

The original title is perfect. It makes people want to read it. Let the reader figure out the distinction between tourism and travel. That way they remember it.