another time zone

I'm getting sick of talking about all of the traveling I've been doing, as you probably are. I'm even more tired of actually doing the traveling. Right now I sit in the Houston airport between connections, heading to Costa Rica in a couple of hours. I tried passing the time by in the airport Border's Books. The fact that there is a book title "the Idiot's Guide to Amazing Sex" scares me a bit and makes me wonder how many copies have been sold. I tried to find a good business book, as for some reason reading about work seems to interest me when I'm not working (very sad actually). All of the books were about how to get rich, how to get promoted at work, to invest, buy and sell real estate, not piss your boss off, and so on. I saw a copy of "the Art of the Deal" by Donald Trump, which I read a few years ago and remembered liking quite a bit. That was suggested to me by my friend Dean Warren, the same guy who believes that global warming doesn't exist. Well, maybe he does now, as it was two years ago that we had that talk, and its been getting warmer and warmer, hasn't it? Our time in Nashville was dampened by the 95-100 degree temperatures with no wind. It is actually cooler in Costa Rica than the midwest scary enough. Holly, Otis and I flew to San Diego on Sunday, one of the longest days I can remember in recent months. At 2AM we were up and leaving for the airport in Tennessee, by 1PM I had been to Home Depot on Sports Arena Blvd in San Diego and was preparing to paint one of our units in OB with my dad. I keep going back and forth on whether or not I want to start renting our places on a nightly basis now or wait until next summer. It has proven to be quite hard to get things done to the place with us traveling all of the time. I posted a craigslist posting, http://sandiego.craigslist.org/apa/392215922.html , so if you know anyone who wants a sweet place in OB tell them to check it out. Holly, Otis and I (effectively called "we") stayed in my parent's camper in their driveway when we returned from our trip. Well, we got to our place in OB and realized how much work needed to be done. The homeless guy Ron from previous posts had moved out, which was good, and so had Justin. Our neighbors told us that Ron had been driving our car while we were gone, so that was super news also. I'm not sure what it was exactly, perhaps a combination of things, but this particular trip has been more of a culture shock than ever before. I guess I'd start by reiterating that I'm almost 30 years old and upon returning to my own home I was unable to allow my family to stay there but instead opted to stay with my parents, in their motorhome in their driveway. To me that is a sign of regression, but I can get over it. We hadn't been in our place for 8 months and everyone else had been apparently using the place, so you can imagine the state it was in. Then compare that to our family reunithon, where we see family we haven't seen in years and realize that we've spent all of our 20s living in the jungle. It is hard to explain how that makes you feel, especially with things seeming to advance so quickly. I moved to Costa Rica when Clinton was President and the dot com bubble was just starting to burst. Holly and I have been talking for quite some time about spending more time back in San Diego. Now that we're pregnant again it seems even more of a solid option, at least once the baby is born, as my folks are there and can help out quite a bit. Then I start considering things like the new Simpson's movie, that I'd like to see it and that I've missed the last 500 good movies or so. I've never owned a Tivo or DVR and am jealous of all my friends who have one. There are tons of magazines I'd love to have subscriptions to, and having them sent to my address (past the second river in Avellanas, on the right, Costa Rica) just doesn't seem to work. I wish to God I could have Netflix... When I'm in the US I get overwhelmed by people talking on blue tooth enabled devices about their myspace blogs and, even though I'm writing a blog right now, I'm miles away from anyone I know who is doing the same. Its like that story about the person in India who stumbled upon an advanced physics textbook and became a physics expert without ever having any experience with it before (except that writing a blog requires no expertise whatsoever). Maybe I'm just missing some of the practicalities of life back in San Diego. I mean, if I want something I can just go and get it while I'm up here. It sounds simple, but after almost seven years of living in Costa Rica I'm just feeling a bit left behind. The last few months have been scattered around the continent looking for long-term solutions to an inner struggle between me and me. Then I realize that I'm about to have a second child and that my first child and my wife don't have health insurance, nor do I, nor do I have a retirement account or a stock portfolio or most things that people my age are "supposed to have figured out". And now this morning I leave Holly in San Diego as she is deathly ill with her pregnancy, nothing to worry about except to receive this reality check of what I'm doing and where I'm going. I guess life has many crossroads and I've been standing at this one for quite some time and didn't realize it completely. It must sound completely incoherent so I apologize for that, but sometimes its nice to just talk to you and not really know who you are. Just an fyi, I'm amidst a website overhaul. I've seen the light and it looks good. This blog has nothing to do with my business Witch's Rock Surf Camp, so I'm taking it down and putting it onto another site. Don't worry, I'll let you know what it is. I've started a business blog as a way to not only clear my mind of it's never-ending thought process, but also to share with anyone who wants to gain insight towards doing whatever the hell they want to do. You can find the start of this project at http://joewalshproject.blogspot.com . Trust me when I say it isn't much, and soon it will reside elsewhere and include my personal blog and other tidbits as well, I hope it helps you moving towards where you want to be. I saw a guy with a t-shirt on this morning in the security checkpoint line of the San Diego airport, and it said "one life one chance", and I thought to myself, holy shit, he's right! aloha- joe