“Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty-his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.”

– Aldous Huxley

The two dumbest reasons to travel

Before traveling I always like to read up on all the different ways that tourists and adventurers can get killed, robbed, or raped. It is a pretty fun exercise and one that will keep you vigilant for weeks on end. Will some poorly washed vegetables in your salad give you a rare bacteria that liquefies your guts? Will the taxi at the airport by operated by a vicious kidnapper? Or will your idyllic day at the beach end with some hobos stabbing you to death? Travel really does open you up to all kinds of new experiences.

Having gone on numerous adventures in the past, and having been robbed once, I’m actually not too worried. At worst I’ll probably get pick pocketed or held up for my phone. In the grand scheme of things I’m pretty safe. In fact, from all of my research, most people are fairly safe when traveling. There are some really dorky people who go abroad and everything ends up fine for them. If some 65 year-old from Kansas can travel to Rio without dying, I’m probably going to be just fine. With that said, there are two really easy ways to get into trouble while abroad. Unless you want to win a game of “Who can die the fastest” I’d suggest avoiding both of these.

Drugs

I’m always perplexed at how many people travel abroad just to buy cheap drugs. One of my friends actually went actually went to Jamaica last year just so that he could get high on their fabled ganja.* Since I’m not your dad I won’t try to give you a lecture, however its pretty stupid to visit a potentially dangerous location just so that you can get drugs for a fraction of the price that you could at home. Aside from the fact that you’ll probably end up dealing with some shady narco-terrorist faction of militants, you’ll also end up buying products that are potentially made of garbage, and you put yourself at risk of being thrown in the local slammer or executed by some local authorities. A quick Google search for “Third world jail” turns up some unpleasant results.

When I was in Belize some dudes who were staying across from me had a story about a friend who had bought cheap drugs while in Mexico. He ended up having to fork over something like $500 as a bribe afterwards when the dealer ran around the corner and told some cops who were in on the whole racket.

Flying to the middle of a war zone to buy some three dollar cocaine from an unstable militant, who probably hates Americans, is an easy way to end up dead in a ditch. Plus, there’s a place back home where the drugs flow freely and there are no repercussions for using them. Its called college.

Dangerous living

The second stupid reason to travel is a bit more vague. For lack of a better word, I’m going to call it a lust for danger. While there are a lot of dangerous yet fun things to do abroad, like climbing a volcano or swimming with sharks, these people seek out senseless thrills. The traveler with a lust for danger is the type of person who gets told “do not walk through that neighborhood at night” and then does so just to show the locals how tough he really is. People who fit this mold aren’t taking a risk to do something cool, they are just throwing themselves into danger because they can.

When I was in Nicaragua all of the roads are incredibly dangerous to cross. There are virtually no traffic laws, and trying to run across the street will get you hit by 18 buses and three horse drawn wagons. In particularity bad areas they have little walkways that are scattered about so that you don’t have to cross the street. Never the less, I heard stories about travelers who would disregard these walkways, they were pretty gross and you had to step over homeless people quite often, and would end up in the hospital after getting run over.

As much as people like to imagine terrorists and gangs as being a threat to tourists, most travelers are killed by more mundane things. According to Medical Daily, cars kill the majority of Americans who go abroad. While there are a lot of reasons for this, stupidity and disregard for basic safety are huge factors. A lot of people who travel like to pretend like they have something to prove. Unlike all those stupid pansy tourists, they aren’t scared of anything. Then they get hit by a garbage truck because they refuse to cross the street like everyone else.

Closing thoughts

If you want to do drugs or prove what a tough guy you really are, there is no reason to even leave the United States. You could play Frogger with traffic right in your own hometown. You could probably buy drugs and go to jail there too. And, if you do get hit by a car or thrown in a cell, you have the luxury of being in a first world institution where everyone speaks English and they have some basic standards for hygiene and human rights.

* According to him it was actually really lousy and not worth the trip at all.

“In less than a year, I’ve been able to build a six-figure passive income business through Kindle publishing (see screen shots below).”

– Stefan Pylarinos

My earnings from the Stefan Pylarinos method

Being lazy and unimaginative, in addition to just finishing up about $300 worth of articles and not wanting to write anything serious, I’ve decided to piggyback off of some recent controversy. A few writers have gotten into a beef with Internet marketer Stefan Pylarinos. While I don’t really feel like rehashing the events, I do want to share a personal story about trying to use their “fool-proof” Kindle publishing methods.

A long time ago, someone decided that selling cheap and generic Kindle books was like a license to print money. All you had to do was write “100 ways to make organic apple pie” and you’d be raking in the dough. Like a lot of gullible young men I fell into this trap and even dedicated an entire month to try and get in on this awesome venture.

During this time I spent countless hours rewriting content that I found on Google and packaging it into nice little 2,500 to 5,000 word eBooks. It was something that I had done a lot for my oDesk clients, so I figured that it would be lucrative here as well. I was dead wrong.

How much did I make?

I actually earned about $50 for my first month. While this sounds like an okay bump in sales, it died out almost immediately. Content that has been taken off a search engine and thrown into a book isn’t exactly best seller material. Once people realize this, you’re out of luck.

In addition to only making an extra $50, I spent a ton of time creating and marketing my books. Re-writing material eats up hours, so does fixing formatting mistakes and finding places to post links to your work. Typically I make between $25 and $75 an hour while freelancing. That means that it would have to have taken me two hours, or less, to make the same from books. In reality it would take me about four hours to do each book. I ended up making peanuts off my efforts.

What if I can’t freelance?

Earlier this month I decided to restart my Fiverr account in order to show a friend how it worked. Within three days I had made $52. The work took me, at most, three hours to complete. That’s about $17 an hour, still more than my Kindle books were capable of earning. Even if you don’t have the time or resources to write professional level articles, you can still find better opportunities, like publishing short product reviews or translating documents, that will help to boost your income. You could probably even go on Fiverr and make a stupid “You can buy me a beer for $5” posting that will do better than your fraudulent eBook empire.

In my defense

I’m expecting someone, who will have zero expertise as to anything involving online business, to post a comment saying “You just sucked at making eBooks and now you’re mad.” While that might be true, there is some basic math that can easily show you why junk eBook sales are not lucrative. Matt Forney already explained this, but I’ll reiterate. Books that cost less than $2.99 only receive 35% royalties. You can’t, feasibly, sell a “book” under 5,000 words, and with no known author, for $2.99. As such, you’re stuck marketing the product at $0.99. To earn $100, you’d have to sell almost 300 copies of your book. This might sound easy on paper, but it is nearly impossible to do in real life. When someone realizes that they are being sold garbage, they post a negative review and warn everyone else. Also, selling books is a lot harder to do than it sounds. A lot of people don’t read, and those that do tend to be very cautious so that they avoid buying trash like the stuff you are selling.

In the marketer’s defense

Stefan Pylarinos  probably isn’t a fraud. He might be shady, but I actually suspect that he could back up his claims if he really wanted to. I’ve worked with guys like him before and they do, somehow, make their junk empire profitable. While I suspect that profit margins are a bit thin, and its a lot more work than they lead on, they are able to make a living off of it. Having 5,000 books earning you $0.35 a day would allow you to do quite well. However, getting to that point, and trying to maintain that level of deception, is something that the average person would be better off skipping over.

In conclusion

If you want to write an eBook, go for it. One of my readers recently sent me a book that he wrote. It has honest information in it, and he’s not trying to get rich by scamming people into buying copy/pasted books. However, if you are trying to make money online, there are better avenues to go down. Freelancing, creating quality products, and building a trustworthy brand all take less time and effort than selling snake oil does.

P.S. If you want an interesting book on making money self-publishing, you might want to check out my review of The Six-Figure Erotica Author by Jade K. Scott. It is a short eBook that costs $2.99 and earned me several thousand dollars. Way better than some shady “get rich quick” program.

“In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is Freedom, in water there is bacteria.”

– Benjamin Franklin

Not drinking won’t affect your sex life

There’s a frequent myth that I hear. It goes something like this: “If you don’t drink you’ll never get laid.” It gets touted around with enough frequency that people assume it to actually be true. I know a lot of dudes who rationalize their drinking by citing that its fun and that they occasionally get girls from it. Despite the fact that alcohol has a whole slew of negative consequences, people continually defend it by claiming that it makes you more social and better with women. As someone who doesn’t drink but still goes to a lot of bars and clubs, I can honestly say that I’ve never seen alcohol really improve anyone’s sex life.

The stigma of not drinking

Sometimes I like to go out solo. If my friends are doing something that I don’t want to do I’ll go out instead. Of the thousands of times, and half a decade, of going out, I’ve only caught serious flack for not drinking on one occasion. Some drunk dude, who was making everyone mad anyway, kept trying to fight with me because I wasn’t drinking. That’s it. I’ve gone out in several major cities and multiple countries, only one person ever go really upset about me not drinking.

With that said, a lot of people do ask why I’m not drinking. I used to try and come up with clever or creative answers, but now I just tell them the truth. I don’t drink. On occasion someone will ask why, or make a comment, but that’s as far as it ever goes. Aside from the odd joke or having to answer a few questions, most people could care less.

Drunk girls

Two years ago I was hanging out at a bar and started talking to some random girl. The girl was all over me and I thought I was Mr. Super Player. For whatever reason she had to go somewhere in the morning so I had to settle for her number when closing time rolled around. She had me text her before we left so that she’d have my number too. About 30 minutes later I got a call from her. She was screaming and yelling a bunch of inane nonsense about who I was and how we met. Eventually her friend got on the line and explained that this girl went crazy every time she drank and accused dudes of harassing her. After that I started avoiding drunk girls.

At the risk of sounding like some white knight who eats Ball Park Franks out of Lindy West’s bellybutton, I’d advise most dudes to avoid girls who drink a lot. Most of them end up looking like trash within a very short time anyway and they are a liability waiting to happen. You’d be better off turning your attention elsewhere.

There’s also a classic myth that party girls are the hottest girls. While they can usually look good while covered in makeup and camouflaged by the glow of strobe lights, they tend to get a lot worse when exposed to daylight. Additionally, many of them don’t have a lot of activities aside from getting drunk. There’s a huge difference between a girl who plays volleyball drinks healthy smoothies, and a chick who surfs Instagram and does shots every night.

Dudes

Despite what dorky PUA guys on message boards say, most men will actually cold approach girls and try to hit on them. However, they’ll usually only do this while drunk. Go to any bar on a Friday night and do some people watching. It’s actually kind of fun. At some point you will see a bunch of dudes spit out stupid lines before sulking off to grind on some gross fatty.

I know a lot of dudes who sabotage themselves by drinking. They end up saying something dumb, throwing up on themselves, or passing out. While they do occasionally get laid from drinking, it’s usually nothing that they should be bragging about. Anyone who has ever read a Tucker Max book will remember that 90% of the girls that he hooked up with were beasts. Getting “Tucker Max Drunk” isn’t going to do you a whole lot of good.

Quantity of life

Lastly, the health benefits that accompany sobriety far outweigh whatever chubby hamshamblers you might pass up. Being able to wake up early, focus on your side hustles, and hit the gym. If you’re getting drunk three or more nights a week, you’ll be missing out on a lot of self-improvement. A lot of basic issues in your life can be solved with money and discipline. Hitting the bars every week won’t bring either.

“Louis Vuitton in Economy class. No matter how you look at it, your priorities are screwed up.”

– Goldman Sachs Elevator Gossip

Keep your priorities in check

A long time ago I read a great book called Class. While there’s a ton of interesting stuff in it, one thing that really stuck out to me was the fact that  most “luxury” items aren’t actually for rich people. They are for middle class and poor people who want to pretend to be rich. Clothes with gaudy logos, “fancy” chain  restaurants, and dozens of other frivolous items.

While most unnecessary purchases are easy to avoid if you have half a brain, there are a few well placed traps that can throw you off from time to time. These aren’t always as shallow or obvious as the stuff that would ensnare average people, but its out there. Watches, cars, and overpriced clothes have all been the downfall of many a young man. While there’s nothing wrong with rolling up in Ferrari or buying a Rolex, you’d better be sure that the rest of your life is in order.

What to consider before making an expensive purchase

Some time ago I did the math and realized that, by the end of the year, I was going to have enough in my savings account to possibly buy a CLA-Class without any payments. As a guy who loves Mercedes I was pretty excited. For about a week I went to sleep every night dreaming of my new car and all of the fun that I’d have in it. This car was all that was on my mind.

This was a great idea until I realized that there were a few problems. Even though I could buy the car, Internet business is fickle and that same money could support me for about a year if I really wanted. Secondly, my apartment and my car would be on two different continents. I’m sure I could ship it or something, but having that car in a developing country, even when you live in the nicest part, is asking for trouble. I wouldn’t be driving the car, but I’d still have to pay for the insurance and registration. Having an entry level Mercedes, which is a depreciating asset and will be worthless in 10 years, that you get to drive once or twice a year isn’t something that would be very financially smart.

Other issues with expensive purchases

There are a lot of people who will drop money on something superficial before they even master the fundamentals in their life. I went out in Minnesota one time and saw a fat guy rocking some expensive clothes and a gold chain. It would be safe to assume that he bought the outfit to attract girls, but it was like putting flame decals on a turd. His obesity nullified any potential that he had. I know dudes who are jacked that will go out in a generic T-shirt and get more girls than Fatty McGucci probably ever will.

Having nice stuff is like an end zone dance

There’s a theory that I’ve had for a long time. It basically goes like this: girls will like whatever you have only if they already like you. If you live at home, ride a Schwinn bicycle everywhere, and wear dad jeans, a girl who likes you will still find something to compliment you about. While manosphere and PUA guys love to try and sell, for $9.99, the idea that you can win any girl over by using their lame advice, things are a lot more binary. Either a girl likes you, but possibly doesn’t know it yet, or she isn’t attracted. No amount of silly hats, questions about the pet store, or Rolexes will ever solve that problem.

A friend of mine once told me that, when he was my age, the only thing he wanted was a Rolex. When he eventually bought one, after building a huge business empire, he said that it didn’t change anything. As a kid he’d imagined people would stop in the street and gawk at how successful he must be. As an adult, people knew him for his actions and character. The watch was inconsequential.

Buying stuff like shoes, watches, and cars is fun. I’ve got a couple of mid-range wrist pieces and a whole bunch of shoes. While it might boost my confidence, it doesn’t change anything. People know me for me. Having some accessories really doesn’t affect anything or make a huge impact.

“Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.”

– William Westmoreland

They’ll always water you down

When I listened to my Schopenhauer audiobook I was surprised by the beginning warning in which the editor apologized for some of the more offensive ideas that were present. This wasn’t the first time that I’d seen something like this though. I have a Nietzsche book which starts with a warning about “It was a different time and he didn’t know better.” One of my editions of Huckleberry Finn, and the one I never read, removed all of the racial slurs and replaced them with more tame material.

If you live long enough and create something profound enough everyone will try and water you down. Something that you said or did will be considered offensive to someone and a whole bunch of academics will try to trivialize and downplay it. Indiana Jones used to gun down hordes of Nazis during the 1980’s. When they dusted him out in 2008 there was virtually no violence. “That was a different era” things had to be family friendly.

The world was an orgy of sex, violence, and war. People dueled to the death, got in bare knuckles brawls, and beat each other into a pulp. Men rode viscous beasts across harsh mountain terrain so that they could stab other men using crude blades and spears. A brief trip to the Ancient History Encyclopedia is like traveling to some distant planet that knows nothing but war. You get mad about someone cutting you off in traffic and mumble under your breath, your ancestors disemboweled people and enslaved whole civilizations so that they could get a better trade route.

In 1914 men speared one another on bayonets, burnt their enemies lungs out with poison gas, and slaughtered whole armies with bulky machine guns. Human history is brutal. Men of the past sailed across oceans in wooden boats, battled with clubs, and fought their environment just to survive. It’s something none of use could ever comprehend. In a world of modern convenience and civil society we could never wrap our brains around the level of violence that most living humans had to endure.

When I go boxing I have to pay money to be in a controlled environment that merely simulates the savage nature of man. Sure I get hit and throw some punches back, but it’s never really life or death. You can go shower afterwards and then call up some friends to celebrate. It’s imitation war.

While I’d love to have something profound to say about violence and our love of it, nothing comes to mind. Conflict is something we all crave. There’s no question there. I’m just glad I live in a time where combat and fighting are leisure activities, not requirements for survival.