Matt’s 2012 in Review

Posted on January 5, 2013 by Matt

A Year of Uncertainty and Adventure

In January 2012, I left my job, sold almost all of my belongings, and said bye to family and friends to embark on a journey that I had no clue where it would take me.

In January 2013, I’m still on that journey, living on the opposite side of the world. This journey is transforming into a way of life, and different way of seeing the world.

We’re at a point in time that the internet allows us to create our own jobs, live anywhere in the world and work whoever we choose. Luckily, I’ve been able to keep in touch with friends and family online no matter where I’m at in the World. Skype, Google Hangout, social media, and this blog have been great at helping us keep in touch. PS: Thanks Randi for writing so much and pushing Asa and I to write a couple posts! 🙂

Here it is…

January was a month of getting rid of the last of my belongings (thanks to advice from Joshua and Ryan) and saying bye to friends, family, my job, most hobbies. Luckily, friends are always willing to throw a party, especially if it means it’s the last time they’ll see you in many months if not years.

Thanks for the yummy cookie cake Michelle

I moved down to Palermo, Uruguay with Asa and Randi. They were pretty much the main reason I’m doing this. If they didn’t decide it would be alright for me to join them, I might have never made the trip. Asa and Randi, I owe you guys the World. You guys freakin’ rock! I hope you will come visit one day!

This is a good hair day!

I became conversational in spanish down there. We could have probably been fluent in spanish in 3 months, but making fun of each other in English was so much fun.

I was bad at taking pictures in South America. I’m blaming it on the fact that I didn’t have a working camera most of the time since the lens’ dinner of choice was sand.

Carnival in Uruguay!!

Candle Festival in Montevideo, Uruguay. They send boats with candles, flowers, and decorations into the water for good luck.

I met Carlos, JuanMa, and Maru in Palermo after finding out there was ultimate frisbee in Uruguay. Luckily they spoke enough English to communicate with us.

12-hour travel to play in the Bahia Blanca Beach hat tourney

I sang karaoke with 4 others in front of hundreds (it was the US National Anthem)

Champions!

I wrestled an alligator (crocodile)

wrestledanalligator

Hey Mom! I’m a foreign TV star… in 2 countries!

I played in 4 Ultimate Frisbee tournaments outside of the US

In the voice of 300 Spartans… This is CIMARRON!

The AFDC and Spin Ultimate made it possible to donate 80 discs and jerseys to help South America further Ultimate Frisbee as a sport

I learned to salsa in Argentina at 4am. (I wouldn’t call it learning, more like drunken wobbling side to side)

We played fun tournament games

I learned how to play the piano… with my feet!

I had another going away party. This time it was for leaving Uruguay.

Viva Las Vegas!

I got back together with the family in Vegas. I went to my Sister’s and Blake’s (now brother-in-law!) wedding. It was a gorgeous and awesome wedding. It was a lot of fun. I lost money at poker (it was overdue) but had a blast with Derek, Blake’s family and my family! So many good times and fun things happened.

Yum! In-N-Out Burger with a creeper in the background.

Ziplining with Dad in Vegas!

Off to Puerto Galera

After too much excitement in Vegas, I headed out to Puerto Galera, Philippines to get together with a bunch of people from the DC and the TropicalMBA. Joining the DC was probably the biggest game changer this year as far as business is concerned. I won’t talk about that now.

In Puerto Galera, I caught some amazing sunrises, had a birthday applechicken with the crew at Badladz and tried to swim with Dolphins.

Birthday chicken apple lunch!!

Taking a short break from work!

Beautiful view of Puerto Galera from the top of the jungle trek

Rented a villa with 2 friends for half a week in Puerto Galera. Our Dive master picked us up from our dock!

Survived a water buffalo ride!

The crew chillin on the beach

Tuk tuk transportation

Trying to swim with some dolphins

After this, I headed back to Manila for a few days to meet with some friends.

I slept on a boat in Manila

Enjoyed the Manila Skyline at night

Off to Bangkok, Thailand!

After the Philippines, I flew over to Bangkok for a big meetup of about 70-80 Dynamite Circle members from all around the World.

This was my view for three days in Bangkok.

We met for three days in a convention center. I met people who hide from the public, well-known influencers, people just starting out on their entrepreneurial journey, and established ballers who are all living the lifestyle of their choice from wherever they want around the World.

I was bad at taking pictures here.

In Chiang Mai

Posing at a temple

Words of wisdom at a temple

Met up with Joel within my first few weeks in Chiang Mai. I was introduce to Melina and Orn then, two awesome people. Robert was laughing so hard he forgot to open his eyes.

Sick mustache, Joel.

Marvin was traveling through so we went to the sticky waters where you can climb them. We decided some sort of Yoga pose would be best.

Cliff jumping in Chiang Mai.

Lantern release – sending bad thoughts away. Bringing in good thoughts.

Thousands of lanterns released at Yi Peng lantern festival during Loi Krathong. This moment was incredible. At one point in time, I couldn’t even see the sky there were so many lanterns right above my head.

Celebrating Turkey day with Apple Pie Shots

Temple in Chiang Mai

Manila Spirits 2012

Cabs R Here losing the 3rd place game to Derek Ramsey in Rock-Paper-Scissors

Was introduced through a Sam to Sam. Played with him in Manila

Dancing with the Aussies and Canadian!

Photobomb #1 – Beer me!

Photobomb #2 – epic makeout scene

Photobomb #3 – Like a Boss

Surviving the Mayan Apocalypse in style!

Taking pictures of myself… as always

Cabs R Here!!!

What the Deuce in Chiang Mai’s first ultimate frisbee league.

Family sent me awesome christmas presents!!

White elephant present – awesome Thailand Tshirt

Meeting up with cousins Jimmy and Janie and friend Sandy after their domination runs in Chiang Mai.

Coffee at Ristr8o with the #DCCM crew on Christmas day

White elephant gift exchange

Christmas day street food dinner with cousins Jimmy and Janie!

Some lessons learned:

People all around you have a strong influence on who you are as a person. Surround yourself with people you look up.

Different cultures around the World can take a while to adapt to. By having a strong core, open eyes and ears, and the ability to see other’s points of view, you can go extremely far in life and be extremely successful (no matter what “success” means to you).

When you let yourself be open to opportunity, doors start showing up in front of you and you just have to choose which ones your going to open and which path your going to go down.

Learning a language is hard, but you’ll get a lot more respect and your stay will be easier if you learn some basic language and show you’re trying. You’ll also get good mental benefits from learning to speak a new language.

Leverage your hobbies to create strong and lasting friendships wherever you go.

There is something unique about Ultimate Frisbee and spirit of the game. If you play ultimate frisbee, make sure to look for ultimate everywhere you go. You will instantly create awesome friends and people all around. I have made so many friends this past year through ultimate and everyone is awesome in their own way. Whether I was partying in Uruguay at 6am with you, dancing/drinking in Argentina, surviving the Apocalypse with the Aussies in Manila, or playing league in Chiang Mai, you guys have been freaking awesome!

This journey would not be the same without ultimate and all the people I’ve met playing ultimate along the way. If there is anything I can ever do for you guys, you know where to contact me!

The same can be said for anyone in the DC. #DCCM, you guys rock! I’ve had a blast in Chiang Mai. Now, it’s time to move it to #DCPai and get more serious about health, fitness, work, and productivity.

It’s not as easy as it seems…

Going out and traveling sure does seem like fun, but there are a lot things that make it difficult. In the beginning, you have to give up on a lot of things like going out and drinking with friends a lot, skipping over to another country for fun, doing expensive dinners. You really have to be the boring friend sometimes who sits inside on a Friday evening and throughout the weekend getting the work done. Your good friends will understand, but most won’t.

Whatever you do, just make sure you follow Derek Sivers’ motto: it’s either “HELL Yeah! or no.”

Most people won’t understand what you do. They see the great pictures, the travel, the fun, but they don’t understand the struggles and the work you do.

Leaving friends is hard. Sure, I’ve made great friends along the way, but with everyday I make a new friend, that’s a day that’s passed that I haven’t seen an old friend from backhome.

The hardest part is probably leaving family. Luckily I can video chat and skype with my family back home, but it’s definitely hard celebrating birthdays, holidays, especially Christmas without the family. Technology doesn’t always work and frustrating times come along that. You just have to accept the fact that s#!@ happens sometimes and there will be another time to say hi!

You have to be like water in a stream, flowing over and around the rocks, the hard times. I think there’s a Chinese proverb about that.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned this whole trip, and it’s something I knew and learned from Mo, quality relationships are pretty much the most important things in life. Without trust, friendship, support, prodding, and pushing from peers, mentors, mentees, friends, family, others, life can be A LOT harder than it has to be.

Go out and create great relationships. Keep in touch, help others, and connect people when you can! Be good to others.

I could write this post about business stuff, finances, etc, but the most important thing to me is connecting, helping, and having fun with people.

2012 was a year of travel and creating incredible friendships.

I’m looking forward to 2013 to be a year of creating and deepening relationships and fine tuning my habits and rituals to be more productive and grow my business efforts this year.
Don’t worry, Mom! I’ll work on taking more and better pictures and keeping everyone updated!

2013 is a year for shipping. Get your work out! Go big or go home (going home isn’t an option here). Do something that matters and the world will reward you for it.

Jacksonville Light Parade

Posted on December 5, 2012 by mlwattsupp

This year Asa and I were privileged to be a part of the Light Parade here in Jacksonville. It is a festival of sorts where local boat owners decorate their boats with lights and parade them around the St. Johns River in downtown JAX. The parade of boats is then followed by one of the best fireworks shows of the year. There are competitions for a variety of boat classes to see who will take home the prize. Rumor has it that in past years the prizes consisted of boat motor oil. While not a very glamorous prize, it certainly is practical!

Anyway, Asa and I were commandeered to help out in the boat of a family friend. She ingeniously decorated her boat in lights shaped like an octopus and needed help moving legs (yes a lot of legs!) and changing colors of the remarkably large octopus body.

It was certainly a site to behold from the dock and close up on the boat, but was even more astounding in videos taken from the shore.

“Octopus’s Garden” by the Beatles was also on repeat and blaring from speakers on the deck of the boat, hopefully loud enough for those on the shore to enjoy.

Check out this awesome video of the light parade on youtube!

After we made our two mandatory loops around the downtown area, we settled in at a local dock nestled between two of the downtown bridges to enjoy the fireworks. We had the perfect spot to enjoy the “waterfalls” of fireworks set off from both bridges during the firework finale.

It was a fantastic night out on the water! Oh yeah, the octopus won first place in the sailboat category!

Monterey Bay Aquarium

Posted on October 30, 2012 by mlwattsupp

I had the opportunity to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium a couple weeks ago while I was in the area for a wedding. I stayed at a local motel and spent a nice Sunday exploring the animals and new exhibits at the Aquarium. I would definitely recommend a trip to the Aquarium. In my opinion it is the best aquarium in the U.S., with a great mix of animals, good signage, plenty of activities for the kids, interactive displays and touch tanks, and some nice art exhibits. Here are a couple memories from my visit.

These are called Lion’s Head Nudibranchs. I was excited to see a tank full of them at the Aquarium because my family and I saw these in the wild for the first time while kayaking in San Simeon last month.

Wedding Weekend

Posted on October 18, 2012 by mlwattsupp

I went up to the Santa Cruz area this weekend for the wedding of a good friend! Despite the awkwardness of showing up to a wedding alone, and not knowing any of the other guests, I had a wonderful time.

The wedding was set up in the backyard of a close family friend. There was a grassy area for the ceremony, a nice patio with adjacent fish pond, a vegetable garden and storage shed, and terraced walking paths and sitting areas. The day was fabulous, without a cloud in the sky and a perfect 70 degrees F.

There were drinks and snacks before the ceremony. The bride and groom brewed the beer themselves, all six choices! There was a very pleasant blue grass band playing before and after the ceremony and lucky for the guests, the bride and groom’s other friends are fairly musical (i.e. can sing fantastically).

The taco truck was a great addition to the after-ceremony festivities, and the pie was a nice alternative to a traditional wedding cake. All in all, I had a great time and am super excited for my friends and their journey through life together. I can’t wait to see the creativeness coming out of that marriage!

Another Triathlon

Posted on October 17, 2012 by mlwattsupp

Alright, so this one I didn’t do. I was planning on it, but a good friend convinced me to come to her wedding instead. It really didn’t take much convincing, just a one sentence email! But more on that later.

I didn’t do this triathlon, but my dad did. So I went to see him off on the swim before heading to my friend’s wedding. This was the Morro Bay Triathlon, right in our own backyard. In fact, the bike course goes near our house. The swim is a nice out and back course in the bay, the bike heads up Highway 1 towards Cambria, and the run is on the beach near Morro Rock.

Anyway, here are a couple pictures from the morning. And in case you were wondering, my dad got first place in his age group and beat his time from last year!!

Dad on his way to the swim.

Yep, the buoys for the swim were big happy faces!

Here is Dad’s wave in the water, headed out the channel towards Morro Rock.

It was early. Even the seal lions were tired!

Morro Bay

Posted on October 8, 2012 by mlwattsupp

I just thought I would share some scenes from Morro Bay, where my parents live. I am really enjoying my time here. It is great to be close to family and the town gives a lot of opportunities for outdoor fun like walking on the beach, hiking, sailing and kayaking in the bay.

A Trip to Schererville

Posted on October 5, 2012 by mlwattsupp

Earlier in September my mom and I took a trip to Bakersfield to visit my grandmother. While we were there we were coerced to visit “the farm” or “the ranch” as some people call it. No it isn’t actually a farm or a ranch… It is my Uncle and Aunt’s house in East Bakersfield.

I refer to it as a farm or a ranch because they have amassed a great collection of animals and plants which include:

4 horses

1 cow (named “moomers”)

1 goat

10 chickens (3 of which are named Huey, Dewey, and Louey)

Assorted dogs and cats

Various fruit trees (grapefruit, apple, pear, orange)

So my mom and I visited on the condition that she could ride the horses with my uncle. It was a great visit and always nice to see all the animals! Here are a couple pics from our visit!

Bakersfield Triathlon

Posted on October 3, 2012 by mlwattsupp

I know I haven’t posted in a while, but I’ve been busy.

Last weekend we were our usually busy selves and took a trip to Bakersfield for the Bakersfield Triathlon. I know what you’re saying… “Who in their right minds would want to do a triathlon in Bakersfield at the end of the summer?” Well the only answer I have is that we were definitely not in our right minds! We had fun anyway.

My dad has done this triathlon every year for the last 4 years. This was my first triathlon after an 8 year hiatus of playing frisbee. Before that I used to do a couple of triathlons each summer. Lucky for me, the Bakersfield Triathlon has both an olympic distance and a sprint distance. Dad did the olympic and I did the sprint.

For those that aren’t familiar with the sport of triathlon, it is a race that combines swimming, biking and running in that order. An olympic distance consists of a 1.5 K swim, a 40K bike, and a 10 K run. A sprint distance consists of a 0.75 K swim, a 20 K bike, and a 5 K run. Some competitions allow relays where one person does each event and the individual times are added up, but most competitions are a grueling endurance event in which one person does all the events by themselves.

Well the day dawned bright and sultry. The temp was about 75 degrees F when we woke up and above 90 degrees F by the time we finished. The swim took place in Lake Ming on the East side of Bakersfield (despite the swimming prohibited sign!). The water temp was perfect and no wetsuits were necessary.

The bike was a nice out and back course along well-paved and relatively traffic free roads. The olympic course had a couple of good hills before turning around and coming back.

The run was advertised as a little long, more like 6 K and 11 K. It was mostly on trails and bike paths, but was dusty and had little to no shade. This was a bit problematic in the heat and most of the crowd just “survived” the run instead of “racing it”.

In the end, Dad and I both had a great time. Dad came in 2nd in his age group and with a time very close to his last years’ time. I came in 3rd in my age group and 10th out of all the ladies in the sprint race. There will definitely be more races to come!

Reflections on Communication

Posted on August 8, 2012 by mlwattsupp

Communicating efficiently with other people is one of the hardest things to learn how to do. Language has so many nuances that are hard to interpret and convey. A simple conversation can be hard to have if two people come from different backgrounds or have different interpretations of life. Communicating can be difficult even when both parties are speaking the same language.

Communicating in a non-native language can be hard, full of misunderstandings, and fairly stressful. During our time in Uruguay, we knew that communication was hard, but we were learning, and it definitely got easier the more comfortable we became with the language. It wasn’t until we got home that we realized how stressed out we had become about communicating with people.

For months we had prepared for every conversation we needed to have with anyone. We prepared for new vocabulary. We prepared for “what ifs”. We prepared to sound as natural as possible. We did this for everyone, from the check-out lady at the grocery store to our land lady to people in retail stores. We combed the internet for phrases that might make sense in the situation we would be in. We reviewed what we would say, how we could explain things, how to ask questions. And we did this constantly.

When we got back to the states, Asa and I both found ourselves still mentally reviewing possible conversations with people in Spanish. One morning, Asa even decided not to get a haircut because it would be too difficult to explain the type of cut he wanted in Spanish… only realizing later that he wouldn’t be speaking Spanish with the lady at the barber shop. Doh! I even spoke to a waitress at the Miami airport in Spanish because I heard Spanish around me.

Once we finally convinced ourselves that speaking to people in English was easy, it was a pleasure to talk to people. More of a pleasure than we had ever realized it could be. Being able to communicate to someone exactly what we wanted, and do it easily was so gratifying. It was fun being able to talk to people. It was nice to not be stressed out about communicating with people. We no longer had to prepare for conversations, we could make last minute decisions.

Our time in Uruguay has made both of us appreciate communication in a whole new light. We commonly take communication for granted, forgetting that at some point when we were young we actually had to learn to communicate with others. The ability to communicate should not be taken for granted. It is our window to the world and without it, I imagine, we would be very lonely.

So the next time you’re at a restaurant or the check-out counter think about your ability to communicate, and do it with ease!

The Next Steps

Posted on August 7, 2012 by mlwattsupp

So now that we’ve returned home, some of you may be asking what we are going to do now.

Well, Asa has made his way to Atlanta to play ultimate frisbee for the club season with his old team, Chain Lightning. Having been a part of this team for the last 4 years, and the two of us not having any grand plans arranged, it was a must for Asa to play another season. He is still in the same wonderful job that he can do from anywhere! He will be doing a lot of traveling for the frisbee season, making appearances in Santa Cruz, Washington D.C., Orlando, and hopefully Sarasota at the end of October.

I am currently in California with my parents and our pets.

The view from my parents’ balcony. It sure is a tough life!

One of my goals during our stay in Uruguay was to find a job for when we got back. Yeah, that didn’t happen, but not for lack of trying. Apparently the academic and science fields are super hard to find a job in right now. So, that’s one of my main activities now: job searching. I am also hard at work continuing to publish work from my PhD dissertation. While in Uruguay I got two papers published and have a book chapter and another paper in the works. For the first time in a long time (almost 10 years), my athletic ambitions do not involve frisbee. Instead I am going to have some fun running and get back into triathlons with my dad.

The next question you’re probably thinking about is what is going to happen with the blog. Well, at least for a while, we’ll continue to post thoughts and reflections from our trip to Uruguay. We learned a lot that we definitely want to share.

We will also start posting some of our adventures in the states. Our friends in Uruguay can get an idea of our life in the states and our friends closer to home may get some awesome ideas for places to go or things to see.

Halupi

Adventures in an Ever-Changing World