These two sto­ries have had a pow­er­ful effect on me:

Why econ­o­mist Alex Tabar­rok (of Mar­ginal Rev­o­lu­tion) decided to travel to Machu Pic­chu spon­ta­neously:

At lunch with Bryan and Tyler last week the ques­tion arose as to what we would do dif­fer­ently if we were immor­tal.  […]  I answered that I would travel more.

Later the ques­tion was asked, what would you do dif­fer­ently if you found out you had only a short time to live.  I answered again that I would travel more.  […] I real­ized there was a prob­lem.  Given that I would travel more if I was to live either less or more the prob­a­bil­ity that I was at just that level of mor­tal­ity that I should not be trav­el­ing now must be van­ish­ingly small.

I leave for a solo trek to Machu Pic­chu July 25.

Why Ben Cor­man (of Rudius Media) is stay­ing in Panama longer than ini­tially antic­i­pated:

I don’t know why I’m doing this. Cer­tainly not because it’s easy. We run out of every­thing here. […] And now it’s rained for five days straight. […] Par­adise is start­ing to feel like a prison cell.

But given the chance to spend three months liv­ing in Panama, how could I say no? I’d spend the rest of my life won­der­ing what I’d missed.

[…] If you’re the kind of per­son who feels uncom­fort­able in busi­ness casual and spends every sec­ond of sit­ting behind a desk wish­ing, des­per­ately for some­thing, any­thing else, then there really isn’t a choice. Some peo­ple make it work. Some peo­ple can find the happy medium between who they are dur­ing their work week and who they are out­side of it. I’d prob­a­bly be a hap­pier per­son if I’d found that bal­ance but in 31 years, it’s eluded me every step of the way. Instead of buck­ling down and doing what­ever I’m sup­posed to be, I’m always run­ning off to do what­ever I want.

And so I guess that’s why I’m here. In the end I didn’t really have a choice.