Thought

Within the last 2 years I’ve traveled a lot… Much more than I ever expected.

What I’m rambling about today is often referred to as travel hacking and it’s nothing secret, or new. Go ahead, google that term. However, most people aren’t really in the know.

I always get asked “how can you afford to travel so often?” and “What are you doing for work? I wish I had a job where I could travel all the time.”

It’s funny because I am always upfront and tell them exactly how I do it. However, most look at me with 2 expressions.

It’s either the ‘are you freaking nuts’ kind of look, or a ‘please tell me your secrets’ response.

But believe me… it’s more of the first reaction. No one ever believes me.

My answer is that I leverage my incredibly good credit rating to take advantage of multiple credit card offers at a time, usually ones that offer a large amount of frequent flyer points if you meet a certain criteria. This usually means spending a set amount of money in a specified amount of time on the card to receive the offer.

More on this in a second.

In the last 2 years I’ve been to NYC twice, Boston more times than I can count (seriously), LA a few times, Kansas City, and various other places without spending much more than $5-10 roundtrip to cover the flight taxes.

There was one weird time that I was charged $85 roundtrip due to weird taxes that sometimes come with American Airlines travel points (I’ve heard of others dealing with this, as well). I’ve also used points for free hotels, as well.

Read moreTraveling Whenever and Wherever I want for nearly nothing…

The amount of questions I get from emails, Facebook messages, and even local trainers about how to get started writing, setting up a website, how to find your voice, how to network, and how to actually get anywhere with online fitness stuff is overwhelming.

I must say that I’m incredibly flattered to get asked all the time, but if I were completely honest with myself, the way I got started is not the way I’d ever recommend anyone doing it.

In fact, there’s a ton of crap I did along the way that could’ve been avoided if I weren’t so damn stubborn.

However, I did learn a lot through the process, and I’ll explain what I learned, and why I may have done things differently if I had the chance to.

For this post, we’re going to just throw out questions I get, and I’ll answer them below.

How did you find your voice? When did you finally become a decent writer?

By far, this is one of the most common questions asked. My answer is usually fairly simple, but I figure I’d elaborate a bit more here.

First off, writing is hard. For me, it’s hard to process all my thoughts at once, and it’s even sometimes emotionally trying, depending on what I’m writing about. If you read my fitness blog, I tend to cover fairly personal stuff from time to time.

Take the hard part, and combine that with the fact I hated everything about english class. I hated reading, and doing research papers.

5-6 years ago, if you told me I’d build a platform as a writer, I wouldn’t have believed you.

But things change. We evolve, and that’s what my journey as a writer has been – an evolution, of sorts.

Read moreCommon Questions + Advice I’d Give Myself Before Writing About Fitness On The Internetz

So, I don’t have a ton to say in this post other than a few things I wanted to share that’s happening in my 30-day experiment as well as a video my friend Jon turned me onto.

Cool Things Happening In JC’s Life, Internetz Edition

1. Today over coffee, my best friend made a comment that I wasn’t checking my phone – I hardly looked at it the whole time. In the past, he mentioned that I was pretty stuck to it, constantly checking messages, social media, and emails. In the back of my head, I was aware of this, for months even – but I couldn’t seem to hack the habit.

Since I’ve been meditating, I notice that I’m more present in any given moment, especially those I’m spending with others, than I was before meditation. He said he was intrigued by it, and my response actually, ummmm, surprised me.

I said something along the lines of “dude, I just want to take in as much of this moment as I possibly can. I don’t know when/if I’ll see you again, so this time is important to me.”

Reading that back to myself makes me feel all weird, but I like where this is going.

2. I’ve made the decision to seek out a meditation group here in Nashville. I believe this is the place I’m going to start: Nashville Zen Center. Another place I may try is actually a Buddhist Temple. I don’t know if this will last, but I want to try it out at least.

3. Here’s a neat article on ScienceDaily titled Meditation Reduces Loneliness. As some of you may know, one of the main reasons I do meditation is to reduce stress. Part of that is reducing inflammation. Here’s a really cool quote from the article:

Remarkably, the researchers said, MBSR also altered the genes and protein markers of inflammation, including the inflammatory marker C-reactive protein (CRP) and a group of genes regulated by the transcription factor NF-kB. CRP is a potent risk factor for heart disease, and NF-kB is a molecular signal that activates inflammation.

So what does this mean? Who knows… but I hope scientists continue to look into the benefits of meditation and mindfulness, though I feel this stuff is a bit hard to quantify.

Read moreMini-Update, Links and AWESOME Video