An Adventure in Patience

What’s the point in watching uplifting movies if you’re not inspired to move through challenging times?

In the Philippines, you append the word “po” to greetings as a sign of respect. But in my mind, everyone's name became “po”. I loved all the Po-dawgs I met.

Just months ago, I was experiencing so much lower back pain I could barely drive a car or stay seated for longer than half an hour. My college roommate who I’d not seen in five years reached out and wanted to meet up. He was only an hour away but I told him it was too far. And when I invited a woman over who I’d met on the local walking trail, I was in too much pain to even flirt. Pain was the only thing on my mind. After inching closer to me on the couch and running her hand through my hair, she said, “What else do I have to do? I’m making all the moves here.” 

And then there was the flight to Florida for a little family vacation before Christmas. Only two hours from Pittsburgh to Miami. But an hour into the flight I was wriggling around in my seat like ants were in my pants. It seemed my wish to travel indefinitely in Southeast Asia would not happen any time soon. The timing would be perfect in January since my apartment lease was ending, but good timing is only one factor. Not including layovers, total flying time from Pittsburgh to the Philippines where my friend lives is over 20 hours — too far away given my condition.

So I did other things. I started fishing, taking my hunter safety course, found new hiking spots in Pittsburgh, and continued dating. I also kept up my healing regimen. Walking and stretching in the morning, doing light workouts in the evening, seeing a chiropractor three times a week, and using my standing desk. My body was slowly starting to heal but I was bored and lonely. A mild depression crept in, accentuated by the fact that the garage apartment I was renting was landlocked by the homes of private families on a busy suburban street. There was no one to interact with. Everyone kept to themselves.

To escape the feeling of being in limbo, I considered meditating more. Buddha style. Many hours a day. Transcending loneliness through enlightenment. Wanting nothing, being okay with everything. I also considered switching from freelancing back to full-time employment, saving to buy a house, and rearranging my priorities to prepare for starting a family. Both options were interesting but they felt like all-or-nothing thinking: something I resort to when I feel trapped. I knew this wasn’t the way, and the time was not right to travel. So I practiced patience. I resumed my hobbies, and I chose to love my little apartment. I tapped into the truth that all good things happen in good time, and that what’s already right here is pretty good.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994) inspired me with hope during this time. After finding the shooting script and director notes at the local bookstore, I revisited the movie and fell in love with it again. Every morning for a month I would wake up and play the soundtrack that starts in the final scene when Red reads Andy’s letter: “Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” I knew this to be true, as well as the “get busy living or get busy dying” bit of advice.

The apartment above the garage I jokingly called my fortress of solitude. When I was in too much pain to sleep on the mattress in the bedroom, I would sleep on the floor in the den. In the background is the lovely standing desk from where I wrote and watched the groundhogs, bunnies, squirrels, and starlings play.

Asking questions to find clarity

My back was slowly healing but flying to Asia still felt unachievable. Plus I wasn’t sure I really wanted to go to Asia. I was supposed to go there while traveling with a group of thirty remote workers in 2017. It was part of a program called We Roam, similar to Remote Year — a company that organizes year-long round-the-world itineraries for people with wanderlust who work remotely. I lasted seven months in 12 countries before running out of money and feeling defeated from too many hangovers. At that point we were in Berlin and only half the group remained. 

After returning to Berlin from a side trip to a music festival outside Amsterdam, I was too hungover to function. It was an existential hangover. The kind where everything feels liquid and you feel disconnected from anything that’s good — when anxiety and depression mix together and make it seem like you’re on your own desolate planet of despair. You’re stuck in your throbbing head while everyone else is “out there” living in a beautiful world you can never return to. I never wanted to feel like this again!

I booked a flight back home to Pittsburgh and told everyone I’d be leaving in a few days. The group tried to convince me to stay but continuing onward with little money in my little liquid world felt unwise. I was no longer in digital nomad mode. The motherland was calling my name. I felt embarrassed and defeated and the feeling of failure stuck with me. So one of the reasons I’ve wanted to go to Asia is to continue the trip I never finished.

At a pool party In Florianopolis, Brazil, with people I traveled with to South America, Africa, and Europe in 2017. Before the doomsday hangover it was so much fun! I’m in the bottom left, possibly taking a pee. Behind me is Blaine who co-founded the program and recently appeared on Shark Tank!

Another reason I’ve wanted to go to Asia is a love for travel. Gaining better context of the world. Meeting people from different cultures. Better understanding and appreciating the whole. Having sensory experiences that you can’t encounter in your own country. These are good reasons to travel and I wanted to make sure I was aligned with them before booking the trip. I didn’t want to travel to redeem any sense of pride.

To better understand if Asia was in the cards for me, I opened my journal and wrote down some questions: Why do I want to travel? Am I running away from something? What if I just went to LA and Hawaii to see friends? Why do I want to go to Asia? Do I just want a change of scenery?

I asked myself more questions like this without attachment to any answers. I was able to do this because of my meditation practice over the years and from learning from David Hawkins who wrote the book Letting Go. His teachings reminded me that you don’t have to do anything specific to be happy. You put all options on the table and let the chips fall where they may. You surrender your desires and hope for the highest good. From this, you learn that you can be happy doing almost anything, anywhere. Happiness is not dependent on location or activity. It’s an energy you cultivate in and around you that extends to all locations and activities.

Over the next few days, I realized I had changed a lot over the years. I was no longer running away. I simply wanted to travel, and the time was right with my apartment lease ending. But I also wanted to be kind to my body. So I let Asia go and decided to travel to LA and Hawaii, each for a week. After getting a cortisol injection in my back, the swelling went down, my sciatic nerve was able to relax, and it no longer felt like I had ants in my pants. A 5-hour flight to LA then another to Hawaii to see friends felt achievable.

Los Angeles, California: Taking the first step

With the back pain under control, I was still hesitating to book flights to LA and Hawaii. Without the pain, a dislike for being trapped 30,000 feet above ground in a winged metal tube that resembles a flying penis was holding me back. Good old fear. And fear is not special. It comes and goes like a fart in the wind. Best to be patient and let is pass.

After the “stack” of fear had “run itself out” (phrases used by David Hawkins), I felt light enough to book my tickets to Los Angeles and Hawaii. And after making it to LA as a first step, it was verified that everything is always okay, even when fear tells you it’s not. So I booked the 11-hour flight to the Philippines while staying at my friend’s house in Valley Village, a town next to North Hollywood where I lived from 2014 to 2016, then again from 2018 to 2019. 

Setting my intention to budget travel

Another reason I was interested in Asia — specifically Southeast Asia — is because it’s cheap and I only work 10 hours a week for money. I started doing less traditional work so I could dedicate more time to screenwriting and blogging, my true passions. Sharing stories through writing is what I enjoy most. It relaxes and excites me and hopefully inspires others. 

Doing less traditional work (i.e. work you do for the paycheck) has also helped reduce stress and anxiety. In college I was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder, but now I think that’s bullshit. I simply wasn’t aligned with what was best for me. I never liked school and there I was, in school. Anxiety is not a big mystery. For me, it signals misalignment between what I’m doing and what I’m interested in doing. But it’s true, you need some money to live, and especially to travel. So instead of working more while traveling I decided to spend less, and this meant forgoing certain luxuries, like $70 Lyft rides to and from the airport.

I enjoyed seeing my friends and cousins in LA, but my adventure didn’t really start until the morning I left to catch my flight to Honolulu. In an effort to save money, I decided to wake up at 5 a.m. (five hours before my flight) so I could have enough time to take a Lime scooter to the Fly Away bus terminal in Van Nuys. The bus will take you directly to LAX for 10 bucks and is the best deal in town. It’s 10 miles away from where I was staying in Valley Village but while concocting the plan over some drinks that didn’t seem too far. I figured I could make it to the terminal in 45 minutes. At 50 cents per minute on the scooter, it would be cheaper than a $40 Lyft to the terminal. At about 22 bucks to the terminal by scooter and 10 bucks to LAX by bus, I was looking at some serious savings compared to the Lyft ride directly to LAX ($32 vs $70).

What I didn’t account for was the cold morning weather (my hands were freezing!), the slow speed of the scooter (it used to be 18mph instead of 10mph!), and the inability to leave the scooter at the terminal. After making it to the terminal 15 minutes behind schedule with numb hands, the Lime app informed me I had to park the scooter at a designated location. Or else. It didn’t even mention a fee. It just wouldn’t allow me to end my ride, meaning the meter was ticking and would continue to tick. My plan was falling apart.

The closest drop point was a mile and a half away and getting there wasn’t easy. People were starting to wake up and traffic was escalating. On top of that, there were no bike lanes. At one point, I was in a tunnel with cars honking at me and cruising by at 50mph. For years I’ve been strengthening my skill of ignoring critics, so I looked at it as an opportunity to do that — and surrender my life to God.

By the time I made it to the drop point, I had clocked 90 minutes at $45. At first I was bitter, then I thought, now that’s a way to start an adventure! If you barely make it to the airport on time, you’re barely living. By the time I paid $15 for a Lyft to take me back to the terminal and $10 for the bus ticket, I had saved no money at all. But my intention to save traveled with me to Hawaii and everywhere else I’d go after that. Spend less, adventure more. The spending less bit didn’t work this time but seeing the sun rise by scooter over the streets of LA, still wet from a historically significant amount of rain, made it worth it.

Oahu, Hawaii: An unexpected treat

Part of the reason I wanted to visit Hawaii was because I have a friend there I’ve never met. We worked remotely at the same company in 2022 and have remained friends since. The only issue with Hawaii is that staying there on a budget is tricky. A crummy hotel can cost well over $300 and most of the groceries are double the price of groceries on the mainland. So I asked my friend if she knew of any under-the-radar accommodations. 

While she was asking around, I created a post on Cragslist and set my location on the dogsitting app Rover to Oahu, Hawaii — the island my friend lives on. The post listed my budget as $100 per night and I got an interesting lead from an older artist and historian who lived in a nice house on the lower eastern shore. This didn’t amount to anything, but shortly after I got a lead on Rover from some cool surfer gals. I facetimed the one who split her time between being a firefighter on the mainland and living in Kailua with her fiance and two dogs, right across the street from a beautiful, non-touristy beach. To get leads like this, I made my nightly rate super low ($20 per night) and explained my travel situation on my Rover profile.

After the facetime, the lovely surfers booked me as a sitter for my last three nights in Oahu. I put the money from the booking toward renting a car for $30 per day through Turo, a service that’s half the price of mainstream car rental companies. Meanwhile, my friend had succeeded in finding me an accommodation for the first four nights of my Hawaii stay — on a boat in the same marina as hers in Waikiki. Paying her friend $100 per night beat staying in the expensive tourist trap of hotels behind the marina. I also had front row seats to the sunsets and big wave surfers.

This is the boat I stayed on for my first four nights in Oahu. My friend lives on a boat in the same marina. To the right of this picture is Waikiki where many tourists stay when they visit Honolulu.

I had no expectations for Hawaii and it ended up blowing me away. At first it was a place to see a friend and break up the flight to Asia. But when I picked up the car and started driving around the island, I found vistas that nowhere I’ve been in Asia so far have topped. I also love to hike and enjoyed trekking the old war paths. What were once paths for getting ammunition to the top of hills during World War II have been turned into hiking trails, including one fittingly called pillbox trail.

Makapu’u Lookout, Pillbox Trail, Hanauma Bay Ridge Top, and Koko Crater Railway

On my last night in Oahu, I had nowhere to stay so I booked a hotel for $300 back in Waikiki (not including the “resort fee”). It was the cheapest place I could find to myself and the condition of the place would have been a bummer but I chose to see it as a point of contrast: rounding out my stay there let me appreciate even more deeply how authentically I had lived during my short stay in Oahu. I even got invited to my friend’s Chinese New Year party at her parents’ house overlooking Pearl Harbor. 

As a result, I would revisit the movie Pearl Harbor (2000) the following night when staying with the doggos. I saw this movie in the theater with my dad when I was 12-years-old so it has nostalgic value. One of my favorite scenes is with William Fichtner in the opening scene. He was one of the most versatile supporting actors in Hollywood in the mid-90s and early 2000s with this small role and his other roles in Heat (1995), Armageddon (1998), The Perfect Storm (2000), and Black Hawk Down (2001). The “disarming the bomb” scene from Armageddon with Fichtner is one of my favorite movie scenes about perseverance. Michael Bay, the director of Armageddon and Pearl Harbor is so dramatic. I love it.

Not only did two doggos get to see Mr Fichtner in action, but three! There would be a little surprise waiting for me at the surfer couple’s cottage when I first met them: a four-week-old puppy! They offered to hand “Little Foot” off to a friend but I’ve been around puppies before and enjoy their company. Once you accept that you’ll be cleaning up pee and poop throughout the day and having your feet bit with razor sharp teeth, they’re a joy to be around.

Little Foot being cute, all the pups, and Ollie giving me a lick.

This experience made me wish that Rover was available in Southeast Asia and everywhere else in the world. It’s like AirBNB, but you get paid a little and get to hang with dogs. However, the good thing about Asia is that dogs are nearly everywhere and accommodations are cheap. As I write this, a dog named Cookie is approaching the bungalow I’m staying at for $20 per night in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Philippines: Island hopping and scooting around coastal villages

The day had finally come. The 11-hour flight to Manila, Philippines. This time, I would not be taking a Lime scooter. Instead, I boarded a public bus right outside my crummy hotel that took me to the airport for three dollars. My intention to budget travel was in motion. Even better, the bus drove me past some of the places I had visited during my stay. I used this time to reflect in my notebook and meditate. I also said a prayer.

Over the years, I’ve incorporated little prayers into daily living, and many prayers were prayed about me finding comfort 30,000 feet above the sea. I’ve also practiced perception shifting. Only 11 hours to get somewhere that used to take five weeks by boat! This is a small price to pay. Still, the mind has trouble holding on to such positive thoughts, and this is when the payoff of the prayers kick in.

I chose a seat in the back of the plane so I could easily stand up and stretch in the opening between the bathrooms. My neighbors were an eccentric and friendly Filipino man and his grandma who must’ve been 100 years old. He shared with me that he was nervous, which initially calmed me. It’s nice to know you’re not the only one feeling a certain way. However, I was hoping the seats next to me would be empty. I had lucked out with entire rows to myself for the flights to LA and Honolulu and my hopes were high for the flight to Manila. The man was nice, but the space was tight and his anxiety was starting to trigger my own as we waited on the tarmac for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, then 30 minutes without moving. Can I make it 11 hours back here without a cry for help?

Fearful questions and “what if’s”  started to arise. So I distracted myself with the screen embedded in the seat in front of me. My prayers for comfort were answered in the form of a broken headphone jack. I asked a flight attendant if there was a trick to getting it to work. She tried to work the AUX cable of my headphones into it and agreed it was broken. “We have another seat available at 53D,” she smiled. “It’s a premium seat. Better.” So I told the nervous man that he could have some more space to relax and headed to the new seat. It was an aisle seat with no other seats in front of it in the middle of the plane. Instead of having space in back of me, it was in front of me, and it was indeed better. Thank you, little prayers.

My new neighbor was a Filipino woman in her 60s who had a home in Maui and was on her way to visit family. An hour into the flight, she got up from her seat and went to an opening to stand. She stayed there standing for about an hour. When she retired back to her seat, she informed me she had a lower back issue. I told her I did as well and understood why she was standing for so long. When your sciatic nerve is pinched, standing is a great medicine. Compared to sitting, it relieves about 5 to 40 percent of pressure from the lumbar discs in your lower back.

With my new seating situation, the flight was bearable. I was able to stretch my legs out as far as I could which relieved pressure from my lower back. I could also easily stand or move around the spacious area in front of me like the lady from Maui. These mobility options and some entertainment — episodes of Masters of the Air and Tokyo Vice on my iPhone, and Ready Player One (2018) in the plane screen — made 8 hours pass by fairly quickly. The last three hours were less pleasant when everyone started waking up from their long naps and getting restless. I saw this as my cue to order a few beers and, before long, the plane touched down in Manila.

On my third day in Manila, my friend took a bus down from Quezon City to meet me. For the next ten days we traveled around Palawan, the largest province in the country composed of 7,641 islands. We started in Puerto Princesa where we saw the Underground River; then Port Barton, a backpacker town where I rented and rode a motorbike for the first time; then El Nido where we went island hopping and played some Filipino version of roulette; then Roxas where I was the only foreigner except for a group of Swedes we discovered 10 kilometers south.

The Underground River, Port Barton, El Nido, and Hidden Beach

From the outside, all this might look like vacation, but I’m simply living my life. 

Two years ago when I was traveling around the United States in a campervan, I met someone who told me she was living, not traveling. At the time, I didn’t understand what this meant. Now I do. Every day cannot be the high I was chasing. Lulls are needed to rest and recalibrate. And this is a great perception shift. When I’m alone and feelings of boredom creep in, I remember to rest and do simple things. I am not vacationing, I am living. I’ll meet the right people, see the right places. There is nowhere to be, nowhere to go. I’m sure that will come later. But for now I follow what feels interesting. And when it feels off, I ask why. Through these questions I find the way.