Yesterday I was the lucky recipient of a comment on one of my blog posts, expressing mild displeasure with my new book, South of Normal.  And displeasure with my existence here on earth.  And any chance I might have of chillaxing in heaven one day.  

Granted, the comment was eloquent, passionate, and succinct, a good piece of writing in its own right.  It said:

"FUCK YOU AND YOUR FUCKING BOOK.  BURN IN HELL YOU SONOFABITCH"

Just like that – all caps to further get the point across.  Oh, and it was thoughtfully submitted by a fan named “FUCKYOU.”

Well Mr. FUCKYOU, so nice of you to touch base.  I would LOVE to know who you are so I could thank you personally for your support, but, alas, you didn’t leave an email address, a phone number, or even a valid social security number.  

I could only take a wild guess.  They say when faced with something like this, go with your first gut instinct, so I answered with the first person who came to mind who probably wrote it:

But no, she assured me when she sends me hate mail she leaves out the “SONOFABITCH” part.  Makes sense.  So who could it be?  Someone who is IN the book, who didn’t like their portrayal?  But I changed the names, details, and fictionalized characters in the book, as well as sent the manuscript to the main characters ahead of time to prescreen it.

Could it be a Costa Rican national, upset that I told the truth about my experiences in the wonderful shit show that is Tamarindo?  Maybe, but very few Ticos would lower themselves to actually reading my inane blog, and their death threat would be more overt, like: “I’M GOING TO STAB YOU IN YOUR LEFT COJONE WITH A RUSTY FORK YOU PUTA GRINGO!!!”  In fact, it only takes about $350 do put a hit on someone in Costa Rica, so if a Tico really wanted to do me harm they’d probably do it the right way and not hold back via a blog comment.  Give them some credit!  So we're back to speculating if he is a bitter expat, someone who has a financial interest in Tamarindo?  Am I getting warmer? 

So who can you be?  The suspense is killing me, Mr. FUCKYOU!  Your comment is like being held down and tickled, and I just can’t stand it!

Maybe you aren't a Mr. at all, but a gilded ex-lover, a MS. FUCKYOU?  Probably not, because those have been few and far between lately (the lover part, I mean – there are plenty of the gilded kind).  Or maybe it was a typo, an innocent mistake, and "FUCK" is actually your first name, and "YOU" your last name?  So from now on I will address you as Mr. You.  Ahhh hell, we know each other better than that, so let's keep it on a casual first name basis, shall we?  You can call me "Norm," and I will just call you "FUCK."  Is that better?

Well, I guess we’ll never know who you truly are and why you wan't me to burn in hell, FUCK, and you'll forever remain anonymous.  Oh, wait…what’s that?  Your computer’s IP address showed up when you left your scalding comment?  AWESOME!  What a great little game of hide and seek you are playing!  You left us a breadcrumb of a clue, you FUN FUCK, or shall I call you "Commentor IP: 68.5.179.131!" 

Ok, so I enter your IP address in one of these hundreds of free sites that track them down to the longitude and latitude (-118.3163 and 33.7584, respectively, if anyone is keeping track at home) and VOILA!  We can find out exactly where you were sitting when you wrote that heartfelt praise!  

Surprisingly, you wrote this from the United States.  California, in fact.  Let me zoom in on Google Earth.  Zoom, zoom, zoom.  It’s in Southern California, near Los Angeles.  Zoom, zoom, zoom.  In a place called Rancho Palo Verdes.  Zoom zoon zoom.  Wow – this is cool!  I can track your IP address down to a little red dot in the middle of Beecham Drive, a small street that only has a few houses!  It looks like a part of town with grand, expensive houses - you must be a BIG FUCK!  And if I cross-reference that with Los Angeles country property tax records, PRESTO!  I have the names of the homeowners and even your exact address!    

Coincidentally, I am coming to California for a book tour soon, and even making it down to Los Angeles!  Wouldn’t it be fun if I found the time to drive out to Rancho Palo Verdes and knock on your door and say hello, face to face, you BIG FUN FUCK!?  I could even give you a sloppy hug and a free copy of my book since you liked it so much!  Invite me in for lemonade and I'll bring cookies!  Or I can just pull a mischievous prank like toilet papering your front yard since you fancy yourself such a cheeky CLEVER FUCK!  Ohhhhh I can’t wait to meet you – and video record the expression on your face as you answer the door, you BIG FUN CLEVER FUCK!


Ok, Mr. FUCKYOU, I have to go now, but it’s been fun, and thanks SO much for keeping us entertained!  

See you soon!  

Warm Regards,

Norm "GOFUCKYOURSELFRIGHTBACK" Schriever

In a continuing effort to help you live the dream - traveling the world and working from the beach, this is part 3 of an article on virtual careers. 

You can see part 1 here, 45 Virtual Jobs You Can Do From The Beach. 

And part 2 here.

Last week I had the chance to interview Rich Pearson, the Chief Marketing Officer of Elance.com, the world’s biggest online work community.  I asked Rich how Elance functions, what kind of virtual jobs are available, and whether it is indeed possible for a semi-talented writer to work from the beach in the tropics. 

Before becoming the CMO at Elance four years ago, Rich worked at Yahoo, Bing Technology, and other tech start-ups.  He’s an alumni of Cal-Berkeley and the Walter A. Haas School of Business, and alongside his wife and kids, enjoys traveling to places like England, Thailand, and Nigeria, to vacation, work, or experience the expat lifestyle.    

What is Elance?

Elance.com is the world’s largest online work platform.  But instead of being another online job posting board, like Craigslist or CareerBuilder, Rich describes Elance as “Online dating for business and freelancers.” 

Based out of Mountain View, California and Olslo, Norway, Elance was launched in its present form in 2007.  Since then they have paid out over $750 million dollars to freelancers (or e-lancers).  Approximately 500,000 businesses actively use Elance, posting 3,500 new jobs every day for 2.5 million freelancers.  Rich anticipates that Elance will pay out about 300 million dollars to freelancers in 2013 alone.   

How does it work?

When a business or individual needs work done, but doesn’t want a full-time employee (or another warm body sitting in the office) they can post a job on Elance to attract freelance workers.  These workers apply for the job through the site, displaying their skills and past work experience through their Elance profile, which acts as an online resume.  If they are awarded the job they interact with the employer directly, do the work, and get paid, all through Elance.  The employer and the freelancer can be located in the same town or on opposite ends of the world – it doesn’t matter.   

It’s interesting to note that all of this takes place through the Elance platform.  Most employment sites just match people up and take a finder’s fee, leaving everyone on their own and hoping for the best.  But Elance only gets paid when the job is done and the employer pays the freelancer, so they have a huge vested interest in making sure it’s all done right.  The fee for their service is 8.75% of the total cost of that job, which is added on to the bid so it’s not out of the freelancer’s paycheck.

What kinds of freelance jobs are available on Elance?

Rich defines a virtual career as “Anything you can do in front of a computer,” which definitely fits our dream of working from our laptops on a beach in the tropics.  He breaks down what the virtual jobs on Elance consist of:

40% are tech jobs, mostly mobile application development, web design, and coding.  40% are considered creative jobs, like blog or article writing, graphic design, search engine optimization, and social media marketing.  The remaining 20% is a great mix of jobs for virtual assistants, architects, accountants, and even attorneys.  Those last three fields are growing the fastest, Rich reports.   

When I ask Rich if virtual careers are gaining popularity, he says they are “An unstoppable force.”  Indeed, the marriage of virtual careers and freelancing is both pulling and being pushed by technological and social forces, forever changing the way we work.  Elance is only one aspect of that change, but it’s a big one, with triple-digit growth every year.  I can think of no more telling flashing neon endorsement of this phenomenon than the fact that Elance employs about 80 full time workers but 150 freelancers on a regular basis.   

How are freelancers paid?

Most work is project-based but some employers do pay hourly.  The paychecks range from quick $10 jobs to projects costing thousands of dollars.  Elance uses an internal escrow system to handle all payments, the only site of their kind in the world that has that capability.  The freelancer’s fee is set and then broken into installments to be paid out at predetermined milestones as the work is completed, so everyone stays on track.

     At Christmas time they put a pine tree up by the bar in the Estrella, decorated with ornaments and tinsel. Blinking white lights hung from palm trees and front doors all over town. Someone hung a stocking from the lifeguard tower. The local schoolchildren even put on a Christmas pageant on a stage built by the pool, complete with a Santa Claus, who was sweating his north pole off in that heavy suit.

     They even brought out a local musical act as a special treat, though I think it was more of a treat for him than the audience. He introduced himself as “Tico Hendrix” and sported a jerry-curl and buck teeth. Tico pawed at an electric keyboard and howled out Christmas songs and bad jokes into the microphone.

“It’s so great that they give special needs people a chance to perform in public,” I told my friend, who corrected me that Tico Hendrix was fully functioning, and not even on the spectrum, but just really bad. During the merciful breaks between bad songs, he told bad jokes:

“Thank you ladies and germs, your applause is underwhelming. Excuse me, folks, but my English is not so good. And neither is my Spanish...” 

Crickets. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Tamarindo so quiet. Tamarindo, Costa Rica, surf, ski, snowboard, diving, pura vida, Central America, Nicaragua, San Juan del Sur, Amazon best seller, travel, adventure, backpack, hiking, sharks, Endless Summer, Robert August, memoir, fitness journey, globetrotting, perfect beach, paradise, spring break, expat, live abroad, work abroad, summer reading, around the world, great read, humor, laugh out loud, South of Normal, Pushups in the Prayer Room

Rudy Maxa, one of America’s premier consumer travel experts, is host and executive producer of “Rudy Maxa’s World,” the Emmy-award winning, 20-episode public television travel series featuring destinations as diverse as Korea and Argentina.

His weekly radio show is simulcast to 160 stations in the U.S. and abroad, including the Armed Forces Radio Network.
http://www.rudymaxasworld.com/

Norm Schriever is an author, humorist, expat, cultural mad scientist, and enemy of the comfort zone.  He likes getting lost on the map and then telling stories about the cool people he meets there.  

Check out his latest book, South of Normal, and drop him an email at hi@NormSchriever.com

Every year 6.6 million U.S. citizens call another country home. They do so for a variety of reasons -- work assignments, warmer climates and better medical care, and a cheaper cost of living. But whatever the reason for buying a one-way ticket to being an expatriate, they have some important choices to make once they get there.

I've been lucky enough to live in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and travel all over the world, 37 countries on six continents and counting, and I've met U.S. expatriates almost everywhere. If you're considering a similar move, here are some things to consider:

1. Language.
Communication is something we take for granted, but when you are in a foreign country you might not be able to walk right up to someone and express yourself... or ask for life's essentials, like the bathroom, and beer. You'll want to study and practice the language as much as possible before you go. Also, taking intensive language lessons once you arrive is a great way to meet people and ease the linguistic transition.

2. Where to go? 
There are many factors that go into your choice of a new home country: climate, political stability, crime, proximity to the U.S. for a quick flight home, cost, language and customs, etc. Many people chose to expatriate to places like Panama, Costa Rica, Belize, or the Philippines for these reasons.

3. Taxes, insurance, and other nuts and bolts.
Even when you're living in another country, the IRS expects you to pay U.S. taxes as long as you're a citizen and make income. You'll probably also want to stay current with your U.S. health insurance, and many people conveniently forget to tell them that you don't live in the U.S. any more so it doesn't cause complications. You can bank online and pay bills online these days with e-statements, but you can also get your stateside mail sent to a relative or to a post office box.

4. Medical.
It's important to be aware of the medical services available in your communities, and how they are rated for quality and consistency, as well as access to prescription medications. Many seniors who are expats want to live in countries with medical care that is much less expensive than in the U.S. Luckily, that is most of the world.

5. Buying real estate and a car. 
Your first instinct may be to plant "roots" by buying a home, a car, etc. but I've found it's best to give it some time. Don't make any major purchases for at least a year until you thoroughly learn the local culture, customs and business climate. There can be some complex and Draconian rules when it comes to property and vehicle ownership, as well as bizarre registration and paperwork demands. Basically, people get ripped off or make bad decisions all the time, so give it some time until you're a seasoned expat and enlist the advice of a trusted local. You'll also want to weigh out the import taxes and costs of having things like a car or furniture shipped down to you, or buying them locally.

6. Safety.
The reality is that you have to be careful no matter where you are in the world, but with some common sense you can stay safe. Don't walk around with jewelry, don't show off valuables, don't go into bad areas, befriend locals to show you around and watch after you, don't walk around late at night or get too drunk, and get a dog! Every country (including the U.S.) suffers from street crime problems, but avoid countries where there's political upheaval or religious fundamentalist groups.

7. Working, making money, and doing business.
Many expats find out that life isn't quite as cheap as they anticipated and the savings goes fast, so you'll have some decisions to make about earning money. But do you try and open a local business? Try to keep working in the U.S., doing your job remotely from your new home country? Or jump into tourism? Do your research and go for a low risk consistent paycheck, not a venture that requires a huge up-front investment of time and money. I can't tell you how many people I've seen open bikini or surf shops or restaurants, and six months later they're broke, stressed and going out of business. Keep it simple.

8. Technology.
Technology will be an invaluable tool as you try to stay connected to friends and family, do business, and get things done from your new country. With some adjustment and planning technology will be your best friend. Get a local cell phone. Almost every bar and restaurant has Wi-Fi, so iPads, laptops, iPhones (with your U.S. network turned off!), and e-readers can all be used as mini computers to keep you rocking and rolling. Applications like Skype, Netflix, WhatsApp, internet calling apps, language translators, currency converters, and GPS make your life easier. And a Go Pro camera is just fun!

9. Blending into the local community.
Assimilating to the local culture is a long-term challenge, but also a constant source of beauty, humor and fascination. Be naturally curious and open to being outside of your comfort zone. Say hello and show respect to everyone, learn the local sayings, the customs, celebrate the holidays, make local friends, and even get in good with the police and officials. Attending religious services and volunteering to do charity work are great ways to foster good will and positive karma.

10. Residency and Visas.
Some expats want to become citizens of their new nation, some are content staying there on extended tourist visas. If that's the case you might have some shuffling to do over the border to renew your visa every 90 days, and be your ability to open a business or own property restricted. Sometimes there are huge benefits to becoming a citizen, sometimes no real difference, so do your homework and talk to other expats, because it could be a lengthy and expensive process to establish residency.

***
I hope that helped!  Email me any time!  Now, can you handle the UNFILTERED experience of my time as an expat in Costa Rica? The TRUTH that you will NEVER find in an article?  Check out the CONTROVERSIAL book that has the Tico TImes, AM Costa Rica, and Costa Rican expats talking...and laughing!    

Get the ebook: Limited time only $4.99 on Amazon for Kindle.

South of Normal; My Year in Paradise.
A gonzo blast of laughter and adventure covering subjects like:  

• Spending "quality" time in a Third World prison.
  
• Getting ripped off by locals.
  
• How a country is different during the rainy season.
  
• Navigating the local dating scene.
  
• Medical care, working virtually, and technology abroad.
  
• Staying safe.
  
• Dodging sharks, scorpions, drug traffickers and corrupt police.
  
• Everything you WISHED you knew before you moved abroad!

 Tamarindo, Costa Rica, surf, ski, snowboard, diving, pura vida, Central America, Nicaragua, San Juan del Sur, Amazon best seller, travel, adventure, backpack, hiking, sharks, Endless Summer, Robert August, memoir, fitness journey, globetrotting, perfect beach, paradise, spring break, expat, live abroad, work abroad, summer reading, around the world, great read, humor, laugh out loud, South of Normal, Pushups in the Prayer Room

I got an email early this morning that Amazon.com just released my book, South of Normal, on Kindle. I was thrilled after all of these months waiting and trying to rush the release date, and then I realized something else - today is April 20, 4:20!  How perfect for a book about living as a beach bum in the tropical paradise of Costa Rica for a year! 

For all of my green friends, HAPPY 4:20 DAY!  For the rest of you, today is an unofficial holiday to celebrate hemp, cannabis, and marijuana.  Whether you smoke it recreationally or not (and I don't much at all anymore) the movement to legitimize this plant for the medical, health, and industrial uses is rapidly gaining momentum.

To commemorate 4:20 and celebrate the Amazon/Kindle release of South of Normal, I am reprinting a chapter titled "Don't Fall Asleep Under The Manchineel Tree" in it's entirety.  I hope all you green lovers and 4:20 enthusiasts enjoy it!

Norm :-)

PS The print version will be out within a couple of weeks, and you can order it here.

Don't Fall Asleep Under The Manchineel Tree.

A chapter from South of Normal.

On the south end of Playa Tamarindo, where the sands narrowed into cliffs of black rock, impassable except by crossing the sharp crags at low tide, stood a lone tree. Nothing else grew out there, where the ocean blew relentlessly without the bay as a buffer: neither savannah oaks nor coconut trees. The Manchineel tree was the only one that could survive, its deep roots acting like a windbreak, keeping the sand from eroding off the beach.

That tree was the perfect shelter on a scorching day: an umbrella of waxy green leaves and spiked flowers with small gray apples. I walked down there when I wanted to be alone, and think.

“Whaa gwaan mi breddah!” the Rasta called out to me on the way, emerging barefoot and shirtless from the jungle. He greeted me warmly and made sure I didn’t get tangled in his fishing lines, strung taut into the sea from bamboo sticks stuck in the sand.

He asked me where I was headed and I pointed to the Manchineel tree at the end of the beach.

“Ahh, mind yah don’t fall asleep under dat Manchineel tree,” he said. “Why’s that?” I asked.
He told me that the Manchineel was perfectly safe to sit under it when

it was sunny, but when it rained the water filtered through the leaves and the apples and became poisonous. They called it manzanilla de la muerte, or the “little apple of death,” in Spanish, and it was so poisonous that the Carib Indians used to dip their arrows in its sap. More than one drunk fell asleep under the Manchineel tree, the Rasta explained, and woke up with horrible blisters on his face like acid burns. If you got too much of it, or inhaled the smoke when it burned, you could go blind or become paralyzed, even die.

I thanked him and wished him luck with the fishing.

“Jah provide,” he said.

I walked on toward the tree, my footsteps disappearing in the sand with each wave that rolled in.
I’d read somewhere that there are 422,000 species of plants in the world, 1.7 million scientific names to label them all. Each of them have unique characteristics, benefits to the ecosystem they exist within, and natural defenses. Every one of them has a role in nature, a reason for existing that isn’t just a divine accident.

422,000 types of plants in the whole wide world, so much natural beauty in Costa Rica that it was like strolling in Edenic prehistory, and yet there were so many problems around this one little plant that some botanist named “marijuana.” How arbitrary it seemed that the Manchineel tree wouldn’t be just as shunned. After all, it could make you blind, or even kill you.

It sure seemed like a lot of people were smoking marijuana, no matter where I went in the world. It appeared to make people happier, to pacify their spirits a little bit. Maybe I was missing something, but I didn’t see the evil with people getting high. We all were trying to get high in some way, weren’t we? Through meditation, yoga, exercise, religion, chasing success, money, or pulling love toward us. And if that didn’t work, we went to our doctor and got permission to take a little pill, designed to do the exact same thing, albeit with the small disclaimer that they “may cause anxiety, dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea, irregular heartbeat, blood spouting out of your ears, yellow fish eyes, six types of rectal cancer, and death in some cases.” Wasn’t it all the same endorphins? What was the alternative, trying to get LOW?

Just like the Manchineel, when you used everything in nature for its intended purpose, with balance and prudence, the ecosystem worked just fine. So why could you get thrown in jail for just touching that one species of plant, when you were perfectly welcome to fall asleep under the Manchineel tree? Or, if we’re making everything that could be bad for us illegal, why are so many things left off the list?

I didn’t have a dog in that fight either way; even though someone offered marijuana to me daily in Tama, I rarely smoked, and if I never touched that one particular plant again for the rest of my life it wouldn’t really bother me. When I was younger I’d tried just about every substance under the sun (though I never put a needle in my arm), but once I reached my 30s do you want to know what my recreational drug of choice was? A few beers. I know, not very sexy, but a couple of beers and a 10:00 p.m. bedtime suited me just fine, maybe a puff every blue moon. 

But Pistol was suffering in Babylon because he’d emulated nature and grew some plants for his own use. Sure, he got stupid. Okay, very stupid, and then he got caught, but he should have been scrubbing toilets and cleaning litter off the beach, not fighting for his life stuck in a Costa Rican prison with no hope of getting out for a long time. It felt so out of control, but there was no one I could go to and just say, “This is way out of hand and someone is going to get hurt. Please stop it.” Anything could happen to him in there.

And me? That desperate rush of entropy was all too familiar—I’d been thrust into a similar situation seventeen years earlier in Colorado.

I was hanging out with my roommate and our female neighbors after the bars on a Wednesday night, smoking a bowl. They were throwing a football around, being goofy, and it broke a window by accident. Someone called the cops and they came in without a warrant. There was a little weed on the table, but I didn’t think it would be a big deal. “Whatever you find is mine, but let the girls go,” I said, thinking I’d take one for the team. Little did I know but my roommate had a pound of mushrooms hidden in a golf bag and eighteen marijuana plants growing in his closet upstairs. The police ripped our apart- ment to shreds and then woke up the judge and got a proper warrant. We were stuffed and cuffed, brought down to the station separately, and coerced into writing statements without an attorney present. From there, they brought me to the county jail, where I woke up sleepless on a metal bench in a cold concrete room. The fluorescent lights were on 24 hours a day, reaching into my eyes like hot fish hooks. I was allowed to make phone calls but I couldn’t remember anyone’s phone number. I was processed, strip-searched, and given an orange jumpsuit to wear. They guard took my shoelaces, a standard precaution, he explained, so that no one would try to hang themselves.

#96CR275. That was my new identity. I was thrown into general popula- tion and assigned the top bunk in Pod #2A, just like Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment number on the show, I remember thinking. There was one small window facing east, a metal toilet with no seat, and a Bible. I was given a bologna sandwich, a mushy apple, and a carton of expired milk on a plastic tray. I got started on the Bible.

Reilly bailed me out on a Friday afternoon, only minutes before the cutoff time when I’d be stuck in there all weekend. I got home thinking it was just a bad dream, but when I listened to the answering machine it was my boss at the town community center firing me from my job.

I didn’t tell my mother I’d been arrested. To be honest, I was more afraid of her than going to jail. I had no money and now no job, but everyone told me that using the public defender was suicide, so I scrounged together my last remaining credit cards and made a down payment for a solid criminal defense attorney who took pity and let me pay in installments. 

The next six months were a hellish waiting game to learn the fate of my life. It wasn’t looking good—they were trying to pin me with trafficking for the mushrooms and the marijuana that was growing, even though I’d had nothing to do with it. The prosecutor was pushing hard for four years in Federal prison with no chance of parole, and a felony on my record.

Still, I was one of the lucky ones, a white boy with a credit card, but there were plenty of others who went through processing with me who got denied bail, received stiffer sentences because the judge didn’t like how they looked, and had to walk the plank with the public defender. They were guilty just for showing up, for being born. At least I got to stress on the outside. But I found out quickly that when you’re in the system everyone has their hands in your pocket.

The only one who would give me a job was a drug dealer, a huge Mexican ex-felon named Jorge who ran a house painting company as a front for his other activities. He walked with a limp, courtesy of a baseball bat to the knee, and wore his sunglasses indoors. I woke up at dawn and worked all day outside in the winter, my fingers frozen from washing out buckets and clean- ing brushes. Jorge bounced checks all over town, including to his employees, so the only other worker who stuck with him was a guy named Eric, a high school dropout who sported a bowl haircut and wore tight white pants. Eric talked incessantly about the time he was abducted by aliens out of his front yard. He didn’t mind as much that Jorge wrote us bad paychecks because he wouldn’t need money anyway once the aliens came back to take him to their home planet, but I sure needed Earth currency. On a big Saturday night I’d get a 99-cent bottomless cup of coffee and read at the local café. At least it was warm in there, and sometimes people left half-eaten pastries on their plates when they left. Don’t get me wrong, I was incredibly thankful just to have a job because no one would hire someone with my criminal record, but still, my seven dollars an hour didn’t cover court fees, attorneys, and rent and living expenses.

Sometimes I was hungry, but I refused to go on welfare or food stamps. There were more than a few nights that I had pride for dinner. One day I looked in the phone book and got a ride to the Blood Center, where they let me donate plasma twice a week. They’d stick a three-inch-long, alarmingly thick needle into my arm and draw out my blood for 45 minutes, spinning it through a centrifuge and injecting my own blood back into my veins, devoid of the valuable white blood cells and platelets. For that I got $15 the first time I donated in a week, and $12 the second time because my blood was so depleted. 

That was my grocery money, $27 a week. I waited for my orange juice and a cookie after I was done and then I shuffled straight to the grocery store. Everyone looked so happy, so clean, but I didn’t feel so good, sick to my stomach and about to fall over. I put things in my cart and added them up twice in my head and then brought them to the register. I waited with the other respectable people, but when everything was scanned and bagged my card bounced. “Maybe it’s just your card, try again,” the checkout girl said. “Do you have another one?” I didn’t. I had to put the things back into the cart, one by one, and then leave them.

The shame made my cheeks red, the only color in my face. I wanted to cry. The gal working felt bad for me, and she wanted to cry. Some of you are shaking your heads because you’ve been there, too. You’ll never forget that feeling, huh? “Just leave it, sweetie,” she said. “I’ll put it aside and have it ready for you when you come back,” but we both knew I wasn’t coming back. It was cold outside. I walked back home, past the college kids eating pizza and spilling beer on their front porches, making noises that I remembered as laughter.

When I got home I dialed the Blood Center. “The soonest you can come back in is Tuesday,” they said.

That winter I shaved my head. I lived in my attic bedroom with the door shut. I did more pushups and pull-ups than I’d been able to do before, extra sets out of fear. I shouldered weights that I couldn’t lift. I read 800-page books by Dumas and Dostoyevsky and actually understood them—“It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?”

My one pair of jeans sagged from my bony ass like a potato sack so I poked a new hole in my belt, then another. I waited months for a court date just to show up and they’d set another court date. The prosecutor was unrelenting.

I’ve never wanted so much in my life to get the fuck out, to just run and keep running. But if I bolted then there was no going back. My eyes bounced off the attic walls and then looked down at my shoelaces. I started consider- ing options that weren’t on the table before.

Four years in Federal prison—what would they do to me? I couldn’t sleep. Every night the wolves howled louder. I dreamt about their snarling pack chase and woke up with the taste of blood in my mouth.

My sentencing hearing was on the fifth of July. My attorney did a bang up job and got them to accept a plea bargain for of a couple misdemeanors and suspend the felony, a four-year sentence hanging over my head if I got into any trouble at all. That meant I could only get sentenced to up to six months in state prison—a huge victory. Still, no one in my family knew. 

The judge was bored and ready to give me the full sentence, and asked if I had anything to say as a formality. I spoke from my heart. He lifted his head for the first time that day, actually looking at me like a person, and sentenced me to the mandatory minimum, fifteen days in county.

They said I could turn myself in the following Monday but I told them I’d rather get it over with, so I was handcuffed and put in the back of a sheriff ’s car in my borrowed suit. “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay,” by Otis Redding was playing on the radio, and right there I decided to move to San Francisco once the whole thing was over with.

We got to the Larimer County Detention Center and I went through processing again and got thrown in.

“Do you know where you are?” the guard asked. I assured him that I did.

A menacing prisoner with a square head and knuckles like hams approached me.

He looked at me. “Sit down,” he said, motioning to a metal table where other menacing prisoners were sitting. I did, and he dealt us all cards. “My name is Metro,” he said. “Two’s and dirty Jacks are wild.”

“What’s up, Metro? I’m Norm,” and we were all friends by lunchtime. Most of the guys weren’t bad at all, just rough around the edges, in for fighting, small time possessions, or parole violations. There were a few guys who were in for check fraud or smacking their wives around, but we avoided them.

It was a vacation for me on the inside. We had cable TV and I got to play ping pong and cards.

Our first night we all watched a new movie on HBO, Mr. Holland’s Opus. By the midway point the guys were all bored and wanted to change the channel, but I was so touched by the movie’s emotion that I had a tear in my eye. Yeah, probably not the best time for that.

I did pull-ups on the shower bar and hung out with my homies, Metro, Gus Lee, a tall, athletic hippie from North Carolina who got pinched with mushrooms in his VW van on his way through town, and a Mexican teenager with a broken arm. I never asked him how his arm got broken. Gus kicked my ass at ping pong, but I could beat the kid playing with the cast most of the time.

We were given three meals a day, the same bologna sandwiches and spoiled milk, but I didn’t care. On the weekends we could have visitors, and Reilly came to see me. I desperately needed him to bring me some toiletries because when I came straight from sentencing I didn’t have a chance to bring any possessions. He brought me a toothbrush and deodorant and more clothes. He also presented me with soap on a rope. I’m not making this up—that horse fucker thought it was funny. But he also brought me lasagna, so I forgave him and we laughed about it.

I reached the Manchineel tree at the edge of the beach and sat in the sand beneath it, enjoying canopy from the midday sun. Imagine someone being against a tree, I thought. I knew if it rained I shouldn’t be there, but of course I didn’t have any bad feelings toward it for that. That’s the same reason I’m not pro-marijuana. How can I be for a plant? That’s almost as ridiculous as being against a plant. But do you want to hear what’s even funnier than soap on a rope? As I sat under the tree in Tamarindo and contemplated these twists of fate, almost two decades after my own incarceration, marijuana had just been legalized in Colorado. I never thought I’d see that in my lifetime. It begged the question, was I immoral back then, or was the law immoral? Or does morality have nothing to do with the laws of man?

On the day of my release, I was twisted, jumpy. I threw all of my things in the trash and wished Metro and Gus and the Mexican kid with the cast good luck.

“Do you have someone picking you up?” the guard asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said, but when I walked out of the metal door and it buzzed and clicked behind me, there was Reilly’s blue Escort, parked with his motor running. I looked over my shoulder and then walked across the parking lot, squinting against the sun. Everything felt different, though I couldn’t explain why.

There was a guy in the front seat, so I jumped in the back and we drove off. “Norm, this is my new roommate, Joey,” he said. The handsome, smiling Italian guy in the front seat turned around and shook my hand.

“Nice to meet you, man—you can call me Pistol. How was it?”

“It wasn’t too bad. But no place you ever want to go, believe me.” “Yeah, I hear ya,” he said.

“So, where do you want to go?” Reilly asked as he turned onto North College Street, into the real world again. “Are you hungry? Where are you staying?”

“I...I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t thought about it at all. I don’t really have any money.”

“Ahhh, don’t sweat it,” Pistol said. “You can stay with us. Right, Reilly? Now, let’s go get a burger in Old Town. It’s on me.”

He reached into the back seat and handed me a lit joint. “And here— smoke one for freedom.”

And I did. 

A few years ago, when I started down this path, I wanted to be a WRITER. It all seemed glamorous – living in the tropics and banging out a best selling novel in between rum drinking contests, bull fights, and answering fan mail from exotic female admirers.  

Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. Not even a little bit.  

It’s been three years after I hit the reset button on my life, walking away from my comfortable existence as a businessman in California. I sold or donated all of my possessions and moving down to Costa Rica to live by the beach, bringing nothing but a laptop and a surfboard, to chase my dream of being a writer. 

Now, two books and thousands of written pages later, the secret to success has been magically revealed to me:

Hard work.

I know, not as exciting as I hoped for, but there it is. Scratching out a living penning words isn’t as much about being a WRITER, as it is about WRITING. Author Mary Heaton said it best:

“The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”

In fact, most great writers have dedicated everything they had to the craft – and then more. They chose a life of self-imposed poverty, isolated hard work, and even ostracism from “polite” society to pursue their passion (though I believe polite society is overrated). It’s about putting in their 10,000 hours, as Macklemore raps, and then some, because they love their art so much they can’t NOT write.  

The collateral damage includes comfort, safety, material gain, friendships, relationships, and even sanity.

“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” Ernest Hemingway.

Even though it was my lifelong dream to be a WRITER, all of that hard work didn’t sound so fun to me. Couldn’t I just skip ahead to the good parts? Still, I devised a three-year plan to lead me to the promise land of literary greatness and financial gain. Here it is: 

My Three-Year plan:

1. 1. Do it.
2. 2. Do it well.
3. 3. Do it over and over, and monetize it.

Granted, that may be the exact business plan of every hooker in Reno, but I’d like to think that my plan was (slightly) more socially ambitious, and by the end of my third year I would have “made it,” breaking into the industry and earning a comfortable living as a writer. Let me explain.

The first year I wanted to write and publish a book. It would be ideal to write the BEST book I could, but just writing one and going through the indie publishing process was overwhelming enough, without worrying about pesky little details, like KNOWING WHAT THE HELL I WAS DOING. I got started in my new beachside home, Tamarindo, Costa Rica, in the heart of the rainy season when the dirt roads were a muddy mess. By the middle of the dry season, in the arid heat and the dust, the book was done. 

“Write without pay until somebody offers pay; if nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.” Mark Twain.

Writing that first book was an exhausting, scrambling process, about as far from my comfort zone as I’ve ever been. At times I didn’t think I was going to make it, or make it out of there in once piece. It was committing my soul to the page only to be trampled, documenting my ridiculous humanity for all the world to laugh at. I rushed at the wrong times, lost steam when I needed it most, and generally made every mistake I could. But, from some small miracle, the book still came out entertaining enough to pick up. 

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” George Orwell.

The second year of my three-year plan was ‘doing it well.’ I actually had two choices here. Upon releasing their first book, most authors focus on selling books. They become expert marketers, and that is where they focus all of their attention. I totally understand that inclination, but standing at that crossroads, I chose a different path. I would focus on learning my craft. Sales be damned, I was going to invest all of my work and focus into becoming the best writer I could be. 

“To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.”
Allen Ginsberg.

I eschewed any chance of profit with the first book and instead moved up the coast from Costa Rica, to the charming fishing town of San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua to write. I sequestered myself in a cheap apartment in a local barrio, dirt alleys in the jungle living in the midst of stray dogs and roosters and the local people who made $2 a day. I was scared at first, in a third world country where some people were desperate just to eat, and many a night I slept beside a machete or carried a knife in my backpack. 

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” Henry David Thoreau.

But I always made it to the dawn, and thanked God for it, sitting down at my desk to document that gratitude with vigor. The locals in my barrio sang as they hung laundry, the smoke from the cooking fires in their front yards rising to my windows on the ocean breeze. It was perfect.

“Talent in cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” Stephen King.

I did two things for those six months: I read, and I wrote. I read everything I could find ABOUT writing; character development, theme, conflict, dialogue, emotion, etc. There was no place to buy books, so I Googled these topics and read every article I could find, and then when I’d exhausted those someone brought me down a Kindle, so I could download books about writing. Pretty soon I’d read all of those, so I started reading biographies of writers.

Do you know what the common theme was? Hard work. Writers write a lot, and when they aren’t writing they read a lot, and that’s how they get better.

“If you can’t create, you can work.” Henry Miller.

So I wrote, too. Every morning I woke up at dawn (Ok, I woke up at 2 a.m. when the roosters and stray dogs started in, but I went back to sleep) and brewed some locally-grown coffee, splashed it with Baileys, and sat down at my desk, just about the time a clunky pickup truck rolled through the barrio, selling freshly-picked mangos and bananas.

“I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired to write at 9 o’clock every morning.” Peter De Vries.

I put on my headphones and cranked some dancehall reggae or Michael Franti or Citizen Cope, and I wrote. It didn’t matter WHAT I wrote, I just unleashed whatever was in my subconscious without letting my mind get in the way. My fingers flew around with a life of their own, blurring with the speed of a DJ spinning records. 

“Through joy and through sorrow, I wrote. Through hunger and through thirst, I wrote. Through good report and through ill report, I wrote. Through sunshine and through moonshine, I wrote. What I wrote it is unnecessary to say.” Edgar A. Poe.

One day I rescued a skinny, whipped four-week old puppy off the street. At first he was too small to walk far, so I carried him everywhere. He was black and white so I named him Panda, and I fed him milk and put him on a towel on my desk as I wrote. I said hi to the locals as I walked through my barrio into town, and the little kids abandoned their soccer ball and ran out to play with Panda. 

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”  Saul Bellow.

And then on August 1, the walls of my house in the barrio shook side to side and dishes fell as a huge earthquake rocked the town. Church bells tolled for everyone to evacuate because of an imminent tsunami, but to me it was a signal to start the first chapter. So I wrote. Three months later, when the school kids were lighting fireworks in the streets for Dia de Indepencia, my manuscript for South of Normal, was done, 1,000 pages of sunshine and snake pits.

But there was no time to pat myself on the back, because that’s when the REAL work began – rewriting and editing. So I put my head down and got busy, once again.

“The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.” John Irving.

Soon, everyone in town knew me, and Panda was so big and strong he was pulling ME when we strolled the cobbled streets. The abuelitas, grandmothers, in their rocking chairs on the front porch waved to me and wished me God’s blessing, and all of the little kids begged to take Panda to the beach. 

“Como esta su libro?” they would ask - how is your book? - for word got out that I was a writer. 

My last week before leaving Nicaragua our little town was infested with rich vacationers from Managua. The parties and fireworks went off all night, every night, but I had work to do. So I took Panda to the ferry and cruised over to Ometepe, cajoining islands in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, one of the only places on earth with fresh water sharks. Each island had an active volcano rising steeply from its center, and the beaches were jet black volcanic sand like crushed moonstone. Panda ran and played and I kept working.  

It was there in Ometepe that I understood the wisdom that all of those great writers were whispering to me; to write well you need to go through a process of failure, of discomfort, of displacement from the normal human condition. You need thrust yourself into a volcano, sacrificing your ego, so you can become connected to everyone and everything. Only through this ultimate surrender will you truly be able to write something important, and serve the world.  

“So you want to be a writer? Unless is comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don’t do it.  Unless the sun inside you is burning you’re gut, don’t do it.” Charles Bukowski.  

My last night in town I threw a big party for the wonderful people in my barrio as a thank you, a pig roast at the very top of the hill by the town’s water tank. All of the mothers cooked and the children gave me gifts. The power went out so the DJ couldn’t play and it was dark, but we took out flashlights and someone turned on their car stereo. And then it started pouring rain but we didn’t care – we danced and hugged each other and celebrated life. 

“Suertes,” they said - good luck, and I finally realized - those people, the same one's I feared at first, had been keeping ME safe the whole time, watching out for me. I handed the children Panda’s leash and he wagged. He was a San Juan del Sur dog, and would be happiest running on the beach with them.

In some ways I think that was the best part of my life, because down there I left behind the romance of being a WRITER, and instead, fell in love with WRITING itself.  

I’m happy with the choice I made, to focus mastering my craft instead of becoming a pesky promoter interested only in sales. And I am happy with my book, South of Normal, because, although flawed and deeply imperfect, it is honest, and I gave it everything I had.

“Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he’ll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer.”
Ray Bradbury.

Now, on the eve of its release, I shift into part three of that supremely important three-year plan: to do it over and over, and monetize it.

This is it, my chance to cash in, to re-enter polite society. I know how to do it - I’ve paid attention to all of the books and articles and blogs and podcasts about promoting yourself, getting attention, landing an agent, and making money. It would be easy for me to invest my precious time here on earth into selling books.

But I just can’t bring myself to do it. It’s not in me. In that respect, I guess I’ve failed at my three-year plan, because I could care less about being a WRITER. I just want to write. 

So, if it’s okay with you, I think I’ll change my three-year plan. I think I’ll just relive my second year over and over, stuffing a backpack, heading to the airport, and disappearing once again into that big, wild unknown. I’m thinking that Thailand, Vietnam, or Cambodia sound good, where I’ll look for that tiny little hut on a secluded beach amidst the smiling locals. And in that perfect soulful silence of barking dogs, clacking roosters and the throng of humanity, I will write. And every morning I will stare out at the sea and say “Thank you, thank you. For this beautiful failure, thank you,” and then I’ll sit my ass down and get to work.

-Norm :-)

“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.” William Faulkner.
 Tamarindo, Costa Rica, surf, ski, snowboard, diving, pura vida, Central America, Nicaragua, San Juan del Sur, Amazon best seller, travel, adventure, backpack, hiking, sharks, Endless Summer, Robert August, memoir, fitness journey, globetrotting, perfect beach, paradise, spring break, expat, live abroad, work abroad, summer reading, around the world, great read, humor, laugh out loud, South of Normal, Pushups in the Prayer Room

The day dream is a familiar one; you’re sitting on a white sand beach by the crystal clear ocean, a soft tropical breeze blowing as you sip your third mojito and finish up the day’s work – which took a grand total of an hour on your laptop. 

Unfortunately, then you always wake up at a desk stacked with never ending paperwork, shackled inside some cubicle. The drool from your mid-afternoon doze-off has short circuited yet another keyboard, which will have to come out of your paycheck (the third one this month) and your boss starts whining because you forgot to put a cover sheet on your TPS report and he needs you to come in to work on Saturday. And someone stole your red stapler again.

That’s a more likely scenario for all of the 9 to 5’ers out there, but here’s the good news – the dream is possible. It’s out there, ready for you. You can travel or live anywhere in the world and take your job with you, still making money in the U.S. (or your home country) virtually. It’s not easy, and it may take a lot of research, planning, and hard work, but it IS possible to live your life by a beach, or on top of a mountain, in a foreign country and still make a living.  

In fact, people have been doing it for years, but many chose to work from home instead of living by the beach, superwoman stay-at-home moms who earn extra money AND take care of the kids. You’ll also hear it called working “virtually,” “telecommuting,” or just working online, and a U.S. Census report shows that the number of people who work virtually or from home has soared by 41% in the past decade. 

Every year there are an estimated 6 million U.S. citizens living abroad. Some of them chose to live in foreign countries and become full-time expatriates, while others go abroad to study, backpack around for a summer, volunteer, or do business. For the youth in other countries, England, Canada, Australia, and most of Europe, taking a year or two to go backpack around the world is so common it’s almost a rite of passage.  

Many of them try to find jobs in their host countries, but I’m seeing more and travelers and expats working virtually from their laptop and making enough money to keep their dream alive, especially in some countries where living expenses may be much lower. This trend is in its infancy, thanks to a business focus on Globalization and the explosion of useful technology in the last five years. The concept was celebrated in Tim Ferriss’s wildly popular book “The 4-Hour Work Week.”   

Whether you are a stay at home mom looking to work, a college student who wants to backpack around Europe and still make some money, or a 9-5 burnout who gives it all up and lives abroad (like me) the dream is alive and well.  

Now I’m going to tell you how it’s done.  

First we start off with a specific list of jobs you can do from anywhere. In the second part of this article I'll go over WHERE to go to find these jobs, and HOW to get them.


Here is a list of jobs you could do virtually:

1. Writer.
 Selling blogs/articles on the Internet for magazines and newspapers, sites, or businesses.

2. Copy editor.
You can write and edit content for advertisements, sales brochures, manuals and guides, etc. 

3. Virtual call center/Customer service rep.
 As long as you have a phone and a headset (or a computer) you can take calls anywhere in the world. 

4. Web developer.
 This is one of the most common live-and-work-abroad jobs, and it does take a technical knowledge of HTML, Wordpress, or other web build code.

5. Blogger.
 You can start your own blog and attract enough visitors to start selling advertising or products.

6. Survey taker.
 They actually pay people to take surveys! Search engines also hire people to review their sites.

7. Telenurses.
 Virtual medical care is a rapidly growing field.

8. Teleradiologist.
 Radiologists mostly review x-rays, so this is easy to do virtually with the right technology.

9. Video producer and editor.
 Produce videos for corporations, non-profits, or entertainers.

10. Technical writer.
 Technical writers design manuals and instructions that are very specific and task-oriented (boring.)

11. On-line post-secondary teachers.
 There is a growing trend of online universities, colleges, and also high schools.

12. Translators.
 The world always needs people with good language skills to translate their messages. If you can speak two languages fluently, you will be in great demand!

13. Virtual tax preparer.
 You can prepare those pesky income tax returns over your laptop.

14. Phone sex operator.
 Do you really need me to explain this one?  “Brown chicken, brown cow!”

15. Data entry.
 Menial and unfulfilling, but who cares if you can do it by the beach?

16. Excel and Power Point specialist.
 If you know the technical intricacies of Excel companies will pay you to set up complex spread sheets and data systems, or prepare PP presentations for sales people, speakers, and organizations.

17. Medical transcriptionist.
 Transcribe notes from doctors and surgeons.

18. Medical billing.
 One of the work-from-home stalwarts, you can organize medical billing records for doctors offices.

19. Counselor or Therapist.
 Sit on your own leather couch and talk to someone about your problems via Skype, for $20 an hour, not $150 an hour.

20. Outside sales.
 Many sales jobs can be done via Internet, phone, fax, Skype, etc. and are based solely on commission.

21. Virtual assistant.
A lot of busy business people don’t want to hire a full time assistant in-house, so they outsource daily tasks to a virtual assistant.

22. Sell travel art and photography.
Though it’s a competitive field, many people sell their travel photography and artwork online.

23. Tourism.
Attract people to certain destinations with websites, social media, etc. and help them arrange hotel stays, condo rentals, fishing trips, etc. The proprietors will usually pay you a 20% finders fee.

24. Affiliate marketing.
You can promote other peoples’ goods or services on your website or blog, and if users click through and purchase something, you get a commission.

25. EBay broker.
 You can maintain an eBay story from anywhere in the world. Either hire people to package and mail the items for you, or utilize the ‘drop ship model,’ (below)

26. Reseller, drop ship model.
You sell products online, but instead of packaging and shipping the items yourself, your order automatically goes through to a warehouse that does everything for you. That means you can sell anything to anyone from anywhere and never touch – or even see – the product!

27. Graphic artist.
Every company needs a logo, infographic, or other artwork.

28. Wedding/event planner.
You can handle all of the minutiae of organizing big events, corporate or personal, and get paid to do it.  

29. Grant writer.
Writing grants for nonprofits and research is a super important field, yet requires a specific writing format. Nonprofits are ALWAYS applying and reapplying for grants and funding, so you will never be out of work. 

30. Social media consultant.
Every company wants to market their brand or service through social media and have access to an unlimited number of new customers, but many of them only know how to use Facebook enough to post inappropriate political comments and send out birthday requests. Help them, please! 

31. Publicist.
 Send out press releases, make connections, and garner traditional media attention.

32. Cottage Publishing.
Attract clients who want to self-publish a book and help them from start to finish, using cheaper subcontractors or services, and then mark up the price to include your fee.

33. Desktop Publishing.
Design the layout and graphics for menus, brochures, books, newsletters, etc.

34. Software engineer.
If you know all of that fancy technical stuff, you’ll be in high demand and can work from anywhere.

35. IT Professional.
These days an IT professional can assume control of your computer virtually, and poke around and fix the problem without even being there.  

36. Educational tutoring.
Tutor children in after school programs or learning centers, or college kids in specific subjects.

37. Language teacher.
Believe it or not, knowing English well is a commodity, and these days you can teach English via your laptop anywhere in the world (see profile at the end of this article)


38. Travel Agent.
You can arrange and book airfare, travel, and vacation packages virtually. The job of travel agent has actually shifted toward a work-at-home model years ago.

39. Franchise owner.
If you own a Subway store, you’re not the one expected to bake the bread. So hire great managers and supervise virtually. Think about it – you don’t even need a staff if you own a laundry mat or vending machine.

40. Landlord.
Own rental properties and manage them from abroad. The check will be in your bank every month and you can have a handyman on call. You can even rent out your own house while you’re out there traveling!

41. Answering service or scheduler.
Many businesses use an answering service during off hours, or someone to manage their busy schedule. You can take on as many clients as you can handle.

42. Insurance adjuster.
A lot of tedious work in the insurance field – like worker’s comp audits, for example, has been outsourced to virtual employees.

43. Support for open-source software. 
There are software systems out there like Linux, Wordpress, Dupral etc. that may be free, but people will pay for technical support.  

44. Accountant/Bookkeeper.
Manage the books and accounting for any business, from the beach.

45. Financial advisor.
Many independent financial advisors can work virtually – why not? They are dealing in information and expertise, not standing on the trading floor on Wall Street.

Does that help? Look for part 2 of this article where I reveal the specific websites you'll use to get these virtual jobs, and even actual companies that are hiring right now. 

I'll also talk about the application and interview process, avoiding scams, and virtual employment code of conduct.  

Do you have more questions about living or working abroad?  Email me and I’d be happy to help. 

Happy job hunting, and safe travels!

Norm :-)

Work Abroad Profile: Tommas Coldrick
Working virtually as an English teacher at an online school.

How long have you lived abroad/where have you lived?
 I'm from England, originally, and have lived abroad the last four years, in Australia, New Zealand, U.S.A. (Texas), The Czech Republic, China, Nicaragua and Russia.

What have you done for work?
Australia- Concreting and steel fixing. New Zealand- Nightclub security. U.S.A. Online teaching. The Czech Republic- English Language Teacher. China- Head Teacher of an international school. Nicaragua- manager at a bar/restaurant and teaching English online. Russia- Head Teacher of an international school, teaching English online.

What are the challenges?
Cultural differences always seems to be the biggest challenge while working overseas. Language can also be a challenge, but more of a fun challenge.

What are the unique opportunities?
Getting to fully immerse yourself into a completely different way of living, is one of the coolest experiences anyone can have. It also opens up your mind, and humbles you in such prolific ways, I can't even begin to describe. Being able to work within a different country, within a different culture; allows you to see the world in a different light, and it allows you to understand the unknown, just that little bit more.

Where do you see growth in careers working virtually?
Having taught online, I see the benefits to virtual careers. I was able to have a half decent paid job in England, Nicaragua, and the U.S. I didn't have to worry about finding work in each new destination; It was already there. 

What advice would you give young travelers who are looking to work while they live/travel abroad?
Do it! Ask yourself "What do I really want to be?" "Where do I really want to be?" Once you know the answers to these questions, then there's no stopping you. So go ahead and quit your day job, book a flight, and don't regret a moment! You will experience things that you would never imagine, you'll meet the most interesting people on the planet, you'll broaden your views on life, and you'll make friends who you will treasure forever.

You can email Tommas if you want to say hi!

South of Normal is only a couple of weeks away from being in print, and this is the single most important post I’ll ever make about it:  

I want to thank you, my friends and readers, from the bottom of my heart, and share the Dedication of the book with you.

To me, those few pages in the front of the book are the most important - and the most fun – because I get to celebrate YOU with a shout-out, all of the amazing people who have read my books, given encouragement, and shown me way more love and friendship than I deserve. Whether you realize it or not, you have been on this journey with me every step of the way. I seriously couldn’t do any of this without your support, so please consider this OUR book (especially if it sucks – then it's ALL you!). 

More and more I could care less about commercial success, professional validation, or money. To me, it’s all about sharing these words with you - the story of how I chased my dreams. I get the biggest thrill in the world when someone reads the book and enjoys it or tells me they laughed. And if it makes you think a little, or feel slightly more human, then it sends me straight to the moon!

I could fill up the whole book with all of the names of the people I want to thank, and I’m sure I’ve missed a few, but I’m only allowed a certain amount of space.  So whether you are listed here or not, please know that YOU are the reason I do this, and your .  THANK YOU!