Tip 1: Start by nixing your bucket listed tourist traps
“Yoo arh Americken… but yoo now leeve in France?”
In the four years that we lived in the French countryside, this was by far the most common question that we were asked.
No matter the social setting or amount of wine consumed, there was always someone curious and brave enough to ask what every other French person in the room was thinking, “Why on earth did you bring your family here?”
Since that time, we’ve moved our family to other remote settings including the Spanish countryside, Rwanda, Vietnam, and the Sacred Valley in Peru.
Half of the time in these…
My mixed-up journey from Head Boy to Queer Mormon
Why is it that life’s most memorable moments are often those when it ceases to make sense?
Sitting in my home office, I feel as though I’ve just shattered into a thousand irreconcilable pieces.
“How could I be this?” the phrase tumbles around my mind like dirty laundry in the dryer. “How could I be this when I had built a life trying to be everything but this.”
“This” had all begun years ago, decades in fact.
It was a cool fall night in September. I was only days into Junior High and could already tell it was going to be a trainwreck. …
A Poem
For decades, I dreamed of the perfect pedicure… without understanding the real dangers
I was just a tween when I first pictured my toes being splendidly feminine.
Uncomfortable in my flabby, testosterone-filling body, I would lay awake on the wrong side of the gender spectrum and reimagine myself.
Inevitably, it would always begin with my toes.
For thirty years, on and off, I would replay this same mental and emotional exercise.
In the meantime, I met and married the woman of my dreams, began raising a family of four boys, and excelled in both personal and professional endeavors.
In all that time, I never spread one layer of lacquer on my big beautiful…
Mechanisms that make writing easy and fun
Have you ever stopped to wonder what it is that really makes you clock in, day after day, to a platform that pays, on average, far less than minimum wage?
“Based on my experience over the last year, I would say that it is realistic for someone putting in decent part time writing effort to make $100–$500 per month.” — Medium Blogging Guide
The answer might surprise you.
It’s found in the art of gamification.
What Is Gamification?
“When you take away the technical [aspects] of a game, you are left off with four elements…” — Eugen Eşanu
For centuries, mankind has been…
I feared the worst. They showed me the best.
A lot of things scared me about coming out as transgender to my four boys.
“They’re too young to understand,” I told myself to justify my silence. “It’s not something they need to know yet.”
But as the urge to come out increased, I knew I could no longer ignore the truth of the situation.
Not only did my boys deserve to hear it from me first, I would need their blessing before opening myself (and our family) up to the world.
What I had been telling myself was that I was protecting them by not speaking about it.
In…
A simple four-step guide to building a stronger reader base
As a writer on Medium, I’ve found it’s simple enough to sit down and crank out an article.
What’s harder is writing something that will get read.
And what’s hardest is actually writing with your perfect reader already in mind.
It’s hardest because it takes time and experience to find your perfect reader.
Unless you’re coming to the platform with an already established reader base, it can require a lot of trial and error to find your “tribe.”
A key way to expedite this process is by developing what marketing experts call a customer persona.
What is a customer persona?
“The idea is to create…
Centuries-old sibling rivalries never get old
We own an American fourteen-year-old.
Most days we call him Noah, although there are more colorful names which come to mind, given the day.
Based on the little research I’ve consulted (i.e. just enough Googling to ensure I’m not raising a psychopath), Noah is an ideal specimen of the species known as adulescens inconcinnus.
He’s as clumsy as a drunk pirate with two eye patches, moody as all get out, and has recently-developed the superpower of finding fault in everything.
Without question, Noah would be the first to tell you how life in France ruined his life. …
Vacation season is here. Why are you still working?
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
To: Our Industrious American Colleagues
From: Your Lazy French Counterparts
Re: Summer Holidays
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
In recent decades, we French have been the target of many a joke told around your American watercoolers.
We’re always on strike.
We’re never at work.
It takes at least three of us to change a lightbulb.
Believe us, we’ve heard it all.
However, with the summer vacation season officially here, we’d like to remind our American counterparts of two important policies.
1. Don’t plan to find us at work (as per usual)
If you’re having a hard time reaching us in the office, this graph might…
Or my quest to find the perfect peanut butter & jelly sandwich
Most people around me don’t understand what “gender dysphoria” really is.
As someone who self-identifies as having it, I can relate.
Growing up, I had heard of plenty of other terms in the LGBTQ lexicon:
- Drag queen
- Crossdresser
- Transsexual
- Transgender
- Queer
Gender dysphoria as a diagnosis, however, alluded me for decades even though the term has been around since I was a newborn.
What is gender dysphoria?
“Gender dysphoria involves a conflict between a person’s physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify.” — The American Psychiatric Association
In the definition above, the keyword is “conflict.”
If you’re male or female…
Dave Smurthwaite
Helping you be happier & more creative by developing a Traveler Mindset: http://bit.ly/31SLsb2.
