The Art of Non-Conformity: Unconventional Strategies for Life, Work, and Travel

If you're new here, you may want to learn what this site is about. I encourage you to subscribe to my RSS feed or sign up for free email updates. Thanks for visiting!

Public Domain Image

As part of your independent-minded journey, many people will oppose you along the way. Some will oppose you by saying that you “can’t” do the things you’ve planned. Others will try to impose their own arbitrary rules on you. Others will be jealous of your success and try to bring you down to the level of average.

Having a strategy to deal with all of these critics is critical.

Without a strategy, you’ll have a lot more stress and doubt. The critics may even succeed in bringing you down. With the right strategy, you’ll rest easy knowing that you won’t be taken out so easily. Possible options for your own strategy include ignoring, confronting, presenting yourself as above the level of discussion, diffusing the argument… or something else, but whatever you choose, you do need a strategy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Until a few months ago, the last time I visited a Wal-Mart store was more than four years ago. There are no Wal-Marts in Africa (yet), nor are there any in central Seattle where I live now.

Last Christmas, however, I received a gift that I didn’t really have a use for. Attached to the gift was the original store receipt from Wal-Mart, so I decided to break my four-year unofficial boycott of America’s low-price leader.

Read the rest of this entry »

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing…
Alexander Pope, 1709
***

Thanks to the use of Frequent Flyer Miles, I flew back to New York City from Bucharest last year in Delta’s nice BusinessElite cabin. Hanging out in the airline lounge before the flight, I met up with another traveler, a professional musician from New York named Hannah Chang.

Hannah was the only person I had ever met that was carrying tickets for two confirmed BusinessElite seats all to herself. Technically, she didn’t use both of them for herself—instead, one was for her and one was for her cello, which traveled with her wherever she went.

Read the rest of this entry »

When I was 20 years old and enrolled in a graduate school program that I didn’t finish, I took a third-shift job working at the FedEx package processing center in Memphis from 10pm-2am four days a week. It was tiring work, and the worst thing about it was getting home close to 3am and having to go to class at 9:00. A schedule like that can work for a few days, but not for the few months I tried to sustain it.

Carrying boxes for FedEx 10 years ago was the last job I ever had. In between going to school and working the night shift, I realized I needed some more money. eBay was just getting popular at the time, and in those early days (1999), it was a seller’s market. You could put pretty much anything up for sale, and you had a good chance of selling it for more than it was worth. Buyers were hooked on the new format, so much that many of them weren’t very price-conscious. If you were a seller and didn’t really know what you’re doing, like me, this was a good thing.

Read the rest of this entry »