Let's Go Exploring! #185.


Dear friends,

I'm back with a quick update.

I've been thinking of tagging my work with "Verified human organic content. These are my real words, real pictures, and real-life adventures." Reading and watching the AI slop being created is a lot like inorganic, fast-food junk. It hurts my brain trying to sort fact from fiction.

If I were business-minded — I'm not otherwise, I wouldn't be an author — I would start a service to certify content as actually being created by a human with an officially looking badge or symbol. Something like this:

Verified Human VH

Anyway... Behind the scenes, I am busy simplifying my life. I suffered a bad bout of burnout, which led to all kinds of other things, including, strangely, acid reflux, which has fried my vocal cords. But it is great motivation to reframe my life. So, I will have some more updates on that when I figure it all out. At the moment, I do plan on keeping my newsletter, but I really want to get off the hamster wheel of content creation that social media demands. I want to focus on perennial content like books.

So in this newsletter:

  • I'm proud to share an article from my good friend Chad Turner about socially responsible travel.
  • I also have a rather heady article that I think is a totally new idea. It's one of the results of being sick and trying to figure out the problem.
  • And a favorite book.

Cheers,
Scott

Responsible Travel

Guest adventurer, Chad Turner, aka Traveling Chad, shares a chapter from his book "Zero to Adventure" about how to be socially responsible while traveling.

Read this article on the website.

How to assign blame

Did you know that given one problem, there are 16 different possibilities of who or what to blame? I didn't, and it has changed how I view life. I outline a process to identify a problem. (It's more fun to blame things.) But, you can use it as a creative process to identify a new area of opportunity.

Read this article on the website.

The Happy Isles of Oceania

By Paul Theroux

All of Theroux’s books are great reads filled with keen insight and big ideas. And the words are a joy to read. Once my book, Falling Uphill, was compared to Theroux, and I thought that I couldn’t get a better compliment. This is his most adventurous book, an eighteen-month tour of the South Pacific, exploring fifty-one islands by collapsible kayak. And The Great Railway Bazaar is his most popular. And here is my favorite quote.

PS. These are affiliate links. I may earn a small commission, but it won't affect your price or the author's profit.

Thanks for tagging along

As always, hit reply to share any thoughts or questions or just to say hello. Hearing your stories is one of my biggest rewards.

I make most of my work free to entertain, inspire and educate. If you enjoy my stories, books, blog or worksheets, please share this newsletter with a friend. It helps keep me motivated, and more importantly, it helps other people.

Let’s Go Exploring!

Let’s explore how to live a more meaningful and joyful life. I’m Scott Stoll, Author, Artist, Adventurer and a work-in-progress. My claim to fame is that I rode a bicycle around the world. For 25 years, I’ve been posting monthly stories, life experiments, worksheets, and more. Join me, and let’s live the best lives possible.

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