Don’t Drink The Water In Argentina

Being a SEO guy, I’m trying to optimize this post for people who might be asking “Should I drink the water in Argentina”. Well, the answer is no!

If you read my week one and week two posts, you’ll know that my stomach was not pleased with being in Argentina. I had assumed it was the food. I was wrong as I so often am!

I’m positive I found the culprit! Well, not me but my new roommate.

Within a couple minutes after meeting him, I told him about my stomach issues. He asked me if I was drinking the tap water. I had been and he suggested that was probably the cause.

Surely enough I started buying and drinking bottle water and magically my stomach issues went away. Thanks Nico! After my stomach troubles went away I really started to enjoy myself.

Get Me The Fuck Out Of Here

That was my thought before I moved into this new apartment on St. Patties Day. I was so busy with work and not really enjoying my time here in BA. I needed to move out of my current place as I only booked for a week. There wasn’t much out there for me but I found a cool spot in an area of Buenos Aires that I really liked so I booked for a week. What was better was that it was priced very well but I was still had thought hard about leaving after the week was up.

One slight drawback is that it has a single bed but I didn’t know how small it was until I got there. I don’t think I’ve ever had a single bed before!

So I caught another cheap taxi (taxi’s are really, really cheap here) to my place. It was a three bedroom place and as my landlord walked me to my room, I asked if anyone else was living there. She said there was a German guy Nico and English girl Sophie.

Ok great I thought, they probably know some english! My Spanish sucks and being so busy with work, I’ve had little time to learn more.

I met Sophie briefly when I got there and she was really nice and friendly. But I had some work to get done so I retreated to my room.

I got sidetracked from work right away. An idea came into my head a day earlier and that was to cut my trip short in BA and head to Miami to check out the Miami Open Tennis Tournament and WMC Electronic Music Festival. I love tennis and electronic music. It would have been a chance to see my favorite tennis players and all the DJ’s who’s mixes I’ve listened to for the last six years in one week.

Hernan Cattaneo and Guy J on a boat cruise was the biggest reason for this. I have listened to their mixes and productions constantly for the last six years. Seeing them play on a boat cruise would be one the most amazing experiences I could think of right now.

So I went to work trying to make this happen.

Switching my flight was possible but for a cost of $700 though. Ok I said, I could deal with that. Next up was finding accommodations. I put the feeler out there with my good friend Graeme who I’ve connected with this past year and now lives in the Greater Miami area. He was going to be in town but wouldn’t have a room for me to stay.

To AirBnb I went looking for places under $60 a night in a 50km area outside of Miami. The results, very sad. These places make anything in Esquimalt look like 4 star hotels. There was really NOTHING out there. Even 2 star hotels in the area wanted close to $90 a night.

I had spent way too much time on possibly cost scenarios that my brain was pretty fried. So my dream of heading to Miami to watch world class Tennis and to see Hernan, Guy J and Nick Warren on a boat cruise fizzled. Seeing the pictures and videos on Facebook was crushing in some ways.

It’s funny because doing the Miami Tennis and WMC thing has always been a trip I’ve wanted to do. The moment this trip to Miami fizzled, I was filled with regret and pissed off I didn’t do that.

But I changed my thoughts around. I work for myself and I have the freedom to do those trips far more often then I had working for a company.

With that mindset, I was no longer pissed off and filled with regret. My mood also got better as I started to chat more with my new roommates.

Connection

My mother and I always talk about connection. Connecting with people is what both makes us feel alive and kicks starts the positive vibes. But we want to connect with people we know or don’t know on a deeper level.

For me I was excited about meeting my new roommates. I can be isolated at times and comfortable on my own. So basically an extrovert. But outside of meeting Pablo and a few other friends Gustavo introduced me, I was 10 000 miles away from any connection I have on this earth. Sure, I’ve used non verbal forms of communication to talk to some of you. It’s not the same though. I needed to feel connected.

For the first two weeks here, I was feeling flat and needing energy.

My vibe was getting better here after the first few days with my roommates. Although I had lots of work to do, I was able to chat with them a fair bit and knew they were open and easy to talk to. Sharing accommodations with two people you don’t know can be great or awkward. Thankfully it’s been great so far.

We’ve gone out for quite a few dinners and spent plenty of time in the apartment chatting. The topics have been diverse and we seem to share a lot of common interests and values. We had quite a long night on Friday where we went out for dinner and came back to the apartment and started talking about the media, world problems and how much we care about the Earth and are sad to see it being ruined by greed.

It’s been a really good experience for me and I’ve enjoyed their company a lot. I had only booked this apartment for another week as I wanted to leave my plans open. But I liked the vibe so much that on Tuesday I booked for another month.

Nico is probably leaving at the end of the month to travel around before heading home to Germany. Sophie is here until the middle of April which would leave me alone or with new roommates and if so, it’s been great connecting with them.

Location, Location, Location

This city is massive. What’s cool though is each neighbourhood feels like a city inside a city.

The other reason I booked for a full month was the location of this place. The 4th night here Pablo and I had dinner in an area called Los Canitas. I knew after one night this was the neighbourhood where I wanted to stay for a while if I wasn’t going to travel around. And here I am.

It’s close to Polo fields, lots of great restaurants and the Race Track so I can go Gamblor mode. Seriously, I’ve been there once and only spent $10. This neighbourhood is also a little more quiet and upscale so it’s safe.

Empanada’s Count

Now is a good time to interrupt you with an empanadas count. I think I am at 28. They’re like a mini pizza pocket but with more options. I will likely break a 100 as Empanadas Gourmet is 50 steps from my front door and they have cheap empanadas.

Adventures

What did I do this past week? Well last Tuesday was St Patricks Day and I spent that with Pablo at an Irish Bar in his neighbourhood of Belgrano. It was fun to see how much the locals support an event. Maybe it was the fact they could drink on a Tuesday until 2 Am, who knows. They had a great Irish band bearing the heat and playing some Irish tunes on bagpipes and drums.

The next night I met up with girl from Tinder who has from Colombia. We had a nice night and ate some Mexican at a great restaurant named Taco Box in Palermo. Once again this was another restaurant that had great ambience.

The next few nights I joined my new roommates for some dinner and drinks.

Thursday night was Nico’s birthday. We had drinks at the apartment with a few of his friends from school. He had friends in the program from Holland, Wisconsin, Austria and here in Buenos Aires. We enjoyed some laughs and exchanging things about each others countries. Felt kind of like a hostel in a way.

At 1 AM we made the walk into Palermo to grab a beer. Not much was open but we made last call at this tacky place called the Tiki Bar. We chatted for a bit and we got on the topic of drinking and driving. The guy from Wisconsin, Herman, was only 20 and it came up that when he goes home, he can’t drink legally. But he’s been driving for 4 years now and I thought this should be implemented in Canada where you can’t drink until your 21 to give kids more time to mature before drinking so they now their limits better.

Friday night Nico, Sophie and myself try some Arabian cuisine. The meal was cheap and half decent.

Afterwards Nico and myself got the craving for some late night ice cream, very common here in BA, and headed for Persico. I got a Dulce De Leche Con Brownie. Dulce De Leche is a right caramel type syrup that the country is addicted to. Here’s some Google Images you can look at.

Afterwards we continued talking and our discussion turned to world problems. I mentioned to Nico the next morning that it was really great to stay up and chat on a deeper level like we did the night before.

We had such a good time Friday night we went out for dinner again on Saturday night just down from our place at a restaurant called La Colorada. With it’s high ceilings, red walls and chairs, it was a cool spot. Very loud and busy but enjoyable none the less.

The meals are very reasonably priced and extremely delicious! I’ll be heading back here again.

Sunday night I joined Pablo for some cerveza’s at this place called Anatares which is a chain of brew pubs. Monday and Tuesday were holidays here and the place was busy. Like every other restaurant or bar here it had a great ambience and nice lighting.

They had lots of photos and beer memorabilia including a Big Rock Brewery Grasshopper poster! None of it was on tab though.

The next day Pablo offered to drive me outside of the city to visit San Isidro and Tigre. The drive out was very nice and the area looks beautiful but expensive. Something cool they have out on the street lights is a timer letting the drivers know how long the light will stay green for.

One the drive we also came across this cathedral. The one thing I haven’t noticed in any cathedrals here which is much different than Europe where there tons of them.

Past San Isidro is a small city called Tigre which is supposed to be beautiful. We got there late in the afternoon and the city streets were packed. Since it was a holiday everyone had the idea to head out there. After 30 minutes of moving 1000 meters, we decided to head back in BA.

And that was week 3 down here! Not a lot of the adventure front but some good conversation and meals. had a couple of bigger work things which are virtual complete and I’ll have some free time to do some more exploring!

Don’t Trust Photos

This past week wasn’t a whole lot of fun. Where I stayed last week wasn’t in the nicest neighbourhood and a ways out so I booked a place closer to the center of the city. It was another overpriced apartment on AirBnb but was closer to Palermo and all the action. I was getting tired of the long commutes into city to see things and meet up with people.

This new apartment wasn’t as nice as it looked in the pictures. The girl who I rented the room off was a photographer and let’s just say she did some things to make the place look bigger, brighter and newer than it actually was. It was marketing at it’s finest and similar to how fast food restaurants present their food.

But I only have myself to blame. I waited too long to book my next apartment so not much was available. The apartment owner did give me the option to look at the place before which I didn’t do. A couple of positives were that it was quiet and had a nice desk for me to work on as I got slammed with work. I’ve been able to get a lot more work done here as I have less of a social life down here so that’s great for business!

A Hermit Explores

In the end I wasn’t really able to enjoy much of the city but that is why I gave myself two months down here. With that much time I could work when I needed to and not feel rushed in having to see everything BA has to offer. However I was able to visit a few places.

First up was the Jardin Botanico Gardens in the center of the city late one evening. Talk about a wonderful place to unwind and get away from the busy city. I setup shop on a bench and chilled out as the sun started to make it’s decent which was really nice. This is a place I will visit a few more times to do the exact same thing.

The next day I went to exchange some US money for the cheaper blue dollar. I’ll write a post about the blue dollar later on. Anyways, it was pretty close to the north west of the city and was far away from where I was staying. On the way there I visited the El Ateneo bookstore which looks more like an opera house.

After exchanging my money I decided to walk through the northern part of the city along a wider main street to see what was up there. I stumbled across the Floralis Generica. Kind of cool to see but not all that exciting. Surprisingly no one was in the vicinity of the giant flower. For sure I thought I would see more tourists like me. Not the case.

As I kept on walking I came the beautiful Recoleta neighborhood. It’s more upscale than Palermo and seems where a lot of the old money is located. Recoleta has some really cool french architecture and of course nice trees!

Down the road a few more Km’s was another nice park with beautiful trees to shield me from the sun. Walking around on pavement really takes its toll so a rest was needed and this area was very chill. After this I headed home and proceeded to drink cheap vino and work my ass off!

The last area I got to explore this week was the cool and quaint neighborhood of Belgrano. This is where Pablo, Gustavo’s friend who I’ve connect with, lives. This is a really cool area that is very quit and feels like you are so far out of the city. There are more homes and tree lined streets in Belgrano and seems like a great place to raise a family. I could see myself living in a neighborhood like Belgrano.

I did mention that I didn’t get to see much of the city. What I did see I enjoyed and will no doubt be spending more time in the places I saw this past week

No Clubs For Old Man Jordo

Friday and Saturday night were supposed to be nights I was going to see a couple of DJ’s spin. Both DJ’s sets started at 2 AM and went until 5 AM. Of course I was super pumped to experience the music that I love live on a huge sound system. It’s probably been 7 years since I’ve seen seen a DJ play and that was Nick Warren in Vancouver back in 2008.

Old man Jordo go too tired though. Both nights I was dead at 12:30 AM and the thought of trying to stay up until 5 AM was too daunting. So I crawled into bed early both nights.

There are plenty of other great DJ’s coming into town so I’m not sad.

Where To Go Next?

I also spent most of the week trying to figure out where I should go. Last week I mentioned I was going to head to Bariloche which looks beautiful and a mix between a British Columbia’s coast and Switzerland’s mountain range. But the more and more I looked into, the less it appealed to me for a few reasons.

First of all, getting down there isn’t easy. It’s either a 3 hour plane road which is very expensive for non Argentinian’s or it’s a 22 hour cheap bus ride. The 10 hour flight from Dallas was enough and despite how comfortable I hear the bus seats are, I’m not going to get a lot of sleep no matter how many melotonins I pop. That means I’m left to fill the time with reading or staring out the window and getting lost in my thoughts. Doesn’t appeal to me right now.

Another reason was the cost of the accommodations. In retrospect $55 CAD taxes in is pretty cheap but I’d need to make this long journey worthwhile and it seemed like staying under a week wouldn’t be worth it. So at $385 for a week, that’s just a bit outside my range to head down to Bariloche. I’ve already spent $450 for two weeks on accommodations here in BA and don’t want to be spending too much cash while I am away. I’m going to keep my eyes peeled for better rates over the next month as it still seems like the high season.

I looked into other areas I could go. I feel the need to get away from the big city of BA and relax in a quiet town for a week or two and just chill out. The beaches look really shitty here in Argentina but there are a couple of nice beach areas in Brazil. They’re too costly to get to and accommodation isn’t cheap. Plus I’d need to spend $200 on a Brazil Visa. Doesn’t seem worth it.

What has been interesting in my countless hours of researching where I want to go, I’ve stumbled across some great blogs of people who have travelled across South America. It’s fun reading about others adventures and what they thought about certain cities. However, it’s best to visit those cities yourself and get to get persuaded by the opinion of someone you don’t know.

Some of you know I am in Buenos Aires right now. I’ve been here for almost a week and I wanted to do a little summary of my thoughts so far. I promise you photos but you have to read or scroll to the very bottom! Do as you please, I won’t judge.

Buenos Aires

I’ve wanted to come here for sometime now. There are many reasons but the top three are weather, food and music. Funny enough, one of my favorite tracks is titled Buenos Aires.

Now that I am landed and settled in, here are some thoughts.

BIG BIG BIG

Do you remember those Lotto649 commercials? The one I am thinking of is similar to this but not as old.

The thing that strikes me right away is that this is a big city! If you know me, I hate big cities and lots of people. Not really knowing the scale of this city, I booked a cheaper AirBnB apartment outside of the downtown area for the first week to get situated. This would give me some time to choose the proper neighbourhood I wanted to stay in for the rest of my time in BA.

I thought it was within walking distance to most neighbourhoods. Boy was I wrong! Luckly the placed I booked is close to the Subte. The subway is hella cheap, about $.75 per ride and has 4 different lines with good connections. So getting anywhere in the city is easy and cheap.

One interesting thing that I’ve seen on the Subway is people who are trying to sell you stuff. They have a box of items like pens, notepads, used playing cards and gum. They will walk by everyone on the subway and drop whatever item their selling in your lap. If you want it, you get your cash out and pay the person before the next stop. I’m surprised the items are sold as much as they are. Surely there has to be better items you can sale on the subway? “What about some aqua because it’s a muggy 32 degrees down here” my inner self is saying. Anyways, it’s interesting and wonder if other cities have this happen on their subways.

Food

I love food. I love all types of food including beef and pasta. Well, Argentina has plenty of that and I have had only a couple meals out at nice restaurants. The first place was Las Cabres in Palermo. This was the first night I got here. I met up with a friend of my squash pro Gustavo, Pablo who has been great so far.

Las Cabras had a great patio that was quiet when we walked by around 8:00 PM to grab a drink somewhere close by. We choose Negroni right across the street for a couple of happy hours drinks. Yeah, happy hour starts at 8 PM and goes to 10 PM.

Las Carbes started to fill up really fast after we sat down at Negroni. By the time we walked over to see about getting a table at 10, I didn’t think we’d get one. But we found a spot on the patio right away. It was a great spot as the patio had a large tree and dim lighting. I love sitting outside late at night when it’s warm out.

The meal was pretty good. We had a couple of Enpanada’s to start. I will eat many Enpanada’s on this trip. We then had some Chorizo which was ok but surprisingly more sweet than spicy. Another type of sausage we had I think was Morcilla. The inside was very soft and reminded me of stuffing in a way. The meal was topped off with ribs which were pretty average actually. They were not drenched in sauce and instead they gave us a side of some home made sauce which was pretty bland too.

The other night Pablo and myself went out was to a place on Baez Street called El Estanciero in Belgrano which is a neighbourhood just north of Palermo. Like Palmero though, this area has some great restaurants and the same vibe. El Estanciero was a mix of Italian and carnes or beef. We had some gnocchi and veal Milanese. The veal Milanese was topped with ham, mozza cheese and some tomato sauce. It reminded me a lot of Chicken Parmesan and was really good.

The grocery stores are pretty weak though. Especially when it comes to their produce. Everything seems to have been sitting on the shelf for a week two long. Also, they don’t store eggs in refrigerators at any grocery store.

Mom warned me about their food preparation and how it was much different. She bought some Dukaral and I was reluctant to take but I did. Her persistence and motherly care was smart as I am needing it! Without getting graphic, my stomach is not happy with the food down here dispute that it tastes good.

Spanish

A few friends have been down here and didn’t mention much about needing to speak a lot of Spanish. Er,in and Sulley leant me their Rosetta Stone Spanish version. It’s been slow going and I am doing my best picking up what I can from everyone I talk to down here who knows english.

Regardless there is less english spoken here. I don’t know why I expected to hear locals speak in English. I was also expecting to be able to go into a restaurant or grocery store and try to communicate in English. But that hasn’t been the case.

This is holding me back a bit from heading South to Bariloche which looks a lot like Swiss town. I don’t want to go to an area which was little English spoken and try to survive for a week by using sign language!

But I have done it before with Sulley on our Europe travels and on my own when I cruised around Portugal for a few days after a golf trip in 2008.

So I think I will head down there in a week to escape the warm weather and large city BA has offered up.

Progressive House

One of my main reasons for coming here was because of the music. I’m a big deep and progressive house fan. Buenos Aires and Argentina is home to many producers and DJ’s I love. Also, many of my favortite international DJ’s play here frequently. I’m sad to see local Hernan Cattaneo, Guy J from Isreal, Henry Saiz from Spain and Eelke Kleijn from Holland are not going to be here when I am. They are the DJ’s I wanted to see most.

But there is still some other DJ’s I listen to playing here. This Friday Cid INC from Finland is here and John Digweed from the UK is playing Saturday with an opening set from local Martin Garcia.

I’m going to check those shows out then make the trek down to Bariloche next Tuesday.

Work

Since I have been here I have done a fair bit of work for my clients. Partly because I haven’t been one to really venture out of this neighbourhood that I have been in. It’s not the nicest nor is there much too do. But it’s also to prove that I can work while resisting the temptation to treat this like a holiday and to relax or go exploring BA.

I’ve been able to actually to grow the business too. As of this writing I have three verbal agreements for new clients! Closing business abroad is pretty damn cool and something I wasn’t expecting.

I remember reading the chapter from the Four Hour Work Week in which Tim Ferriss talks about his first work vacation and how nervous he was. In the end things all worked out. Seems like that way for me and when you have the ability to connect to the internet, you can work from anywhere and communicate with anyone.

Although I may have a few extra minutes of my travel plan from. But it’s the cost of doing business and I will gladly pay Bell Mobility more money because we all know they need it!

Tom Doak & The Jockey Club

Originally I was going to bring my golf clubs and try to play. South America and Argentina are not hot beds for golf and there were only a few courses I wanted to play. In my research I contacted a golf architect Randy Thompson from Chile who suggested some places and has been a great help for me outside of golf courses.

Anyways, I asked him if we could connect if I made it to Santiago. He told me he was going to be doing a two week South American tour with one of my favorite architects Tom Doak. I’ve played three Doak courses and loved them all.

In conversations with Randy, he invited me to visit The Jockey Club with Tom and himself. The Jockey Club was designed in the 1930’s by Alistair Mackezine, the godfather or golf course architect and the man behind Augusta National and Royal Melbourne. I have looked at the Golf Club Atlas course profile of Jockey Club probably 50 times.

Obviously I jumped at the chance to go on this tour of a great course with Tom Doak! Randy wasn’t going to tell Tom though which could and was a bit awkward!

I showed up at the holiday yesterday morning at 8:00 AM and were were going to get breakfast and go from there. I figured this would be where I’d be introduced to Tom and Randy would tell him I am tagging along. When I got to their hotel lobby, Randy was there by himself and we chatted for a bit. Then we went up for breakfast. Tom had left to his room though. So we ate breakfast and when finished Randy went up to his room to grab some things. I went down to the lobby and saw Tom at the front desk.

So I sit down and so does Tom a few minutes later. I pull out of my phone and look busy. Since Randy hadn’t told him yet, I felt odd thinking about introducing myself and saw I am tagging along. We both sat there for a few minutes.

Finally Randy comes down but he doesn’t introduce me to Tom! And he didn’t until we were leaving out the door.

We shake hands and I say to Tom “Nice meeting, you don’t mind if I tag along?”. He says it’s fine and we’re off. I didn’t interact much with him as I didn’t want to come off as a fan boy and ask a bunch of questions. I interacted with the others who were on the tour though which was great to share some insights and love for classic golf architecture.

It was all a little awkward with Tom in the morning but in the end the tour was a great and I really hope to play the course as it looks like a lot of fun. Fairly wide open off the tee, a lot of long par 3’s and 4’s with some killer green complexes.

Photo Time

One thing you might not know about me is that photos don’t really mean much to me. I have never been one to take many photos on vacations. Even when I do I rarely look back at them. I always remember my trips and the many amazing sights I saw as they have been ingrained in my memory forever. Pictures just don’t do being their physically any justice.

With that said, he’s a small batch of BA.

I’m not one for anniversaries but it’s been a little over a year since I quit my day job. I left that job to focus my effort full time on my Local search engine optimization (SEO) business. This has proved to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

During the last year my life has improved in so many areas. I was recently out having a few beers with Aidan Henry, who like me started off doing local SEO in Victoria and now owns Brink Events, and we talked a lot about working for ourselves and the freedom of owning a business.

Our meet-up and chat sparked me to write this post as a reminder. It’s a reminder to myself that I never want to return the corporate world. So if things get bad or I’m feeling down, I want to be able to read this post and remind myself to grind through. It’s a reminder to do whatever it takes because working for myself and having full control over my life is the so important to my health and well being.

The Journey

This journey of freedom started for me back in 2008. At that time friend who I met through DJ’ing and I started talking about life and what we wanted to do. It turned out a lot of the things involved soaking up as many cultures as we could and enjoying things like golf, surfing and adventures. We wanted to travel for extended periods of time and to do it now, not when we were retired and had plenty of free time.

The corporate world wouldn’t allow this dream life though. Two weeks of holidays is all you get until you work five whole years for a company then they give you an extra week. But no one in their right mind would take all three weeks at once and work the remaining 49. It was evident we’d have to work for ourselves to make this dream life happen.

Something else made me want to achieve this dream life now.

I had lost my brother and father a few years prior and that hit me hard. It made think about life. I had always imagined myself growing older and my family always being there. All of the sudden the loss of my brother and father made me realize that there are no guarantees in life.

There is no guarantee I’ll live to my retirement. Now you might be thinking this is a negative thought process. To me, it’s more of a seize the moment thought process.

Too many people say to themselves “I’ve always wanted to do that but I don’t….”. You can finish that sentence with a load of excuses. Some justified. Some not.

What I am getting at is these people are letting life and all the amazing things they want to experience pass them by. I don’t want to be one of them.

I didn’t want to be one of them when I started this journey. But I had no idea how to make this happen. I first started a website called Golf Instruction Guy. My idea was to make money off the site through paid video tips and online lessons.

It failed.

I took a job on commission with a member from the golf course I worked out. I was to create and sell golf holiday packages. This was going to be the best job every as I would go on the trips and give instruction.

None of the trips sold and I made no money. I still thought we could market the packages through the internet but the guy I worked with wasn’t on board.

So I started Peerless Golf. My strategy was to blog about golf tips like I did on Golf Instruction Guy and build awareness around the my golf trips. It didn’t work out well as the people searching for golf tips online didn’t have the cash to go on expensive golf holidays.

Peerless Golf taught me a lot about SEO however as I relied solely on that for traffic. It didn’t matter though as I still failed and needed a job to make my dream life come true.

Right In Front Of My Nose

It was late 2011 and I dabbled with a few ideas for affiliate marketing websites. But I was wasting my time and making no money. This job that was going to launch my dream life and give me personal freedom was right in front of my nose. I just couldn’t smell it.

My friend who I had the life talk about with back in 2008 pointed out the obvious. I know a lot about SEO. I know a lot of business owners. I am very likeable.

With those three things he told me to start selling SEO to local small business owners. It made total sense as I had learnt so much about SEO over the years.

So I started Meaningful Marketing in April 2012. But I was reluctant to talk about SEO or sell SEO services. Why?

I had just read one of the best marketing books ever called The Next Evolution Of Marketing. It opened my eyes to a world of marketing that connected more to humans. I wanted to and still do want to build and agency that focuses on that principal.

But as a another friend suggested, companies have to evolve. She said that I should start with SEO and build towards being this agency. And so I did and in April of 2013 I focused Meaningful Marketing’s content and keywords towards Victoria and SEO. Within three months my site was ranking at the top and I had 6 clients by November.

The clients continued to come and in January of last year, I said enough to my full time job.

So here I am. One year later looking back and how much I’ve enjoyed getting up whenever I want, working whenever I want, from wherever I want and being able to go where ever I want.

My plan is to head down to Buenos Aires in 6 weeks for a month or two. I want to enjoy warm weather, meat, wine and to see many of my favourite DJ’s while I am there.

I wouldn’t be afford that opportunity if it wasn’t for the all the serious of events that I’ve talked about in this post. And I want this all to serve as a reminder that I don’t want this freedom to end.

Lately I have been losing my focus ever so slightly on the roads. At 32, I’ve been driving for pretty much half of my life. I grew up in Qualicum Beach and if you have ever been there, there isn’t a lot of traffic to worry about. The next biggest city I drove in until I move down to Victoria was Nanaimo. But I would only ever drive through it.

Since living in Victoria I haven’t had many close calls on the road. The one accident I was in took place in a cab about 8 years ago. I had another close call but was lucky to escape when another driver ran a red light just as we were entering the intersection. I should add that I slowly have run into two peoples rear bumpers. But those happened almost ten years ago.

But as I said, lately I’ve been losing my focus on the road and having more close calls. I’m really starting to think I need to search for Victoria driving schools and get some lessons. A few months back I just got back from Argentina and hadn’t driven in a couple months. I forget to should check and almost side swiped someone.

Then just yesterday I was at an intersection waiting for the light to go green. There was a car to my left waiting to turn left. Before either light went green I heard Ambulance sirens. I wanted to get out of the way and hear where they were coming from. So when the car to my left started to move and enter the intersection, I crept out into the intersection to see where the ambulance was coming from. The light was red though and the cars on the other side had an advanced green. So as I slowly creeping through the intersection worried about the ambulance, my light was red. I was pretty much half way though when I realized. Thankfully the car turning left from the other side was worried about the ambulance too and hadn’t turned. They then noticed me half way though the intersection and let me go.

When I noticed the light was red I felt so embarrassed and damn lucky that the other car noticed this and we didn’t have a collision. There’s been an angel looking out for me these days and I almost feel like a cat with 9 lives on the road with some of these close calls. I am really worried that something bad is going to happen and I’ll need to visit my client Westshore Driving School for some lessons and to get me paying attention on the road again.