The American Dream® Now Looks Different Than You Remember

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Over the past several years, The Atlantic, CNBC, CNN, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Forbes, Fortune, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, NBC, Psychology Today, The Telegraph, and Time have all reported on a growing trend in personal finance. Those of us … Continued

How to Find Unique Vacations on a Budget

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I regularly get asked how I find the unique places where I vacation. My trademark response: “Give me five hours and Google, and I can find a vacation you’ve never seen.”
Everybody has the Internet, though; and everybody has five hours. Here’s my process, in case you’re looking to break your status quo.

An Ohio Church Plant and an Animal Migration Bridge in Alberta

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Candidly, the church through history has often made those instinctive journeys more dangerous. We’ve crushed lives and spooked others from progress. Even as we have attempted to build in-roads into secular culture, we have created more hurdles for someone to find their destiny on the other side of their church experience.

5 Reasons to Spend Your Vacation in a Desert

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To be fair, there’s a reason few flock to this slice of the Chihuahuan Desert. It’s not convenient to get there—hours from an interstate highway and seven hours from a major airport (San Antonio). The unabated sun makes visits bearable only half the year, and paddling possible for even fewer months on the calendar. You have to buy water, because it’s that scarce; and educated folks know not to drink the river water that’s already there.

7 Tips for a More Productive Writing Sabbatical

As you learn your writing rhythm, you’ll learn when, where, and how to get the most out of your time at the keyboard. Some of these elements will impact your efficiency more than others. So, be aware of procrastination triggers and distracting stimuli. Pay attention to patterns in the process—good and bad—and determine ways to diminish the negative and promote the positive. That’s how I got this list.

A Ticket to Spontaneity

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Back at my hostel, folks asked where I’d been; and I told them.
Responses included, “They let you do that!?” and “How did you arrange that?”
“I asked.”
There are some big lessons in there for me—professional, relational, and spiritual ramifications that I’ve been processing since then. But on my first morning in Cape Town, I made the rest of the trip unnecessary. This would not be topped. This would be the story of the trip.

A Different Rest for the Weary

posted in: Explorience | 4

I’m flying, floating, then riding a bus to what’s rated as one of the most grueling hikes in North America—a rugged wilderness described by trail alumni on YouTube as a place where nobody escapes a battered body. In fact, the Canadian Coast Guard and Parks Canada medevacs or otherwise rescues up to nine people a week from this stretch of ground—when only 52 people per day are allowed to enter the trail.
When I tell people where I’m going, I get two general responses. The first: “That sounds awesome!” and more often: “Not me. Why would you do that?” For the crowd who fall in that second camp, let me walk you through the reasoning.

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