Matt after Amazon and Antarctica… in reverse
My dear reader,
For the past year, I’ve been a bit of a ghost and haven’t really posted much. Part of it was laziness, it’s been a busy year with a lot going on, but I also really didn’t want to be “THAT GUY”. You know, the one high fiving themselves and humble bragging for every little thing going right in their life. For the most part that policy has served me well. However, when there have been more selfies of my boyfriend Dan, cute photos of otters and videos of the two cutest Boston Terriers in the world than updates on social saying I’m alive, or photos of what I’ve been up to — it occurs to me something needs to change. So, pull up a chair, put on a fresh kettle and get ready to read a very long, long overdue update of what’s up with me.
So, we’re gonna Benjamin Button this — so I’ll start with today and work backwards. Or perhaps more accurately Merlin’s style of experiencing time backwards.
Yesterday, I resigned from my role at Amazon Web Services. I took an Uber to Amazon Mexico HQ in Mexico City, turned in my laptop and badge then said “Hasta Luego” to the company I’ve worked at for over three and a half years. Saying the moment is bittersweet would be an understatement. As of yesterday, I had seniority on 86% of current employees, changed roles four times and launched a dedicated social media team with some of my dearest friends. As Jeremy would say, “My watch has ended”.
You may be asking — Wait, but, how are you? What are you doing in Mexico? Why did you leave your job? What do you have lined up next? Aren’t you worried about <insert valid concern here>? Or perhaps you’re just thinking — So when are you coming home? Well…
Where I’m at now?
· I made hamburgers for breakfast in my apartment in La Condesa, Mexico City where I’ll be until the end of March.
· I’ve had five interviews for new exciting opportunities with 100% remote companies, and another scheduled tomorrow.
· I WhatsApp Video called the newest member of my family — Kiki the Boston Terrier who just piddled in my mom’s closet.
· I’m back into Yoga, weigh 185 lbs, can do 76 push-ups & 89 situps (shout out to Kenton!).
· Last month, I made it to Antarctica, checking off my 7th continent in 11 months.
· I’m making videos and have edited four travel videos for my VLOG.
· Dan and I are celebrating 3 and half years together, and started looking at buying a house.
· I’m one part terrified, two parts excited and shaken not stirred about the next 2 months in Mexico & Ecuador with nothing planned after I get home in May.
What about the other stuff?
The answers vary given the day, but they’re all driven by one big collection of adventures this past year, called Remote Year.
For the past 10 months, I’ve been traveling with 50 beautiful humans as a part of a program called Remote Year. Basically, Remote Year sorts out all the logistics for participants to work remotely in 12 cities for 12 months (one city each month) with a group of other digital nomads who are working remotely with their own jobs or freelancing. A few quick clarifications — Amazon did not pay for it, but they allowed me the flexibility to join while I continued working for them. I don’t work for Remote Year in any way.
My Remote Year (RY) family of 50 people is Kaizen, the 11th RY group. Mexico City is our group’s 12th and final month. Which I’m promised will be filled with tacos, Mescal and enough tears to fill a small swimming pool. On the subjects of food, booze and my love of these humans I could write a novel, but I’ll leave my feelings about goodbyes with two thoughts. As fellow Kazien, Jace puts it, this isn’t an end but a very long beginning and in the spirit of Merlin, a fantastic comic from XKCD.
February concluded with a two-week vacation ending in Mendoza, Argentina during festival season and starting with an expedition ship to Antarctica. The phrase “dripping with decadence” couldn’t even begin to describe the trip and the cherry on top that ended it was a business class flight from Lima to Mexico city (the seats went horizontal and the meal had a wine pairing). My last minute booking, partner in crime for the trip was the aforementioned Kaizen/Wizard Jace.
Our Mendoza trip was planned for us by a friend of his mother’s during a three course meal at his restaurant and included a driver, zip-ling, white water rafting, insanely tasty food and of course vineyard tours. I’ll say that what Mendoza lacks in good internet it makes up for with incredibly kind people, amazing food and beautiful scenery.
Mendoza Recommendations
Best Food: http://azafranresto.com/en/
Best Activity: https://www.argentinarafting.com/
Best Wine: http://www.bodegacicchitti.com — Their Sangiovese was incredible.
Wine is great, but WHAT ABOUT ANTARCTICA!?!?!?!
Antarctica was in a word — sublime. The fancy definition of sublime, according to dictionary.com is “impressing the mind with a sense of grandeur or power; inspiring awe, veneration, etc.”. For me, the key word is awe — it’s that feeling of being small, that nature is a force, a power that will outlast any impact I could ever make on the world and somehow it’s not a sad feeling, but something that makes the world a more terrifying and beautiful place.
That’s the feeling I got outside on the deck of the Ocean Endeavor, watching icebergs go by and hearing the steady sound of winds and the occasional crackling of glaciers settling or a whale exhaling as it breaks the surface of the water. I hate to be a tease about it, but I’ll post some videos soon which include: an awkward teenage penguin tripping over a bundle of flags, a fur seal swimming up to our zodiac, spinning then shaking his mane off and the majesty of icebergs resettling.
I’d booked the expedition last minute through a travel agent with Quark Expeditions, whom I highly recommend. I got to do a polar plunge, which was surprisingly not as cold as I expected — but at the same time when I was climbing out of the water attempting to vocalize this thought all I could say was “Urbba gurrbaa neb la bub”. The expedition leader was an Alaskan man by the name of Solon who’s beard game was so strong, fellow crew members say he was born with it. Henceforth a required exclamation is “BY SOLON’S BEARD!”.
What really brought the trip to the next level though was the fact that everyone on the boat, 200+ passengers, were seasoned travelers, united by passion for nature (and by extension conservation) and no reliable internet access. There was joke telling, puns, stories and when trying to figure out facts like “How did Elon Musk make his fortune?” we had to crowd source. But what surprised me most were the deep conversations with a wide range of topics. One night we had a delightful conversation about the death penalty, I use the word delightful, because there were drastically differing opinions, but everyone took the time to carefully understand perspectives and in some cases opinions were changed. That level of openness, curiosity and understanding is something I honestly haven’t experienced with many of the most important people in my life.
If the social interactions on the ship were complex and mature, then the interactions off the ship with local wildlife were a simple and adolescent counterpoint in the best way possible. In February, summer is coming to a close so most of the penguin eggs have hatched and the chicks are getting into their deliciously awkward teenage phase. The adults have their own troubles too and go through what is called catastrophic molting, where all their feathers fall off so they can grow new ones. In the meantime, while they wait for their feathers to grow back in, they look equal parts goofy and miserable.
Goofy with patchy feathery bits and miserable because they aren’t able to swim. Their feathers are an essential part of their natural waterproofing process, and since they get all their food from the water it’s not a fun time for them. But, teenagers and grumpy Guses leads to some great penguin watching.
According to an international treaty, visitors are not allowed to approach wildlife closer than specific distances. For example, seals need a distance of 15m, and penguins should be given a berth of 5m. The funny thing about this rule though, is that animals are allowed to come up to you. Likewise, at certain locations, penguin colonies coincide with research stations and human structures. So it’s nearly impossible to walk outside your front door without bumping into one. At one such research station, when attempting to film a segment for my travel VLOG, I had a penguin mosey into the shot and hang out.
I was so flabbergasted I’m pretty sure I redid the take 10x time and had the whole thing out of focus. On a hike up to a lookout point, one curious penguin actually started nipping at the jacket and boots of an unsuspecting photographer taking a selfie with a different penguin. But what universally ties all penguin colony experiences together in Antarctica, is penguin poop. I honestly couldn’t tell y’all about any other smells in Antarctica because it seemed to me that in all the vast emptiness of ice and water, the only thing that generates smell on the whole continent seems to be penguin poo. It wasn’t a truly awful smell, but it certainly has a presence.
Besides penguin poop…
What I’d been warned about most before visiting the 7th continent was Drake’s Passage. So a bit of geography/history here, Drake’s passage is the stretch of water between the tip of South America, Cape Horn, and the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. It’s named after Francis Drake whom didn’t technically navigate the passage, but accidentally found one his ships off course there after navigating the straight of Magellan which is just north of Cape Horn.
This bit of sea is notorious for massive storms, three story waves as well as the bane of anyone prone to sea sickness. Getting to Antarctica via boat requires crossing this open water for about two days where your ship is at the mercy of whatever the wind decides to serve up. Since wind forecasts have less than a 20% accuracy more than a day out it’s pretty much a roll of the dice. We were incredibly lucky and had moderate conditions there and back. I considered the safe passage as mother nature’s birthday gift for me, as I toasted a bottle of champagne and an entire plate of cookies (thanks Dan!) on our way through the passage.
Before getting to Antarctica and Ushuaia, where the boat left from in mid-February, I had some time to kill. This past year, I’ve learned a lot about myself, somethings were not that surprising, for example — I’m comfortable booking international flights the day before I leave and am happy to land without accommodation booked. But other things came as a shock.
My spirit animal is no longer an Otter.
It is now officially the patron saint of my laugh — sea lions. In Argentina I finally got the chance to swim with sea lions. In Puetro Madyrn, I woke up at 6:30am on Valentines day, pulled on a wet suit and took a boat filled with exclusively Portuguese speakers to colony of sea lions and penguins 30 minutes south of town. The colony was filled with pups who tried valiantly, but unsuccessfully to perch on the rocks with their parents to sun bathe — exactly like Gerald from Finding Dory — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5rnDPYgbZA.
I had heard sea lions were curious and playful, that they liked to pop out of the water and say hello, but I didn’t realize that they were basically puppies. After about 10 minutes in the water, a sea lion came up to say hello. She swam directly in front of me, then spun in place, a full 360 degrees, paused and did it once more. This was something that my dog MoMo does after she puts her ball in front of you, and if you don’t throw it fast enough to play fetch, she’ll start doing play spins and making a siren pitched “mreewww” noise.
So in absence of a ball to throw, I did the next best thing. I also spun around twice, returning the gesture and waited. Then the sea lion repeated it, and thus created a loop where we both sort of spun at each other pausing occasionally to check in, with much the same spirit of when two very polite people both keep repeating “thank yous” to each other with no sight in end. After about 5 minutes, we parted ways, me dizzy, the sea lion back off to the rocks.
Never in my life have I felt such strong FOMO for not having a GoPro. I honestly think that is what GoPro commercials should be — that moment when something magical happened that could have been captured but wasn’t. Now, I know that sentiment raises a lot of questions about presence and how experiences can be more genuine when they aren’t recorded, but I want to know what on earth it sounds like when I laugh underwater and have a keepsake for something that meant a lot to me.
February, before Puetro Madryn was a blur of Tango, empanadas, Buenos Aires nightlife, tranquility in the sleepy town of Montevideo, Uruguay, new friends, nights in hostels, Air BnBs and the occasional luxury hotel. But more than any of those things, it was a time of reflection. I didn’t come to the decision to leave my job overnight. It had been an option on the table for several months, through management changes, restructuring, stock vesting, questions of where my career was going and long discussions with my fellow Kaizens.
On my flight from Colombia to Uruguay I reviewed my 2018 goal list. For context, my goals are in a small notebook with “It always seems impossible until it’s done” written on the cover with a large dreamcatcher over a soft starry background. I know it’s corny, but it reminds me of what it felt like before I became 100% remote and convinced my company. One month in, and I’d been nailing my goals, I was up to 50 push-ups, had completed an online business certification and had a rough outline of my business plan. I based my goal list on a framework created by Michael Hyatt called “Your Best Year Ever”. The idea is you try and pick a mix of habit goals, and achievement goals, but the trick is you want to capture of a variety of different aspects of your life. So the goals you select should be spread evenly across categories like: intellectual (a book reading or course goal as an example), financial (save $1000 by the end of Q1), avocational (related to your hobbies), etc. Under vocational, I’d listed “Make a new job/get a new job/get a promotion by the end of Remote Year”. Out of all my goals that was the only one I hadn’t made progress on. So I started pushing, sending my resume out, scheduling role fit discussions internally and developing an individual development plan with my manager. As opportunities started presenting themselves, and I had deeper conversations internally, I found myself drawn to opportunities outside the company. The last time I’d “hit the pavement” with my resume was five years ago when I had applied to entry level jobs out of college. I was stoked when I got my first job from a LinkedIn post working for a small survey and data analytics firm in DC after what felt like a pretty grueling job search process. After a year and a half there, I joined Amazon via a referral. For the past five years, I’d been on the interviewer side of the equation more than the interviewee and I wasn’t sure what to expect.
Somewhere in that plane over Brazil, it dawned on me — coming up on my 28th birthday, that I was now a mid-level professional. Which quite frankly for anyone else my age reading this, is still baffling! Not only that, but my experience was valuable, and the job search process wasn’t looking like it was going to be that painful. By the time I landed, I’d developed a plan to check my finances and start pushing harder. If I was going to stay at Amazon — I’d need a commitment of a renewed remote agreement & a path for promotion, and if I was going to get a new role it wouldn’t just be a job it was going to be the next step in a direction I was excited to take.
Michael Hyatt talks a lot about the messy middle for goals, that long bit where the initial excitement has worked its way out of your system and progress becomes a bit tedious after all the easy wins. Taking more ownership in my life and with my career has not been without its obstacles. I’ll say simply that pushing harder for the last month wasn’t without it’s frustrations. But as I worked these things out before my trip to Antarctica, in small cafes and hotel lobbies with WIFI, the pieces started falling together. I realized the best way to advance my career in the spirit of my goal was to say goodbye to Amazon for a little while and find a new role. In my last few months out of the country, I’d have the flexibility to pursue my passions, savor my new friendships and take the same intention that I bring to traveling and listening to other people to myself.
I promised myself I’d catch y’all up with everything that has happened in the past year. But, in the timeless words of Mark Twain, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” Although this journey is coming to an end, I feel like the story is only just beginning.
With the love and fondness of a long absent friend,
Matt
