The hotel staff guy could tell I was angry. But he didn’t speak a sentence of English. And my Spanglish wasn’t cutting it.
In my little hotel room in Costa Rica, the power went out twice in a quiet surf town with maybe four beachfront hotels. On the second night - with no power and no restaurants open, I devoured two small cans of Pringles chips in the mini-fridge for dinner. The worst part was that they cost $3 each.
But it wasn’t this guy’s fault. He was just the night shift dude. His job was to make sure we felt safe in a foreign country. Albeit he was doing so by lounging sideways in a chair in the outdoor lobby while watching an endless stream of TikTok content.
I wondered if this is really the life he wanted to live. Angry digital surf nomads shouting at him “No me gusta! Tengo hambre!”
But I had a right to be mad. Technically I was paying around $100/day for a bed, A/C and supposedly stable wifi.
And by me staying in a room for a week, it was enough for him to get through life. At $8/hr, was this good enough to feed his kids? To pay rent for a likely multigenerational family shack in the jungle? I guess it’s fine if you believe in capitalism. Which I do. But given how he showed up for work every night - I’m guessing he was willing to make the trade. And I was too - even if I was angry for a bit.
The morning before I dropped two tabs of acid - I made sure to run payroll for Interview Query.
Or at least confirm with my Filipino virtual assistant that it got done. She also makes around $10/hour. But she definitely does not lounge in her chair watching TikTok’s all day.
Banking and ACH automates most of it. But for part-time hourly contractors, it does require a responsible human being to wake up on the 1st of the month, enter some numbers into a spreadsheet, and confirm that digital bits from one server made it to the other side of the world. And I don’t know for sure, but I think most people are happy that the guy responsible is usually the one that impulsively decides he’d rather surf mid-way through the work day.
I just turned 30 years old. And other people actually depend on me.
Ants depend on me too.
There are 600 different species of ants in Costa Rica. At their worst, they would slowly climb all over my board shorts, grabbing any pieces of leftover ocean salt that dried up. I would follow their trail one day as they carried leftover Pringle crumbs and salt back across the pool where they face a line of iguanas basking in the sun.
The iguanas are like the chickens of Costa Rica. You’re not supposed to feed them because they’re supposed to eat the ants. And yet they behave with a nature of high anxiety towards predators like me.
And so in a way - my $3 went well spent. Some ants made it back to their queen. And some iguanas got their mediocre ants. While avoiding highly processed carbohydrates.
Daily life in Costa Rica. Wake up. Do some work. Then head out to a glorious sunset surf. If you told me in high school that this would be my life - I think he’d be nodding his head proudly.
If you told high school Jay that he also spends 40+ hours working, thinking, analyzing data, using spreadsheets - I think he’d be aghast.
High School Jay - “What?! And no one is forcing me to do these things?”
Future Jay - “Yeah - you like it too! You sick fuck!”
But it’s even better than that. Random strangers in economies across the globe needed me to continue living my life. People could lose their jobs if I lost my judgement or addiction to business building. Consequently hotel staff in tropical places need me to continue to ditch work and go surfing.
But it’s not like I don’t take things as well. I took the waves from mother nature. I took the food and service from the hard labor of the local chefs and farmers. And I was granted the kindness from the people around me that welcomed me onto their country.
The real fact of adulting isn’t learning to just pay your taxes and do your laundry. To me I’m slowly seeing more glimpses into how these symbiotic relationships change as I get older. I took a lot from people and the world from 1 to 18. And realized that as more things shifted towards people needing things from me, it’s not zero sum. There’s plenty that goes around.
It’s easier to do harder things, to take on more responsibility, because you can indeed handle more than you ever think.
I’m really happy to understand that more and more at this age. Yes, I did wake up with lower back pain last week. But whatever - I’ll get over it.