I should have unbridled happiness flowing from my pores, but truth is my life today brings me contentment, not bliss. I’ve gotten used to this lifestyle and see it as normal. Only when I think back ten years do I appreciate how far I’ve come.

I’ve become a man without goals. I don’t need more notches or a higher income. I don’t want a family (right now). I don’t want a smartphone or tablet device. Besides a couple of countries I want to visit in the future, there is nothing else I want. What should I try to achieve next?

I’ve meditated about this problem a lot for the past couple months. My thoughts kept going back to the pussy I had in Poland, where my penis reached the then pinnacle of its existence. I don’t need any more notches, that’s for sure, but I can’t think of anything else that keeps my mind sharper and my masculinity stronger than chasing pink. The day-to-day adventures of pussy chasing keeps me young, vigorous, and fully engaged in life. Being a slave to the pussy has made me a warrior. I’m miles ahead of the sexual pack when compared to my male peers of the world, whose approach to getting laid is based more on luck and hope than concerted effort and strategy.

If pussy is my fountain of youth, it is clear what my new mission in life must be. It was under my nose all along, something I must have known was the answer but could not admit to myself. Here is what I wrote almost a year ago:

Within a country there is a city that has a bar that contains a spot where you will be in disbelief at how easy it is to consistently get quality women, regardless of how many flaws you think you have. On this 3 foot by 3 foot patch of space you’re an unstoppable rebel force, though for the guy standing next to you the patch does absolutely nothing because it’s not his patch. It is your duty as a man to find out where that little patch of Earth is and reap the rewards that it contains.

Ironically enough, I titled the post “Your Duty As A Man.” At the time my duty was slightly different, just to travel through Europe and fuck around, not to find this magical patch, this pussy paradise. I wanted to meander through Europe and accumulate random experiences and flags. Then Poland happened, and that plan no longer made any sense after I realized that a consistent stream of high-quality pussy profoundly affected my immediate happiness in a positive way. The feeling that comes from being unstoppable with the women was like natural heroin. Every night in Poland I’d go to sleep with a little smirk on my face, ready to die in peace, even if I was alone in bed.

It’s finally obvious what I have to do. My mission today is to find a place that exceeds Poland. My goal in life is to find pussy paradise.

I want to be in a place where if I step outside and take a deep breath, pussy will come. I want to walk in a huge club and be the most desirable man who women compete over. I want zero-effort pussy of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever had in my life. Maybe you’re laughing right now that I’m dreaming, that this place doesn’t exist, but I believe it does, and sometimes belief is all it takes.

Before a man searches for pussy paradise, he must understand its transient nature. Nothing stays paradise forever. They’re like once in a millenia tsunamis that occur after a convergence of unlikely factors, never to be seen again in a location for many generations. In two recent countries I visited, Estonia and Latvia, I saw the scattered ruins of the paradise that existed before me. Stories from those who remembered its peak suggested great riches and glory to all those men who visited, but I was too little too late (actually five years too late). With the rapid societal changes that globalization brings, I estimate a 1-3 year window until emergent pussy paradises fade, with the only thing left for late arrivals is the smell of faint pussy juice in the air.

When you stay on the road you start to develop a sixth sense for where pussy paradise may be. You look at a city name that you’ve never seen and have a feeling that this could be it. Then you dedicate a lot of time and resources to investigate further, only to be likely disappointed. In my hand I hold yet another losing lottery ticket, but the jackpot continues to grow and I still believe in my numbers. I will find pussy paradise, no matter how long it takes me.

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Now it’s rare that a day goes by where I don’t think of the grim reaper. I hold death real close to my chest, using it as the main way to act instead of waiting for tomorrow. The reaper pushes me to go against what my upbringing has indoctrinated me to do, to fit my peg body into the college-career-mortgage-marriage hole.

The more I think of death and the more I use it as a tool, of knowing that there is a clock on my life that ticks every second of every day with a random deadline that I can’t predict, the more it has pushed me to take the tough steps of making big changes in my life.

It’s now clear to me what I have to do so that I will not be upset when the end is near: I have to complete as many of my dreams and goals as quickly as possible. It’s a bucket list I must work on while still very much alive, not when I turn 50 or get diagnosed with a life-ending illness. I’m in the prime of my life, but I’m living as if it will soon end.

I believe the more times you can say “been there, done that” on your death bed to all the things you set out to do, the more peacefully you can go. These can range from the insignificant to the lofty:

• Banging a big Brazilian booty
• Writing a book
• Learning a foreign language
• Starting a successful business
• Living in another country for one year
• Procreating
• Playing a few songs on a musical instrument
• Fucking cheap hookers who loved you all night long
• Paying off debt
• Owning a restaurant or bar
• Starting a nonprofit organization
• Beating someone up with your bare hands

While it will be impossible to complete everything you want to do before you die, there is a point where you feel like you’ve done enough, where you’ve gone far above your human duty and any extra day you live on earth is gravy on top of what already was an exciting life where you acted instead of waited. When it’s your time to go, you can say to yourself, “I had a good run,” and close your eyes with no regrets. This is what I want.

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I had been out to clubs a couple times before, but I had absolutely no game, no style, no confidence, and no money. All I had was hope that I’d get lucky. My mom helped me pack my wardrobe, including two fine pair of brown slacks, and I was off.

For some reason, guys think it’s easier to succeed with women when they are far away from home, that you unlock some type of cheat code that places you in a parallel universe where women are ten times more attracted to you. I thought no different. I believed that stepping foot in Miami would reveal the Casanova that was always bubbling underneath. I even took a couple boxes of condoms.

It become very clear early on that I would not succeed. I was a helpless little minnow in an ocean far bigger and more competitive than my University of Maryland lake. Me and my slacks were utterly unable to compete, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t try. I approached at least ten girls that week, my first approaches ever, and actually got a number from one (I remember calling her from a pay phone). I also talked to a “hot” girl for about fifteen minutes. I was proud of myself. Though I didn’t come close to getting laid, or even kissing a girl, it was the moment I first dipped my foot into the pool. The water wasn’t as cold as I had thought.

I get nostalgic when I think about that trip. I was just a sexually frustrated guy who wanted to bang a couple girls until finding a nice girlfriend. Back then I fantasized more about cuddling and romantic trips than aggressively loosening a woman’s pussy. I had no clue I would become who I am today, a guy who fucks just for the sake of fucking with no higher aim in mind.

I thought that learning game would be a means to the end of helping me get a girlfriend, but I didn’t know that within my nature was a man who viewed the game as the end itself. Now I look back at poor little Roosh of 2001, and remember how he had to gather the powers of Zeus to approach just one woman.

Then I wonder why men become who they become.

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The beautiful Colombian girl you fucked a couple years ago? Doesn’t matter. The 18-year-old with a perfect body who you raw dogged? Big deal. The doctor’s wife you seduced that let you drive around in her husband’s expensive toys? No one gives a fuck. You’re only as good as your last bang. The past is not water that you can carry over to the present, just an abstraction that grows dim in your mind with time.

I rode a little high into Latvia after banging two new girls during my final weekend in Poland. I was ready to keep the momentum going and do even better in my new home in Riga. The universe had other plans for me.

I swung wildly but was unable to connect with the ball. My first week I went out on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, did countless approaches in almost ten different venues, both day and night, but had only two measly numbers to show for it. I was annoyed and angry because I thought I had passed the point of grinding it out, especially after coming from a country that was easy for me. The universe knew I was getting spoiled in Poland. It wanted me to be humbled again, to appreciate what I had. It began throwing curve balls to remind me of it really takes to succeed in the game.

I was beat by the time Saturday came around. I didn’t want to go out, and my thoughts constantly drifted back to Poland. I made myself snap out of it. Whatever made me successful there was not present in my new home, so I had to treat Poland as dead. I went to the coffee shop and wrote down a plan to get my Latvian flag from the things I had so far learned in my three days of experience. That night I walked out of the door with the plan in my pocket, telling myself that I couldn’t return home before 7am without exhausting all possibilities.

I got lucky on my third approach and returned home half past five with a Latvian girl. She had no idea that violating her pussy was the culmination of four grinding days where I questioned the decision to visit her city.

The universe doesn’t owe you anything. I don’t care what you’ve done in the past. I don’t care where you’ve been and who you’ve fucked, because there is nothing that says you are supposed to succeed today. No girl you talk to has to treat you well or be easy just because she’s not as hot as another girl you had a long time ago. All that matters is how committed you are to putting in time and effort towards your goal. Your game, your skill, your environment, and the level of difficulty will always change but as long as you work, you will succeed. Walk up to the universe, tell it you’re not spoiled, you’re not entitled, and then punch it in the face. Make it watch you put in that work.

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There’s no guarantee you’ll be happy in a country no matter how much due diligence and research you do. Don’t travel unless you’re ready to take the good with the bad.

Don’t underestimate how much local guys will hate you for being successful with their women. Watch your back when rolling solo.

There is a point where having additional money, without fame or status, will not at all help you fuck more or better women. That amount is much less than you think.

Too much success drives you away from what made you successful in the first place.

There are no regrets if you failed after listening to your gut.

Fucking pussy gets old, but fucking young pussy never does.

Success is less great if you don’t have anyone to share it with.

Everything they say about European winters is true.

When you’ve been with enough fast women, it becomes impossible to wait for pussy. During the time you’d be waiting you can fuck something else just as good, if not better.

Life is much easier when you assume that every girl will flake on you all of the time.

There are organized movements in Western nations to eradicate gender, particularly masculinity. Losing this war will make it all but impossible for you to find a feminine woman who wants to serve your needs.

The happiness you experience from success cannot be bottled up to appreciate another day. You need to constantly seek out more success that is even better than your last. If you cannot top an achievement, you have peaked.

Having an apartment near your favorite bar or club dramatically increases your notch count.

Some countries are not worth figuring out. If it doesn’t work after you gave it your best shot, move on.

The more happiness you find outside of your country, the more hate and criticism you will get from those who still live in it. They will do everything in their power to make you come back and suffer with them.

If you’re feeling depressed or lonely in a foreign city, go out for a one hour walk in the center. Something will happen.

Don’t dismiss eye contact from women; it’s the primary way they show interest. Your response to eye contact from a pretty woman should be instant, like a reflex.

The biggest way that men self-sabotage themselves is overdrinking. It’s worse than being best friends with a cockblocker.

Foreign women are almost just as bad about not using condoms as American women.

The layout of a nightlife venue is just as important as the ratio of girls to guys. I can pick up better in a sausage fest with a favorable floor plan than a gigantic mega club with more girls.

It’s hard to find good clothes in many foreign countries. You’re eternally stuck with H&M and Zara.

Tourist apartments are always cheaper than hotels, but they are more comfortable and don’t make you seem like a sex tourist. I see no advantage in staying in hotels.

As much as you hate your country, you will defend it if it’s criticized by a foreigner.

If you’re going to wear a suit, it will be much better received if you wear it in a venue where there are no other guys in suits.

You can’t go back to what used to make you happy. You have to find new happiness.

You should learn the local language, even for a short stay. It improves your experiences and scores points with the girls.

If you’re going away for a while, write a diary for one month before your departure. If you ever get homesick on the road, read that diary. If that doesn’t cause you to stop being homesick, you’re probably not meant to live abroad.

The low point of an expat’s year is Christmas. Buy good food and presents for yourself to dull the depression.

Women highly value honesty from a man, as long as it doesn’t involve positive feelings you have for her.

Baking soda.

Fear is man’s greatest enemy. I don’t ask anyone for advice with something that involves risk because they will try to talk me out of it.

The best city in the world can suck in the off-season. Not only do you have to know where to go, but when.

It’s better to overpack than underpack.

The first thing you should do when you get into a city is buy a small bottle of vodka to arm your afterparty move.

Foreign girls like silences. Don’t be so eager to fill them.

If a book doesn’t excite you, isn’t teaching you anything you don’t already know, or doesn’t fascinate you, stop reading and find one that does. Finishing a crappy book is like dating a girl you don’t like.

There are many first world countries in Eastern Europe where the cost of living is half that of the United States. You don’t need to live in Peru or Thailand to see considerable savings.

Polish and Russian are excruciatingly hard to learn for English speakers.

Your haters increase in direct proportion to your influence.

Life will you throw you problems that you can’t immediately solve, or solve at all.

Feminists have successfully brainwashed men into thinking they’ll become unattractive to all women if they choose to remain bachelors. Truth is that a man’s best pussy-getting years starts at 30.

Some guys say they grew out of the game. Then you see his unattractive girlfriend and realize he never got good at it.

The only game that will always work, no matter where you are, is the numbers game.

It’s better for a girl to look at you and laugh than for her to look at you and offer no response at all.

Reading books is the most powerful thing you can do to gain the experience of life without experiencing life. I’ve learned more from reading last year than I have from four years in college.

You adapt to little increases to your happiness each year. The dream life you envisioned for yourself ten years ago will be seen as normal when you finally get it.

No one is looking out for your interests 100% of the time, not even your family. You’re always on your own.

Your brain is capable of so much more if you clear it of distractions. Learning is a form of meditation.

There’s a reason why foreign guys don’t travel to the United States to get laid.

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I thought about that little encounter afterwards, particularly how my whole strategy with women for the previous ten years is to bang them as quickly as possible with the least amount of work and bullshit. I’ve created an efficient factory assembly line that is custom-made for fucking and almost nothing else.

I don’t want to go for daytime hikes or romantic walks.
I don’t want to go to museums.
I don’t want to dine in restaurants.
I don’t want to solve a girl’s problems.
I don’t want to go on little vacations to the beach.
I don’t want to spend quality time.

On any given night I want to have a couple drinks, a couple laughs, and then fuck. I’m so dedicated to this goal that one outcome keeps repeating: short relationships that usually die after the second or third bang. There are no hard feelings, no tears, just a silent, non-dramatic end that quietly fades from both of our lives when it’s clear that two fucks was all I wanted from her. Then I go out and find another girl who is similar but different enough to keep me interested in order to repeat the same process over again.

Have I lost a part of what it takes to be happy in a long-term relationship of mutual sharing and companionship? I’m not sure, but when you’re a man with options who can fuck as much as your dick can handle, you don’t lose sleep wondering whether you’re on the right path or not. When you have a solitary life in strange cities without friends, you don’t care for much more than drinking and fucking. The particular lifestyle I’ve signed up for is making it increasingly unlikely that a monogamous relationship will happen for me.

It doesn’t help that the more I become the man I’ve always wanted to be, the harder it is to find a woman who stimulates me both intellectually and emotionally. It’s as if my experience is pricing me out of the world dating market, which was best explained by commenter Begby a few months ago:

The supreme irony of it all is that as soon as you’ve [become accomplished] and met all of [your] goals that make you interesting, funny, strong, attractive, and alpha, you are going to be WAY better than any potential woman you will end up with. You will be dumpster diving for the rest of your life because no woman can really measure up to a fully developed man. It’s called penis envy.

Why on earth would you treat them as anything but disposable toys, to be used 3 or 4 at a time and then discarded in short order? They are all inferior to the self-possessed man, so why would we want to spend our lives with inferior people? You let them stick around long, and they start working to ruin your life and keep you emotionally unbalanced so they can control you. Then when you are worn down enough to give them some of that control, they feel they “conquered” you, and are no longer attracted to you.

When is the last time a woman entertained you for hours, made you laugh, said witty things that she made up on her own, etc? Like never? All they are good for is sex, and even that is boring after a few times with the same girl.

Men really did get the short end of the stick on this planet—having to bust our ass 24/7 in a misguided effort to impress people who are far inferior to us.

The Polish girl at the grocery store believed my joke because she barely knew me. Otherwise she would just roll her eyes, because the outcome I told her would simply never happen.

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Times have since changed. After educating himself, the modern man is lost on exactly what to do or be so that he can have a sense of pride in who he is. Creating a family with masculine women who are eager to rob you blind in a failed marriage doesn’t make sense anymore. Being secure in a good job where you don’t have to worry every few months about getting laid off is a thing of the past. What can you do so that you feel like a man in today’s culture? I’ve determined six things:

1. Fuck 25 girls. After 25 notches, you will have a strong understanding of female quality and psychology, giving you needed tools to make good decisions when it comes to relationships and commitment. Before that number, you run the risk of entrapping yourself in a toxic relationship that takes away from your manhood instead of feeding it. You’ll have a nagging doubt in your head about whether the girl you’re with is ideal for you or not. Also, there is no other way I know of that builds a man’s confidence than fucking significantly more women than the average man.

2. Intimidate others with your physical size. Is it possible to be a man if others think you are weak and non-threatening? Is it possible to get respect from others when you look frail? As fast as I’m sure your newest smartphone can dial 911, it’s hard to feel like a man if you don’t think that other men would fear getting into a fight with you. This doesn’t mean going on steroids, but it does mean getting strong and taking weightlifting seriously.

3. Don’t be afraid of getting your ass beat. You’re not a man if you win a fight, but you are one if you’re not scared to get into that fight. When you realize that you’re not made of glass, you stand up for yourself in all situations, whether they possess threats of physical violence or not. You push back at disrespect even if you think you may get beat up. The irony is that the less scared you are of getting beat up, the less likely other men will ever fight you. Accepting that a beatdown will happen almost guarantees that you’ll never receive one.

4. Give back to those who took care of you. When you were growing up, who looked after you? Who helped make you who you are? Chances are you’ve yet to return the favor. Starting with our parents, we take for granted those who have helped us along the way. Right now they could probably receive help with something that you’re able to give. Repaying them is a surefire way of increasing their happiness, which in turn will make you happy. While I’m sure there are many starving kids in Africa who could use your help, there are people closer to you who could use it, too. Help them first.

5. Accept that you will die. Western culture does a great job of making death a painless afterthought, an event that might as well never arrive. It teaches everyone to deal with death by turning into obsessive-compulsive automatons when it comes to diet, exercise, and risk avoidance. Instead of living the best, most pleasurable life they can, people waste their time by hedging their bets in order to maybe live a longer, more unfulfilling life. Accept that you will die, sooner than you think, and get to work on those things that you want to accomplish right now, not ten or twenty years down the line. By doing the things you want without delay, you listen to your nature and become a stronger person in the process.

6. Do something worthy that other people admire. A genetic bug in the male genome is that we want to be admired. It’s not enough to do something great, but we also have to be acknowledged for doing something great. Until then it’s hard to feel like a man. Don’t do just the bare minimum. Don’t go easy on a project or hobby that means a lot to you. Don’t stop until you’ve gone farther than what most other men who have attempted it has. After you’ve reached a high level of achievement, share your knowledge and allow other men to accomplish what you have. When others want to do what you have done, you will feel like a man.

Do all these things and you will come into your own and be comfortable in your skin. You’ll also serve as a role model for those young guys trying to find their place in the world.

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I’m convinced that the solution is to grow up and do what society expects of me, to be a man as defined by my middle-class peers.

I will man up and fly to Washington DC. I will fix my resume, make up some amazing bullshit for the four-year gap in professional employment, and become a microbiologist again. Hopefully I won’t have a mean boss, and hopefully the HR gals like me enough so I don’t get the axe in the first round of corporate restructuring.

Once stably employed, I will man up by looking for a modest condominium in the suburbs, taking on a mortgage that is not too crushing. The mortgage will give me a respectability that my self-published fuck guides never could. Hopefully the value of my condo doesn’t decline, the condo association nazis don’t complain about my music, and no major repairs will be needed that force me to eat ramen for an extended period of time.

To get around in the suburbs, I will man up by purchasing an environmentally friendly automobile, preferably a Toyota Prius. I will finance it. I will have to budget carefully since gas, insurance, and maintenance adds up. Hopefully I don’t get into a catastrophic accident.

I will man up and enroll in a part-time graduate program by borrowing the tuition (I can get my dad to co-sign the loan since he likes it when I go to school). If I really move my ass, I can have a fresh degree in four years, which will really impress my boss and set me up for a 4.5% annual raise instead of the usual 3%. My debt load should now keep me quite busy and anxious for the next 30 years.

I will man up and find a wife on eHarmony. She’ll be my age, a handsome woman tired of being pumped and dumped, with a masculine sensibility that South American and Eastern European women don’t have. She will drastically shorten her hair six months after the wedding, and in spite of my disapproval, she will gain one pound a month until finally exploding like a whale for our first of two kids. She’ll never make the effort to lose the pregnancy weight, no matter how many subtle gym membership gifts I get her for Valentines Day, Mothers Day, her birthday, and Christmas. She will lose interest in having sex with me. The most humiliating moment of my life will be when she tells me to pump her hand while she reads a woman’s magazine. I will feel unattractive and unloved.

Once the kids are in middle school, my wife will initiate divorce proceedings because “the feeling” is no longer there. The feeling was no longer there for me either, but I was willing to make it work for our children. Nonetheless, I will man up and let her take the property, the cars, and the kids. I will pay her steep child support payments that leave me on the edge of poverty. My kids will be brainwashed against me, and hate me for the rest of their lives. I’ll hate them too, but if I stop paying child support I will be sent to prison. With little fatherly influence in their lives, my son will become a little bitch and my daughter a slut who loses her virginity at the age of 14.

I will not give up on life. I will work even harder and make wise investments until my kids are 18 and the burden of child support payments are lifted. Once eligible for social security at the age of 67, I will take my modest nest egg to a modern country with a cheap standard of living, maybe Poland. Once there, no one will count on me and no one will expect anything of me. There will no reason to wake up before noon. I’ll spend my days writing, reading, drinking, and purchasing pussy. I will have so much free time that I’ll decide to learn Polish, one of the hardest languages in the world, just for the hell of it. Yes, I’m ready to man up.

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I love Poland. A true globetrotting playboy knows when it’s time to kick back and enjoy low-hanging fruit, and when it’s time to get down and bleed. Poland for the former, while places like Argentina and Spain for the latter.

After a few months of bliss, boredom and complacency sets in, and you’re longing for girls to feign indifference and play a mind game or two rather than show their cards right away. As a man, I just love the novelty and struggle of the chase too much, otherwise I’d live there forever. Great in the short-term though.

Not all guys have great success in Poland, but if you have the right key then the girls put out surprisingly fast.

I have the right key.

My game is not going up in Poland because what I had before arriving was insanely overkill. I came packing nuclear bombs when all I needed were slingshots. About two months in, I started to get “bored” of banging so much. I wanted to go somewhere else where I would struggle a bit and then have to come up with new methods or tactics. And then I slapped the fuck out of myself.

I bled for four years in high school, unable to talk to a pretty girl without urinating in my pants.

I bled for four years in college, constantly stuck in the friends zone with girls I hoped would give me pity sex.

I bled for nearly a decade in DC, improving my game on career-driven cunts who didn’t make me happy.

I bled for six months on my first South America trip, trying to figure out why my DC game wasn’t working on Latin girls, all while shitting my brains out due to various infections.

I bled for two months in Denmark on girls who were even worse than the DC girls I hated.

And then a short while into Poland I considered leaving because I believed that struggling was necessary to my growth as a man. Truth is I’m not sure how to live without bleeding.

I look at my reflection in the mirror a little longer these days, to make sure what I’m experiencing is real. I savor the moment because soon I will become numb to what is making me happy right now. I will stay in Poland until I no longer care about sex, until I need to give my dick a rest, until the thought of fucking another 110 pound Polish girl disgusts me. I will stay in Poland until I get deported. Maybe this will take another month, maybe another three months, maybe longer, but I would be a damn fool to leave when all my dreams are being met in a place that is as close to natural viagra as I’ve found.

I originally planned on some grand European voyage of visiting ten countries, but now that’s out the window. I will stay in Poland indefinitely, because I don’t want to bleed anymore.

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Not many Americans subscribe to Buddhist philosophy, which states that all life is impermanent and in a constant state of transition. This includes things you may see as everlasting, like your personality, humor, or attitude. You may think that your essence is permanent enough that it can be locked up in a bottle and retrieved a month or year from now, but your environment and experiences are changing you every hour of every day.

A denial of change is what Buddhism claims to be the primary source of human suffering. A modern example is people who refuse to accept the aging process of the human body, putting it through plastic surgeries that make them, ironically, less human in appearance. Another is the denial of death, of worrying so much about extending your life through an obsessive-compulsive approach to health that you forget to live it.

The average man who comes to me to learn about women wants to change his results, but not what he considers to be his self. He wants to learn the “magic bullet,” the one little item he thinks will significantly increase his results, without having to make wholesale changes to his behaviors or routines. I consider this to be his biggest stumbling block to success. He wants to meet a lot of women, but he doesn’t want to approach outside of his social circle. He wants tight day game, but he isn’t willing to dedicate two hours a week to day approaching. He wants fast bangs, but he doesn’t want to go to bars or clubs. He wants hot girls, but he isn’t willing to build up his skills by first getting with more average women.

In fact, the “magic bullet” is one of the most commonly used marketing strategies out there. Real estate seminars, get-rich books, and even mainstream publications like The 4 Hour Body advertise how just a tiny bit of work on your part will get you exactly what you want. There’s only one or two things you’re not doing that will completely change your life! You can remain the same you, keep your routine, and not have to commit to a long journey of improvement! This marketing gimmick is taken to its logical conclusion with a $93 game book called… wait for it… Magic Bullets.

I think of man as a collection of computer programs, perfectly designed systems for accomplishing a defined set of tasks, whether it’s excelling at a specific job, being good with women, being a drug addict, or the countless other lifestyles and behaviors that humans live. When it comes time for man to change, he wants to use his existing number counting program, for example, on something that doesn’t even involve numbers. He doesn’t want to write a new program.

Change can only come when new programs are written, which alters the relationships between all the other programs. The end result in a newer, upgraded operating system. Only by accepting change and realizing that who you are now will be gone forever—and would never last forever in the first place—will you get closer to becoming the person you want.

If you want to make big improvements to your life then you have to accept the possibility that one day you won’t completely recognize who you see in the mirror. Disregard the Western concept of “self” and work hard until you finish writing the new program that accomplishes your goals. This already happens under you nose, but to speed up the process you should consciously embrace it. It’s better to achieve success as a “new” person than stay the same and never get what you want.

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• Trimming my armpit hair. I’ve read that the odor comes from bacteria on the hair, but taking it off only marginally helped.
• Aluminum based deodorants. I sweat so profusely that the aluminum barely puts a dent on the river-like flow.
• Deodorant stones. Two applications a day definitely helped, but the odor stubbornly remained.
• Direct application of 70-90% isopropyl alcohol. I got this idea from working in a laboratory where we used alcohol as a sterilizer. If I washed my armpits twice a day and sprayed afterwards, the smell was greatly reduced, but it was too labor intensive.

I normally shower at night so thankfully I don’t put out an odor during my night-time approach sessions, but by the following afternoon I reek. Sometimes I’m lucky to have 6-8 solid hours of smelling okay until the odor returns.

One day I was searching through natural remedies for a sinus infection on a site called Earth Clinic. I browsed around the ailments page and noticed body odor. Their top solution was baking soda. I figured it’d be worth a try.

I went to the grocery store (I was in Copenhagen at the time), and paid $1.50 for a small container. That night I showered, dipped two wet fingers in the baking soda, and rubbed it into my pits. I figured that it would take a few days to see a noticeable effect, like was the case with the deodorant stone.

The next afternoon I stuck my nose under each arm and couldn’t pick out a smell. Later that night, a full 24 hours after initial application (at a time when I would be a biohazard), there was absolutely no smell. For the two months I’ve been putting baking soda in my pits I’ve forgotten how it’s like to have odor. I repeat, I am no longer odorous.

For a minute I wondered if my armpit odor was a key to my sexual success. Was my odor releasing arousing pheromones in the environment? Would I get laid less if I smelled nice? This has not turned out to be the case. I’m ready to conclude that body odor is not an attractant, and if it’s something that chips at your confidence like it did to mine, you’d be best served getting rid of it.

For many years I stuck with commercial chemicals that didn’t work and merely masked the odor, so I’m amazed that such a common household product has the potential to wipe out the world’s body odor problem (other guys on my forum also can’t believe it works). I’m so excited at this development that I’ve become a baking soda evangelist. I’ll tell anyone who wants to listen how to be odor-free and proud.

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Dear teenage Roosh,

1. Don’t listen to your parents. They want you to have a stable and boring existence without the struggle they had to go through. They want you to play it safe instead of taking risks that may lead to your ruin or even death. Unfortunately, if you follow their advice the most you’ll get out of it is a steady paycheck. You will have a mere average existence with average women and average experiences in an average city. Understand that the more risks you take, the greater rewards you receive.

2. Hit the gym. Just because you’re not the best looking guy doesn’t mean you should give up on being attractive. Weight lifting will help you build confidence and increase your testosterone level so that taking risks literally becomes in your blood.

3. Cut off the television, internet, and video games. Pick a hobby such as music, writing, DJing, languages, or sports, and dedicate one hour per day on it. You’ll be a beast before you even hit 21, where it’ll not only make a positive contribution to your life, but give you the option to take an alternative path.

4. Read at least two books every month. You don’t know shit about life right now. Hell, you still won’t know a whole lot even when you turn 30. Keep yourself sharp by tapping into the brains of others through their work. Writers have spent hundreds of hours to create books that distills all their knowledge or experience in an easily digestible format. Take advantage of that, and watch your conversational skills increase as a result.

5. Stop being concerned about what other people think of you. They don’t care about you. They are so wrapped up in their own insecurities and what you think of them that you’re wasting your energy trying to get accepted by strangers. Take risks, fuck everyone else, and note down what you learn. If you’re not making a lot of mistakes, you’re not doing enough.

6. Take the pussy off the pedestal. You know what? Just become sexist. If getting laid is what you want, that’s the path you should take in the feminist society you live in. You can soften that stance when you get older, but for now just view women as mindless fuck toys who are garbage. Whether or not they really are garbage, this will get you more pussy than you’ve ever imagined. Sure it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way, but you’re living in an age where the laws and cultural environment concerning marriage are set up to destroy you. You might as well get laid a lot.

7. Have a backup plan to earning a living. Don’t count on putting in four years at college and getting a cushy job that lasts until some golden retirement. Don’t count on some cunt in Human Resources to like your answer to what your greatest weakness is. Don’t let people who don’t care about you determine your income. Re-read number 3 again. One hour a day into something has probably made you a mini-expert. What service or product can you now create with your expertise that someone else would be happy to buy? Trust me when I say you’ll be much happier making $20,000 a year controlling your destiny than four times as much being controlled by someone else.

Good luck little Roosh!

Sincerely,

Old Roosh

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I hit bottom on New Year’s Eve. What should have been a magical celebration on Copacabana beach was lonely and depressing. I talked to one girl for two minutes. I couldn’t even drown my sorrows because the vendors ran out of beer, so I went home after the fireworks and slept. All the things that made Rio magical during my first visit was gone, and I had to confront the reality that it was time to start from scratch.

I didn’t want to go out on New Year’s Day, let alone talk to another human being. I just wanted to stay home in my favela shack and reminisce about Colombia and the nice pussy I was banging there before I left. But I knew that absolutely nothing would happen if I stayed home, so I cleaned myself up and went out to the same bar where I was successful a couple years prior.

I bombed. I couldn’t make headway with any girl and by the time I got to ten approaches I wanted to kill myself. I couldn’t believe that things had so quickly turned against me, and wondered if this was the same city I remembered. Was I completely wrong about singing its praises? Should I not have told other guys that Brazil was a magical paradise? It was so bad that I started considering a trip to Argentina.

I paid my bar tab and was on the way out when I saw a cute girl who looked like she was Middle Eastern. At that moment I can’t stress how much I didn’t want to approach her. I didn’t think there was a point because of all the failures that preceded it, but something told me to just say a few words then get the fuck out of there. I asked her if she was Brazilian and she answered that she was, but that her father was from Lebanon. We got into a conversation and when I joked if she liked “hairy men,” she said yes. She also liked Americans, having lived in the States for several months.

I didn’t bang her that night. I weaseled my way into her room but couldn’t even get off one article of clothing. The bang happened on the next date and we ended up dating for about a month, which when you’re abroad feels like forever. During that time I connected with my Danish roommate, pursued my nightlife niche, made solid progress with my Portuguese, and settled into a pleasant work and exercise routine. Most importantly, a little tide of girls began rolling in. That Brazilian girl was day zero of four months of happiness in Brazil that made me forget about the Colombian girls I was messing with. She was the beginning of a memorable period of my life that made me hate Argentina for the month I ended up staying there afterwards.

No matter how bad things get, all it takes is one girl, one night, to get you back on track. I don’t care how many rejections you’ve sustained beforehand, or how many dozens of girls have recently flaked on you, but that one special meeting, which you cannot predict, will pick you up and give you the confidence you need to keep getting more and better. If life is full of peaks and valleys and you’re in a deep slump, it’s just a matter of time until you get out of it, yet it’s not enough to merely go out. You can’t sit quietly in the dark corner of the bar for two hours and think you’ll be thrown a bone. You must work hard, consistency and continually, approaching and persisting every night to your maximum capability until your head hits your pillow.

I understand that I have to put in the work to get the rewards. I don’t go out for “just a drink”—I stay out until either I hook up, I’m exhausted, or there are literally no women on the streets. I’ve lost count how many times I pulled when all hope was lost, when no previous girl was digging me, when any average man would have long since given up, and when I already mentally identified the porn clip I would be masturbating to. If I didn’t talk to that Brazilian girl after I had already decided I was finished, my time in Rio would’ve been much different. If I didn’t always persist like a machine until my head hits the pillow, my whole life would be different.

You’re walking home after a brutal night out where you can’t even hold your head high, but then you see a girl walking in the opposite direction. Approach her with everything you got. She may change everything. This night may change everything.

P.S. I'm huge on Twitter, with over 1 billion followers. Click here to check out my feed.

There is one bar in the city you’re in which has your best odds for sleeping with a high number of quality girls. The way that your vibe combines with the bar’s vibe creates a powerful force where girls are drawn into you through a mechanism that you don’t understand. It is your duty as a man to find out which bar that is and commit the time to reaping the rewards that it contains.

There is one city in your country which has your best odds for sleeping with a high number of quality girls. Maybe it’s something in that city’s water supply, but girls there love your look and attitude so much that they regularly approach you outright. It is your duty as a man to find out which city that is and commit the time there to reaping the rewards that it contains.

There is one country in the world that has your best odds for sleeping with a high number of quality girls. Something about your unique foreign aura causes girls to get on you so hard that you wonder if they’re confusing you for someone famous. It is your duty as a man to find out which country that is and commit the time there to reaping the rewards that it contains.

Within a country there is a city that has a bar that contains a spot where you will be in disbelief at how easy it is to consistently get quality women, regardless of how many flaws you think you have. On this 3 foot by 3 foot patch of space you’re an unstoppable rebel force, though for the guy standing next to you the patch does absolutely nothing because it’s not his patch. It is your duty as a man to find out where that little patch of Earth is and reap the rewards that it contains.

P.S. I'm huge on Twitter, with over 1 billion followers. Click here to check out my feed.

He never planned on settling in Venezuela. It started when he was rehabilitating a boat that doubled as his home while docked somewhere in the Caribbean. “It was my project,” he said to me. “Several hours a day I worked on that boat.” One day he learned that a hurricane was approaching the islands. To save his boat he decided to go out to sea, as far southwest as he could. Unfortunately the hurricane was not forecasted correctly, and he ended up getting caught on the storm’s edge. His boat sustained heavy damage and he was forced to make landfall in Venezuela.

He sold his boat for scrap and moved to a Caracas slum. Thanks to his knowledge of French he picked up Spanish quickly. He found odd jobs here and there and eventually met his future Venezuelan wife. They resettled in Merida where he bought a small piece of land upon which he built his ranching business. A look at his dozen horses, workshop, large house, and gun collection made it clear to me that he did well for himself.

After he finished his story, he looked at me and asked, “What is your project?”

“My project?”

“Yes, your project. What are you working on?”

I had a blog at that time, but was that a project? To me it seemed more like a way to procrastinate from doing work reports. “I just started the outline to a book I want to write,” I said.

“So you’re going to write a book?”

I hesitated. Before that moment I had only thought about writing the book, jotting down ideas on napkins here or there, but had never fully committed.

I looked at the Frenchman and said, “Yes, I’m going to write a book.” Apparently all it took was verbalizing the goal to get my brain to commit to it, and Bang was released a year and a half after that. You can say it was my personal hurricane.

Chances are if you’re reading this, all your basic survival needs are met. You have food, shelter, clothing, and hopefully women as well. Maybe you want more money, but it’s safe to assume you have enough to get by and are in no danger of starving to death. There probably isn’t much telling you to go above and beyond your current situation. No one to motivate you to learn a new skill, no one to push you to take a risk with something that has no obvious opportunity for monetary gain. Besides what you’re assigned at work or school, you’re not required to do anything else but spend your free time watching television, reading magazines, or playing video games. That’s not a bad existence, and a billion men living in the slums of the world would kill for it, but it’s not good enough for one reason: there is no growth. You will be the same man that you are now in ten years time—grayer, but no wiser.

For you to grow, there has to be something in your life that is difficult and challenging. There has to be a goal where the chance of failure is very possible, and it has to be hard enough where you’ll be required to call upon forces within you that you didn’t know existed. There has to be a point where you wonder to yourself, “Maybe I can’t do it—maybe I’m doing all this for nothing.” If you don’t day dream about quitting, about going back to what you used to do, then you picked something that wasn’t hard enough.

If it is hard enough, the mere act of attempting to accomplish your goal will make you a better man. Success is not at all required—it serves as the cherry on top. The journey itself will be its own reward, and you’ll look back to how far you’ve come. And how much wisdom you’ve gained. I cannot predict what benefits will come from taking on a difficult task. It really could be one of a hundred things, most of which you would have never expected. But it will come.

So, what is your project?

P.S. I'm huge on Twitter, with over 1 billion followers. Click here to check out my feed.

Can you give us a little background on your age and the type of environment you grew up in? What are some things that influenced you earlier in life that put you into the position you are in now?

I am a financially independent 22 years old traveling the world full-time while working 22 hours per week running two successful online businesses. I started with $50 running my own web-based businesses since age 16 but currently run a career services business (Resumes/CVs, interview coaching, etc.) and an online retail store selling physical products. I started traveling independently on my own at least 4 months per year on my own dime since age 19.

I grew up comfortably in an east coast suburb as one of five children. All the basics were easily covered from birth: weekly tennis lessons, SAT class, summer camp, and one of the top rated public schools in the nation. I was a complete suburban stereotype. I never felt comfortable given all of these advantages. And since I wasn’t naturally gifted in any school subjects like most of my peers I didn’t buy into the cycle that if I got good grades everything else would take care of itself. But for a while I didn’t know what else to focus on either.

As a privileged teenager, it’s pretty common to go on an international travel/volunteer program. It wasn’t my first time abroad, but at age 15 I jumped at the opportunity to go on my first cultural exchange program to Costa Rica. The highlight of this trip was living with a Costa Rican family in a rural town for three weeks. I ate rice, beans, and eggs every day, shared a wooden plank bed with the host family brother, and showered each day with a bucket of cold water. The experience was uncomfortable and I could barely communicate with the family, but the feeling of independence from back home in the United States was an invaluable emotion that is probably what has motivated me ever since.

Talk about your ideal girl. What does she look like? Where is she from? What’s her personality like?

I am still figuring this out. One of the many consequences of my lifestyle is that I rarely have enough time for a proper relationship. My experiences are limited to the countries I have traveled, and even then I can’t claim to know most of the cultures on any level deeper than your average tourist. There is just not enough time.

But a benefit of travel is that I know what type of girls I do not want a relationship with. As I travel more I find myself traveling a little more closed-minded because I have more experience in knowing what I don’t want. As a result I often put myself in situations where I am less likely to encounter certain types of women. An easy example is that I especially avoid going out to bars or clubs popular with tourists and expats. In these places I have found that the girls want something from me; sometimes for the Western stereotypes I can offer if they are fascinated by my culture. Other times they just might be more attracted to something different because a lot of the countries I visit are so homogenous. Either way, I think that many girls who go to these places have some kind of agenda, whether those examples I gave, or countless other reasons that have more to do with circumstances rather than us actually having any sort of connection.

Describe your travel experiences and strategy.

My style of travel is constantly changing because of an increasing income, language ability, and travel experience, and work obligations. It also depends on what region of the world I go. What I do, spend, and eat in Tokyo is much different than what I do in La Paz.

I first traveled independently after my freshman year of university to Ecuador and Colombia. In Ecuador I lived out of a dorm room in a party hostel for three months and traveled on the weekends. I volunteered during the weekdays and put in a probably less than ten hours a week in my own businesses. I made very few local friends but at this point my Spanish was also very basic. My travel experiences were also very limited so I was eager to go everywhere, from small towns to remote jungles.

Fast forward year after year and my Spanish continues to improve conversationally. I earn more money but I also work more hours. Sightseeing is becoming repetitive after having been to a lot of jungles, small towns, churches, and temples. I have also done most adventure activities from white water rafting and caving to even more adventurous ones like skydiving and bungee jumping. But I also get to know fewer places for longer, making stronger connections to people in fewer places.

What kind of lodgings do you stay in?

Location is most important to me. No matter where I stay, I always try my best to find a place closest to the action. I have always stayed in places below my means because I don’t like the idea of spending much on the place where I will sleep. But this is changing as I spend more and more time at my accommodation mostly because of an increased workload.

I have stayed in countless hostels, occasional budget hotels and boutique hotels, student residence, friend’s apartments, and with a couple CouchSurfing hosts. These typically cost around $4US-$60US per night. I even slept in a park and one time in the corner of a hallway. Those were free! In less than a week I will rent my first apartment abroad with amenities like a gym, pool, doorman, and maid.

How do you approach integrating yourself into a new culture with regard to food, language, local customs, etc.?

The longer amount of time I stay in one place the easier it is for me to feel a closer connection to the local culture. Language is also a key. I didn’t realize how effortless it was to communicate with locals like I did in South America until visiting places like Ukraine or Bangladesh where my hands had to do most of the talking. In terms of actually meeting new locals it has usually been by going out to bars with other backpackers and meeting new local friends there.

What do you fill your days with?

I’ll usually start my day whenever I wake up around 9AM-1PM. I put in around three hours of work every day and then do whatever I please. Often times I then go for a walk around a new part of the city I am in. If there’s something special that I want to do, like the Machu Picchu for instance, I’ll plan an entire day around it. Recently in Thailand I spent a few weeks learning Muay Thai because I wanted to get in shape and what better place to practice? In South America I typically went out for drinks around 3-5 nights a week.

Do you have a basic strategy for meeting women while you travel?

Nope, I’m pretty typical in that I go out to bars/clubs like everyone else. I used to think that being a foreigner really helped make me unique, but I think people care about this less than I used to think. Maybe I have just become comfortable being different so much that the reactions now seem normal?

How do you make a living? How did you get into it? What are some skills you had to learn?

I have been self-employed since age 16 (more details here). I never received any formal training so a lot of what I have done is just educated research mixed with trial and error. Along the way I have honed my internet research skills and drastically improved my writing ability. These skills together are very useful when it comes to advertising and marketing. They are also skills I take advantage of daily since they directly relate to the services I run.

My career services company specializes in writing resumes, curriculum vitae, cover letters, and coaching clients on interviews to an average of 60 new clients each month, The company has created and revised over 1,000 resumes and curriculum vitae since 2007 for everyone from recent college graduates looking for their first job or professionals with 20 years of experience ready to take the next step in their career.

The second business, an online gift store, provides 15 categories of over 400 products including printed t-shirts, cologne, watches, sunglasses, tactical gear, lighters, and other categories. Since 2005, the store has completed more than 3,000 orders and counting. I am able to manage this business online because I have arranged for manufacturers and wholesale distributors to ship products directly to each of my customers’ only after I make a sale.

There are people twice your age making far less money than you do, and not even close to being independently mobile. What do you attribute your success to?

I have only ever really had 2 passions: travel and business. I was one of the lucky people to find myself in the right circumstances to discover these passions so early in life. These are the kind of interests more suited to older people, but I was too impatient to wait for others to tell me when I could get started on pursuing them. So I started on my own initiative. It was difficult, but I enjoyed the process of building these businesses. While 22 may seem like a young age, it’s only after 7 years that I reached this point where I can live like I am full-time. There is no big secret. I worked really hard and it took a long time.

What’s the most important thing you’ve learned so far in life?

I think my answer changes every few months but a more recent lesson that I am learning is the importance of family and life-long friends. For so long I wanted to travel aimlessly, leaving behind any semblance of a home base. I wanted true independence, traveling from place to place, only visiting old friends and family on occasion. While I have done this many times in the past I never actually gave up my home base of friends until this year.

I can report back that after four months of aimlessly traveling without the comfort of a home base in the back of my mind, this concept just doesn’t work in my reality. The past four months of travel were the same as any other year. The difference is that after all of these amazing experiences I had few people to share them with that I would ever see again.

What are your future goals? How do you see your life playing out in the next 10-20 years?

It’s now been a month since I am back in the U.S. staying with family. This is the first time I have actually chosen to return to the U.S. and I am thoroughly enjoying my time with familiar faces. But most friends now live in other cities and I see there is little for me at home unless I chose to invest the time and effort in getting my own place, making new friends, etc. My passion is travel so I don’t want to just hang out in the U.S. forever either.

What I eventually want is to develop 2-3 of my own bases (friends, apartment, etc.) in foreign cities and split my time in each throughout the year. I’d then take shorter, 1-3 week mini-vacations to new international destinations whenever I please.

In less than one week I will be on a plane leaving the U.S. to another country where I will rent an apartment and get this new goal started.

Jason has a blog called Locationless Living. Read other lifestyle interviews here.

P.S. I'm huge on Twitter, with over 1 billion followers. Click here to check out my feed.

His love for Medellin helped make him the go-to guy for advice on the city, which he shares on his popular Medellin blog. I used him a couple times when I needed fresh ideas for where to take girls on dates.

Right now he’s back in Medellin, subsisting on income from his internet properties. He took the time to answer some questions…

1. Can you give us a little background on your age and the type of environment you grew up in? What are some things that influenced you earlier in life that put you into the position you are in now?

I recently turned 34, and by all accounts, grew up in a stable, upper middle class American family. My parents have been married over 35 years. My mom stayed at home with me and my younger brother, while my dad, a businessman, worked hard to provide a comfortable standard of living for us all.

I began listening to punk music very early. By age 10, I can remember owning a Sex Pistols tape. In my early teens, I was listening to bands like The Dead Kennedys and Suicidal Tendencies. By my late teens, I was getting into the California bands like Pennywise and NOFX. Even though I was very introverted and reserved growing up, the lyrics by these bands and others affected my developing attitudes toward how a guy should live his life.

After college graduation, three of my best friends were planning to travel around Europe for the Summer. It seemed like a great opportunity, so despite my parent’s protests, I joined them. It was my first time traveling abroad without my parents, and I quickly learned how easy it was to find a place to stay, meet other travelers, and get around. After about 10 days, my friends all wanted to go home due to lack of funds, or girlfriend withdrawal. I thought they were crazy, and since neither problem was an issue for me, I spent the next 6 weeks traveling on my own. Despite some loneliness, I had an amazing time, and was officially hooked on the freedom that backpacking and solo travel afforded.

2. Talk about your ideal girl. What does she look like? Where is she from? What’s her personality like?

The more time I spend outside the United States, the more I realize my ideal girl is from a European or Latin American country. I love to travel, and discovering new cultures through relations with women is a lot more exciting than talking to taxi drivers and walking around a city with other backpackers.

Right now, it’s safe to say I’m smitten with the women of Colombia, where I’m currently living. Here, my type is the norm: a few inches shorter than me (I’m 5’8″) or equal in heels, with tan skin, long black hair, and a petite body. She doesn’t speak English, which forces me to improve my Spanish. That provides a fun, sometimes frustrating dynamic to the dating experience. She’s dependable and punctual, which seems to be a rarity in Colombian women, and is pursuing her own passions in life. We absolutely must connect on the dance floor, as it’s a big part of the nightlife here, and an activity I can’t get enough of after being a wallflower all my life.

One of the downsides to Colombian women (who don’t have dual citizenship, in say, the USA), is that travel is very difficult and expensive for them. Since traveling and living abroad is extremely important to me and my work, I don’t know if I could ever be in a long term relationship with a Colombian girl. In that respect, Western European women (French, Italian, Spanish) become a more attractive option.

3. What type of game do you run? How does your typical bang go down? How do you change your game when you’re abroad versus in your home country?

I began reading and practicing game in early 2009. I was a member of the Stylelife Academy for about a year, and was able to connect with other guys in the Washington, DC area to go out with. My game is the antithesis of cocky/funny. If there’s such a thing as “sincere” game, that would sum up my approach. Early in conversation, I focus on highlighting my travel experiences and independent lifestyle. Ideally, a first date will be at a salsa club where I can DHV, gauge her attraction via body language, and be in an easy position to go for the first kiss.

In the USA, I find Internet dating to be a waste of time. It requires far too much effort, and offers too little in return. By comparison, in Colombia, I can copy/paste the same message to a hundred attractive women, and get enough results to keep me occupied for months. The interested ones respond back with their phone number or e-mail address, as if to say “let’s cut to the chase.”

As other interviewees have already mentioned, I’ve discovered in Colombia that it pays to line up dates via the Internet before you visit a new city. I think this strategy will change how I travel going forward.

4. Describe your travel experiences and strategy. What kind of lodgings do you stay in? How do you approach integrating yourself into a new culture with regard to food, language, local customs, etc.? What do you fill your days with? Do you have a basic strategy for meeting women while you travel?

In November 2007, I resigned from my management job at an insurance company to take a 15-month trip around the world. I visited over 20 countries on 5 continents, staying in a mix of hostel dorms, beach bungalows, cheap hotels, and private homes via Couchsurfing.

When I got to Medellin in early 2009, and decided to stay for 6 months, I spent the first month living in a party hostel which was terrible from a logistical standpoint. Even with a private room for part of the time, I wasn’t allowed to have overnight guests. Once I made the switch to renting rooms in apartments, I didn’t have to worry about such rules. If I’m traveling to other parts of Colombia, I pay more for private, budget hotel rooms. I do this not only because it makes it easier to bring a girl back if the opportunity arises, but because I’m getting tired of the hostel scene and like to have a quiet, comfortable place to work.

Until I got to Colombia, I put little to no effort into learning other languages because I was always just passing through, and it’s easy to rely on English, or simple body language to communicate. In Colombia, I began to learn Spanish, and am being rewarded with more dates as a result. Couchsurfing has been a great way to see cities and cultures from a local’s perspective. Trying new foods has become an increasingly important part of my experiences, and I’ve been greatly influenced by Anthony Bourdain.

While traveling, my days are filled with typical sightseeing activities. During my RTW trip, I spent more time than I expected updating my blog at Go Backpacking. I was earning a few hundred bucks a month from advertising, but that kept me motivated to publish content 6-7 days a week. While living in Medellin, I spend a lot more time blogging/working in my apartment, and fill my free time with the gym, salsa lessons and dancing, movies, and hanging out with friends. In the countries I visited before Colombia, I was always trying to hook up with other travelers, but that changed when I got to Colombia and my attention was focused squarely on the beautiful locals.

5. How do you make a living? How did you get into it? What are some skills you had to learn?

I currently make a living through travel blogging. My primary blog is Go Backpacking, while I began Medellin Living last year to document the expat lifestyle in Colombia. I also launched a membership website, Travel Blog Success, earlier this year to help other people build high quality travel blogs. Most of my income is from selling advertising on the two blogs, though I am beginning to offer private consulting services as well.

After my first trip to Europe in 1998, I returned home and taught myself basic HTML so I could publish my handwritten journal on the Internet. After people actually started reading the thing, and emailing me for advice, I bought the GoBackpacking.com domain and added more content. I even made a few hundred bucks from a Eurorail affiliation at the time. But creating an HTML site wasn’t fun or easy, so I went on a 5-year hiatus, before getting into blogging in 2007, ahead of my RTW trip. My friend had convinced me there was money to be made, and he was right. In addition to knowing some HTML, learning how to build websites using WordPress, write effectively for an online audience, and optimize content for the search engines has been important. I’ve also learned a lot about negotiating with advertisers, leveraging social media to build a brand, and Internet marketing.

6. What are your future goals? How do you see your life playing out in the next 10-20 years?

I’m currently planning to spend New Year’s in Tokyo, Japan, and then see a little of the country in early January 2011. Afterward, I’d like to address some business-related needs back in the US, and then return to Medellin for another 6 months. Starting in July 2011, I’d like to see the rest of South America. In terms of my online income, my goal for 2011 is to average $5,000 per month which means I’ll need to do more work, and less partying.

In the next 10 years, I’d like to continue splitting my time between traveling and living abroad in a variety of countries, such as Brazil, Italy, and France. I’d also like to be earning six figures from my web business. Along the way, I’d get married, and maybe have a kid or two.

7. Tell us more about Colombia. Why are you drawn to the country? How are the women like? How is it like to live there? Has the country changed your opinion of America, either the culture or the women?

Colombia as a travel destination first entered my mind in May 2005 when I met a Swiss backpacker in Costa Rica who had been there. He said it was safe, and the women were beautiful (specifically, they had big tits). From that point forward, I was determined to get there to see the women for myself, and also to go somewhere everyone else in the world deemed too dangerous.

In January 2009, I couchsurfed with a cute university student my first week in Bogota, and as she took me around the city, I began to realize most Colombians were normal, well-intentioned people. It helped that I wasn’t being shot at or kidnapped either. When I flew the 25 minutes to Medellin, I immediately knew I was in a city I didn’t want to leave. Medellin sits in a valley 1,500 meters above sea level, surrounded by big green mountains. A metro system and cheap taxis make getting around the city easy, and the temperatures are Spring-like year round. For a city of 2-million, it has a small village feel to it.

In the 30+ countries I’ve seen so far, there have always been beautiful women, though some have far more than others (sorry Rwanda and Nepal). For me, the typical Colombian girl is the sexiest. She’s very image conscious and thus takes care in her appearance, whether at the gym or a nightclub. She displays a sense of femininity that seems lost in American women. Chances are she has a good sense of rhythm, and can dance well. Unfortunately, they have strong jealous streaks, and are also very flaky, and far less punctual than American women. And while I’ve come to expect it, I still get annoyed.

8. What’s the most important thing you’ve learned so far in life?

Have the courage to pursue the kind of life you want to live—follow your passions, regardless of what others say, and don’t give up. Chances are it will take a lot of hard work, patience, and persistence, but it’ll be worth it.

David maintains two travel blogs: Go Backpacking and Medellin Living. Read other lifestyle interviews here.

P.S. I'm huge on Twitter, with over 1 billion followers. Click here to check out my feed.

How much does that truly, really matter? I’m going to enter a void of nothingness after death, and whatever mark I live on the world will be erased anyway when the human race perishes. What difference does it make if I sit alone in a dark basement for the rest of my days instead of trying to sleep with women, see the world, and pursue challenging endeavors? Why not just kill myself right now, and spare the misery of human existence, the suffering that is sure to fill the space between whatever blissful moments I experience?

As self-aware as I become about my nature, I’m still operated by the program that is encoded in my genes. I’m hungry as I write this and will soon have to seek out food. A day after that I will have no choice but to defecate the unused bits. My mind ventures into sex often, and I will have to relieve those intrusive thoughts by attempting to copulate with a female. It forces me to express its knowledge by creating pieces of writing that I share with other people. It produces neurotransmitters which dampen my mood if I stay in the same environment for too long, and that can only be improved if I go somewhere else. I can’t kill myself because my brain tells me I can’t.

No matter how meaningless and absurd I find life, this moment demands everything—my attention, my abilities, and my energy. My brain wants satisfaction right now and makes me suffer the chemical consequences if I don’t follow its urges. I must observe new cultures, sleep with different women, enjoy music and other sources of entertainment, and then share all the lessons I’ve learned to strangers who gain from my creations.

So, yes, it does matter. This moment matters, and I want it to be the best that it possible can.

P.S. I'm huge on Twitter, with over 1 billion followers. Click here to check out my feed.

While there is a large number of things that can increase the happiness of a man, I believe only five are absolutely essential. They construct a pentagon:

Family & Friends

Human beings are social animals. All those studies that say alcohol is beneficial to your health actually measure the social benefits of drinking (among other things), and not the effects of the drug itself. Truth is we need a stable circle of people to confide in and pass the time with. I accept solitude as a necessary feature of life, as even family members will come and go, but I know that I’m a more grounded, stable person when I’m anchored with other people that share my blood or personality type.

Health

If you’ve ever had a serious health scare, you know how just about everything else fades into the background while you focus on repairing your body, but a lot of people continue to mortgage their future with unhealthy living. This isn’t about living to 100 years old, but living the most number of years with a sound body that enables you to enjoy other points on the pentagon. I rather die at 50, healthy as a horse, than living until 70 with half of those years afflicted by a chronic disease that could have been prevented.

Health is not only physical but mental, too, such as the case with depression and anxiety. I know that my mental health degrades when staying in the United States for an extended period of time, improving drastically once I hit the road.

Fulfilling Work

It’s hard to approach other areas with vigor and optimism if you don’t look forward to each and every day, something that only a fulfilling job can give. Otherwise you may fall into ruts that involve drug abuse and wasteful habits like television watching or obsessing about the news. There are too many hours in a day to suffer not having something that stimulates your brain and allows you to feel that you’re making a positive difference in the world.

One good thing about my generation is that they are less patient with boring jobs. You won’t find us working in factories (like there are any, anyway) and it’s common for men to take a year or two off to explore things on their own in order to discover the type of life that tailors them best. You probably already know several men who are doing what they love, with gigs that most likely started as an extension of their hobbies. We live in an age where a budding writer, musician, artist, or entrepreneur can succeed with desire and hard work, something that was considerably harder twenty years ago. Old excuses for being stuck in a dead-end office job are no longer valid.

Women

We can’t fight the genetics that nature has given us, which says that we need to mate with fit members of our species. It is undeniable that a man is most happy when he’s sexually active. There is a point of diminishing return where too many women will not increase happiness, but there is a basal level of sex that I’m sure releases beneficial hormones into the male bloodstream, allowing him to more easily focus on other aspects of the pentagon. For most of my 20s, my main focus was on women, but as I can now stay sexually active with a smaller amount of effort, my focus has easily shifted to accomplishing other goals.

Money

Lack of money limits your options for achieving other areas like health and women. One problem with the Western man is that even though he is making a lot of money (compared to men from other countries), his lifestyle is too high maintenance and full of consumer waste. His income is high but because he doesn’t save, he will never see the benefits that a pile of cash can give him, such as peace of mind and extra options during stressful times when he experiences a direct hit to work or health areas. The Western man ends up worrying more about the future than a poor man living in a Brazilian favela.

Currently I’m more financially secure than I’ve ever been in my life, but I live like a frugal man because I know that an upgrade in lifestyle with more “stuff” will not result in an increase in happiness. I enjoy my time with simple experiences while letting money in the bank balance the ups and downs that will get thrown at me.

Understand that every point is connected and always affecting each other:

In America it’s hard to have health with money, and even an overindulgence with women can result in health problems. A problem with work may strain relationships with family and friends, or hammer your energy so that you don’t have enough left over for women. Here’s the happy man “pentagon” that we have been trained to believe since birth:

Many Western men believe money, above all else, will lead to happiness, but your life can still be bleak if you are rich but haven’t worked on the other areas.

I can’t say I’m too optimistic for the Western man. It is now exceedingly difficult for him to find a decent woman, regardless of his income. He has the least amount of friends of any culture, and he has to deal with the most expensive health care system in the world along with diminishing job prospects. While expatriation is an idea that may improve the life of many men, it will not bring him more happiness than if was already born into a society whose soil was fertile enough for his development. Western land has become an increasingly harsh environment for robust crop cultivation.

The key to happiness is balance. While a short-term excess with one point won’t hurt you, prolonged obsession with women, work, or money, for example, will definitely cause other areas to suffer. Is there a book written on how this balance can be achieved? Is there a man who can be modeled? I don’t believe so. You must determine the best mix for yourself by being mindful about working on all five areas. That usually means working hard on your goals, changing comfortable routines, taking risks, and being a real man instead of a chump that modern culture is telling you to be. You must carefully stop and think at what affects your being. You must make the right changes, and you must embrace a lifelong process that will make you not only happier, but the best man that you can be.

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During the drive home I was listening to music and thinking about if I should grab a burger snack at the McDonalds near my house (I was leaning against it because I knew it would probably give me gas). I wasn’t on my cell phone, I wasn’t thinking about some girl who did me wrong, and I wasn’t drunk—my mind was clear and unusually free of distraction.

I was driving on a four-lane road. There were two lanes to my left going in the opposite direction, then a small median, then my lane, then the final lane to my right. Suddenly a black cat popped out of some woods from the left. I watched it quickly cross the opposite side of traffic. I only braked softly, assuming it would make it across the road with room to spare, but I badly misjudged its trajectory.

In the split second that a collision appeared imminent, two options popped in my head: braking hard to avoid impact or speeding up to pass it before it got off the median. I ended up slamming on the brakes, and came to a near stop in the middle of the road. I didn’t hear any thump so I slowly put my foot back on the gas. I drove 30 feet away, then looked in my rear view mirror.

I saw a black mass in my lane violently jumping up and down, as if it was possessed by a demon. I stared at the mirror for at least 20 seconds, watching the cat toss its body around. My throat tightened. I took a deep breath then pulled over to the side of the road.

All my friends know I have an unusual fascination with cats (for a heterosexual man, anyway). I’ve been known to read cat blogs, cat comics, and I’m still a sucker for cutesy lolcat images. So when I got out of the car and walked up to the animal, I was not prepared to see that most of its head had been crushed. Blood was splattered all over the road. I instinctively put my hand over my mouth, and just stood there in shock, unable to look at it for more than half a second at a time. Its body was still shaking. After suffering badly for another minute, the cat finally stopped moving. If another man hadn’t pulled over to help, I would have probably burst into tears.

It’s not my fault the cat was slow. It didn’t even have a collar. Stupid feral thing was probably crawling with fleas and parasites. There are billions of cats and maybe I did the thing a favor by putting it out of its misery. This type of thing happens a million times a day, right?

I imagined that’s how other people would rationalize what I had just done. I’m not a PETA member and I don’t think a cat’s life is more important than a human’s, but it’s one thing to feel sorry for cute little animals dying and another thing to have killed one of those cute little animals. I’m the guy who gets a kick out of internet justice when 4channers locate the perpetrator of a cat abuser from a single frame of torture video, and though this was an accident, I inflicted the same harm as those sociopaths. For a few hours it did feel like I killed a human being.

The cat I hit could not predict the accident. It’s not like it could plan for living the most pleasurable cat life possible until some idiot tried to time its movements as if it was a squirrel. Sometimes I wonder about people who plan their lives that way, working on the assumption that not only they’ll live until they’re 75 years old, but be in perfect health right up to their end. Every day I remind myself that nature doesn’t give a shit about my goals and dreams, that it will eventually misjudge my trajectory in a way that I will not agree with. I just hope it doesn’t again give me such a direct role when it needs to annihilate something it created.

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