If you’ve been with me for some time, you probably noticed I’m a sucker for quotes. You know, those succinct and beautiful little nuggets of wisdom from the great women and men who lived long before us, or if we’re lucky, are still roaming among us.
So speckled on my walls are words from these influential avatars. I even keep a spreadsheet on my computer dedicated to great quotes that’s ever-opened and overflowing like a New York City diner on a Saturday night. I keep these quotes around me so that in a moment when I need them most, they have the opportunity to appear. And boy, do they appear. Even before I know I need them, they seem to find me and whisper, and my only hope is that I’m paying attention when they do.
Today, we’re officially announcing Tales of Iceland to the world. I’m not going to dance around the issue: I want you to read it!
There are 3 [UPDATE: 6] ways you can read the book:
1. Amazon Kindle (ebook)
2. Barnes & Noble Nook (ebook)
3. Paperback via Amazon
[UPDATE] 4. Apple’s iBookstore (ebook)
[UPDATE] 5. emma.is (ebook) – Icelandic startup ebook retailer
[UPDATE] 6. Kobo (ebook)
I’ll be honest, there are some embarrassing stories about me in the book, as should be expected when three single twenty-something friends embark on a foreign adventure. You may be wondering why I would promote such a book. Here’s why: As I continue to write on GiveLiveExplore, I’ve learned to become more open with sharing who I am. If someone wants to judge me, so be it. Life’s too short to spend it paranoid or embarrassed. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
I have a very special announcement today. Since you’ve been with me for a while now, following my musings and misadventures over the past year, I wanted you to be one of the first to know.
I’m happy to announce that GiveLiveExplore is officially a publishing company. On Tuesday, Tales of Iceland became available on Amazon. We’ve decided to quietly announce the book this week as we get any and all final kinks out. Next week, we’ll make formal announcements, send out a bunch of press releases, and try to get some coverage for the book. But in the meantime, this will be our little secret.
“If you want to learn something, read about it. If you want to understand something, write about it. If you want to master something, teach it.”
- Yogi Bhajan
There are plenty of blog posts out there under this same title. What I’m about to tell you has been told thousands of times over. (Google “how to start a blog” and count the 3,670,000,000 results). So why am I writing this?
“Each man had only one genuine vocation – to find the way to himself….His task was to discover his own destiny – not an arbitrary one – and to live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one’s own inwardness.”
- Hermann Hesse, from Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair’s Youth
While touring countries in Europe, it’s hard not to notice that every corner of the place is filled with statues of great men and women who have become our heroes. The leaders we study in school, the avatars we aspire to become like, and the legends who continue to shape our world today. Their names even remind us of how special they were. Alexander the Great. Socrates. Mother Theresa. Martin Luther King, Jr. Saint Stanislaw.
I’m thrilled to announce that GiveLiveExplore is publishing Chicago-based humorist Stephen Markley’s new book: Tales of Iceland or “Running with the Huldufólk in the Permanent Daylight.”
The book is about three Americans (Stephen, myself, and our friend Mike) and their travels through Iceland in June 2012. We’re describing it as the “fastest, funniest, true tale of an American experience in Iceland” and “required reading for anyone wishing to visit this strange, remarkable, and beautiful country.”
“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate.”
- Pico Ayer, British-born essayist and novelist.
Greetings from the Gulf! I’m down near the Florida-Alabama (USA) border, spending time with family and keeping costs down as I work on a couple projects (more on this below).
This is a quick, impromptu post. I had no intention of sending something today. But after reading an incredible essay, an ode to travel of sorts, an air of inspiration and awe and wanderlust engulfed me, and stirred within me an urge to share it.
Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…
Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
As I sat down to write Thoughts on Coming Home on January 6, I realized there’s no way to boil the whole experience of coming home down to one post. So I split it up and expanded it. A whopping 8,500+ words later, here we are, part five in a five-part series. Yes, I had a lot to share. But I was also buying myself time. You see, I needed time to answer the all-too-obvious question that sits on the tips of the tongues of everyone I meet: “What’s Next?”
“When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.”
- Jacques Cousteau, French explorer, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, and author.
June 4, 2012. Reykjavík, Iceland. KEX Hostel. Feeling a little typsy off an overpriced local beer and the adrenaline of a new adventure, I hit ‘Send’ on a heartfelt email, instantly delivering it to 200 friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances:
"In your darkest, most frustrated hours, remember the value you are trying to add to peoples’ lives, the satisfaction you’ll feel, or the cause that you’ll further. The path to a finished book is not a smooth or a straight line, but the end result will make you forget the pain."
Most meaningful creations are born of frustration. APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur is no exception.
On June 2, 2012, I left the US on a one-way ticket to Iceland. Eighteen countries and seven months later, I returned home an evolved man. GiveLiveExplore began as a platform to share my physical journey, but it continues as the virtual home for personal and professional projects that excite me. Several times a month I write thought-provoking pieces called Tales. Thanks for joining me, I'm thrilled you're here. Don't hesitate to say Hi.
"The fastest, funniest, true tale of an American experience in Iceland...required reading for anyone wishing to visit this strange, remarkable, and beautiful country." (Click cover image for more info)
Join me in Italy for Abruzzo’s first food and travel blogging workshop.