15 September 2014

I site I follow on Facebook had a link today to an interesting article called “5 Quotes From Billionaire Mark Cuban That Will Inspire You To Work Your Ass Off.” This post is not about Mark Cuban, I just happen to like a lot of what he was quoted as saying in this article.

I liked all five quotes. They weren’t just 1-liners – they had explanations of why he said each. I really liked number four. You can read for yourself at the link above but it ended with the following:

“We are trained to interpret “different” as a negative, when in reality, different jobs and opportunities often provide for the greatest potential for us to thrive as individuals. Life is too short for us to live in fear of being different. Be whom you want to be and don’t worry about the haters.”

I like the “different” part. Doing what Sharon and I are doing here on St. Thomas is definitely different. Life really is TOO short for any of us to live in fear of being different. Just go for it. Whatever “it” is.  As you can probably guess, we had many folks who said we were crazy for doing what we did by taking this position at Silk Cotton Villa. But no regrets here.

And part of this lifestyle is having to give X number of hours in return for a nice place to live and extras paid for such as Internet, utilities, and TV service. In other words, “Will Work for Living Quarters.” Many of our friends have ragged us from time to time (since our arrival) about what a great life we have here on a beautiful Caribbean Island. And it is N-I-C-E … no question about it. But we still have to get our work done before we can play.

I did a post earlier called the Project List where I outlined some of the projects on the list and some we had accomplished. And once again I won’t bore you with the details of the list. It’s a living thing. We complete projects and add projects all the time.

A few weeks ago we took a break from projects and spent a wonderful Saturday with some new friends at Frances Bay on St. John island. Our first trip over there since taking this position. You can see more photos of that day at The Working Couple Facebook page.

And this past weekend, we spent a lot of Saturday and some of Sunday knocking out more projects. One was pressure washing the east deck. Yeah, the view is nice and who cares if you get soaking wet in 90° weather …. but it is still work and it has to be done.

But there is a reward for all the hard work we did this weekend and the photos say it all. It could be worse. We Work for Living Quarters (on St. Thomas).