| My college years were spent dreading the day I would | | | | be the perfect avenues to explore. With a background |
| be released into the American workforce, an act in | | | | in internet marketing and long-fantasized career as a |
| itself a forerunner to depression. Although my | | | | travel writer, my options in Panama became about as |
| experience and GPA may have looked good on | | | | vast as the gulf that separated me from my home. |
| paper, I knew in my heart that my employer, the keen | | | | Several other expat friends I know occupied various |
| eye that he'd have, would invariably figure out that I | | | | jobs, from the pool business, to real estate, to |
| had learned nothing over my four years and kick me | | | | restaurants, to hotels. |
| to the curb, asking me politely-as if a restaurant-never | | | | Having noticed a lack of written information on the |
| to come back to blue-collar America again. My | | | | country, I set out to do something different. Over the |
| colleagues would stand there, in their pressed suits and | | | | exciting course of my first year, I spent every waking |
| shiny shoes, looking out over the walls of their cubicles | | | | moment documenting the isthmus. I wrote about the |
| and whisper amongst themselves. "He wasn't cut out | | | | people, the provinces. I wrote about the food, the |
| for this," they'd say. "The guy never even wore a suit". | | | | flowers. I wrote about the good, the bad, and the ugly. |
| I'm 24 which, although it may seem young is over one | | | | Too often, I feel, travel information is not real enough, |
| hundred in dog years. I originally came to work in | | | | it's not entirely honest. Sure the guidebooks and the |
| Panama after graduation because, as most innovative | | | | websites will tell you about the cupcakes and the |
| decisions are made, there was nothing better to do. I | | | | birthday parties, but what about the kid who peed in |
| wouldn't have fit in working nine to five and I certainly | | | | the lemonade cooler or worse, the kid that drank it? |
| could not tolerate another Jersey winter of frost on | | | | They never tell you that stuff, being the bona fide |
| the windshield or ice on the driveway. Panama was | | | | things that you may encounter upon traveling to a new |
| just a country with a Canal to me back then-every | | | | country. I set out to create a website to reveal all |
| one of its people, in my vision, showing the | | | | pieces of the puzzle. From hotels, to restaurants, to |
| pock-marked face of Noriega and the bat-swinging | | | | real estate, to tours, I set out to create a website to |
| prowess of Rod Carew. The moment I stepped off | | | | warn people about the proverbial lemonade. |
| the airplane though, realizing that none of my | | | | My creation, The Panama Report was a modest hit |
| preconceived notions were true, I knew this country | | | | right off the bat. People enjoyed the fact that the site |
| was the place for me. I knew this because in the | | | | was up-front, no strings attached, not overly salesy or |
| airport terminal I found a brand new twenty dollar bill | | | | negative as some other sites tend to be. Eventually |
| which, on its most basic levels, assured me that I didn't | | | | over time it earned a reputation for being something |
| need to find a job. | | | | unique and today, my consulting work for various |
| There's a very defined gap between knowing you | | | | tourism and real estate enterprises is a testament to |
| don't want a traditional office job and actually knowing | | | | its success. Could I every have made it this way at |
| what kind of job you do want, and it appeared that my | | | | home? Maybe. But it would have definitely been a lot |
| foot was stuck in it. When it came to figuring out what | | | | harder: more competition, more investment, more luck. |
| I was going to do, nothing was clear-cut. "Anything's | | | | But I prefer the way I live down here. Maybe my |
| possible" my parents used to tell me "if you put your | | | | friends were right, that I wasn't cut out for the hustle |
| mind to it". But after a number of broken limbs and | | | | and bustle of nine-to-five office life. Maybe I wasn't cut |
| about forty five cents in loose change wandering | | | | out for the cubicles or struggle or even life in the |
| through the tubes of my digestive track, I realized this | | | | States at all. |
| wasn't so true. The circumstances I found in Panama | | | | I'm sure I'll make it home some day. But for now, |
| though, were to give credence to my parent's | | | | traveling around this amazing country and sharing my |
| metaphorical advice. | | | | travels with others is good enough for me. Because |
| The opportunities that I came across seemed to be | | | | after all, isn't work for people who have nothing better |
| abound. Because the country's tourism and real estate | | | | to do? |
| sectors were (and still are) so young, they seemed to | | | | |