Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Slow Down and Fast in Mexico!

Slow Down And Fast

By Jaime Byrd


How does the movie, Slow Down and Fast have anything to do with what Adam and I are doing with our lives right now?  It actually has a lot to do with it and I am thankful that I can share this idea with all of you. 


Many of us have asked ourselves, "Who am I?" and "What am I suppose to do in this life?"  "What is my purpose?"


Needing to "do the right thing", and "finding purpose in our life" has sometimes become common questions for many of us.   We struggle everyday trying to do our best and fill our lives which often result in over consumption of material objects and poor relationships. Confusion and turmoil in a modern day world has become so challenging at times, that we do whatever we can to disconnect and alter our consciousness in order to make it bearable.  


Today, it seems that we are working more and more on enhancing our awareness and becoming more enlightened with what really matters to us;  love, family, friends, truth, health, understanding. 


My movie, Slow Down and Fast, is a film that attempts to answer some of these hard asked questions through one mans experience in the wilderness without food for 30 days.  It explores the ideas of living with and living without.  It allows us to open our minds and see how little it takes to really appreciate the life we have - not through the unfortunateness of others - but rather through the beauty we all have inside our minds.  We are shown how appreciation and gratefulness can expand our lives, even if just a little bit. 


We get a glimpse of what may appear real to some and what may not be real to others.  We can imagine just what it is that we need in order to be at peace with ourselves and the world.   There is nothing more real and deep then connecting with ourselves and discovering just what we want out of life in order to make that dream come true.  That is exactly what we are doing with our lives now.


We are living in a state of appreciation and gratefulness everyday. We feel more abundant then we ever have in our lives because we're focused on what it is we want and need to make us happy instead of all the things we thought were missing and lacking. 


I believe that this idea of slowing down, and connecting with our physical world can help us be at peace a little more with ourselves and with others in a way most of us have not yet thought about or explored. 


I plan on posting our experiences and thoughts about this process along our traveling journey.  I want to share and discuss with you how we are attracting all things into our lives just the way we've asked to and how easy it is to create this in all of our lives.  Life is what we intend it to be. If you have the ability to imagine it, or even think about it, then you have the ability and the resources to have it delivered to you.  Intend it and it will be yours.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Arrived in San Miguel de Allende

We pretty much laughed ourselves silly through the entire 3 day drive south to the Mexico boarder with Whitney.  That alone made us exhausted.  Turns out we all travel the same way, with the same food, the same humor, and the same positive outlook. 

We spent a night in Ocean Springs, Mississippi and another in Corpus Christi TX,  and then arrived at the home of our new best friend, Juan, a couchsurfer in Ciudad Victoria, Mexico. Our plan was to only stay one night, but with his generous hospitality, fantastic conversations, and bbq's each night with his friends and family, we felt like we just couldn't leave Juan right away, so we stayed 2 more days.  The laughing went on and on with Juan as well.  

We were stopped by military check point inspections quite a few times, but with our unique distraction of having a circus-type blind dog "without eyes" with us, we were quickly on the road again without too much repacking.  Seems to work every time.  I guess, drug smugglers don't have many blind dogs with them these days. 

We arrived in San Miguel de Allende this last Tuesday where we began our "house sitting" gig with Whitney.  This house is fantastic!  It's a huge Mexican style 3 bedroom 4 bath home with lot's of American money poured into it making it feel like a 5 star resort.  There are 3 outdoor patios overlooking the city in different locations of the house including a cabana covered patio on the roof top.  We have a maid that comes 3 times a week and a gardner twice a week and a dog and cat to keep Lyle company.  We are living the high life and not paying a dime.  We love Mexico!  Plus we have tacos whenever we want. 

As Whitney said, "why would anyone want to live anywhere BUT Mexico?" Well, we have started to ask ourselves this very question now. 










Thursday, January 8, 2009

Getting ready to leave for Mexico!

Hello to Everyone!
It's that time again for us to load up our truck with all our gear along with Lyle and head down south to Mexico for 3 months! We can taste the tacos now!

On January 22nd, we will be driving from Asheville going first to San Miguel de Allende, a colonial city in the state of Guanajuato in central Mexico. A friend of ours from Asheville, Whitney, will be going along with us for the ride since she will be living down there and working on midwife training.

Our plans are quite loose, yet at this point we do have the general outline of going to live in San Miguel for one month, then go to the Pacific coast for one month, and then go back to the city of Guanajuato for another month. We'll be working on some video projects as well as taking some time off to sit in the sun and eat some tacos (Lyle prefers mangos).

We really want to stay in touch with all our friends and family, so please email or call us anytime! Also subscribe to this blog for regular updates with photos and videos. We will continue to have internet connection everywhere we go, and we'll be using Skype for making phone calls (this means if you call us, we will call you back using our computer connection that will cost us only a few pasos a minute).

Wishing all of you a fantastic and exciting 2009!
Love,
Jaime, Adam, and Lyle