CURRENT MISSION

july 1, i started a 1-2 year long cycling tour around the country, where i will be visiting friends, family and learning anything i can about people and the world.

ABOUT ME

Hello, my name is Nick. I am 25 and i am from Wilmington, North Carolina. I normally wouldn't consider myself the type to quit my jobs and travel the country/world, but life has its wicked ways and i recently decided to do just that. i would identify myself very simply as a cyclist and a traveler.

I recently came across an opportunity to work and live at Karme Choling Shambhala Meditation Retreat Center in northern Vermont, so for the next year i will be taking a break from traveling in order to explore the inner world.

PHILOSOPHY

i am not sure how to answer this quite yet, so until then i will borrow these quotes:

"Overcome any biterness that may have come because you were not up to the magnitude of pain that was entrusted to you. like the mother of the world who carries the pain of the world in her heart, each one of us is part of her heart, and therefore endowed witha certain measure of cosmic pain. you are sharing the totality of that pain. you are called upon to meet it in joy instead of self pity." - Sufi

"a good life is to honor what is required for your own transformation and becoming. And to embrace all the things that people dont want to discuss, like setbacks and near wins and potential failures and flops and wipeouts and sit with them and find the advantages that come from them and let that be your solid foundation to which you rise." - Sarah Lewis

"We don't seek the painful experiences that hue our identities, but we seek our identities in the wake of painful experiences. we can not bear a pointless torment, but we can endure a great pain if we believe it is purposeful." - Andrew Solomon

"How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant with the weak and the strong, because some day you will have been all of these." - George Washington Carver

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Right now i am just a surfer.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I am very new to this site, so i do not know much about it and the culture. I think it is a really vulnerable and exciting way to connect with people. relying on someone you don't know to take care of you is kind of a risk, but it can also be a wonderful way to dive under the surfaced and get right into knowing someone. The few people i have met through this site have been genuinely interested in showing me a good time, which makes me that much more eager to share my life.

Interests

i draw a bit. mostly portraits for friends. i also like ceramics, painting, ted talks, meditation, audio books, hiking, all sports, camping.. etc

• culture
• books
• meditation
• traveling
• pottery
• painting
• drawing
• cycling
• hiking
• camping
• sports
• science

Music, Movies, and Books

charlie kaufman/spike jonze movies, wes anderson movies, good will hunting, perks of being a wallflower, milk, sound of music
neutral milk hotel, arcade fire, glass animals, alt-j, beach house, lord of the rings score, blood orange, beirut, vampire weekend, diplo, edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros, haim, the tallest man on earth, yeah yeah yeahs, beasts of the southern wild score

Teach, Learn, Share

I think neuro science is fascinating. I love talking about how and why we do the things that we do. i think being a human being is the most complex, beautiful, painful, nuanced experience in all of life. if people understood the extremely heavy bourdon it is to be a person, then i think we would be a lot nicer to ourselves and to each other. Learning about how our brains work takes the shame out of what we don't understand about ourselves and restores our humanity. it is fundamental that everyone starts learning basic knowledge about the mind in order to maneuver more efficiently through a complex and global society.

something i would like to learn? i guess i'll give a shot at anything!