I Think, Therefore, I Can’t Decide

In all its irony, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill finally provided some normalcy. I arrived with hesitant enthusiasm, but soon lost my hesitancy and enthusiastically extended my orders multiple times to continue working on the response. I spent six months in the glorious Floribama (Florida + Alabama) region working on the documentation team and was something in my work days I couldn’t identify at the time.  Respect?  Compassion? What was that nice feeling I had when I arrived to the office that continued throughout the day? My project team and its leadership served as a lesson in what motivated employees. The nice feeling developed from mutual trust, autonomy, and a got-your-back mindset. All were incredibly intrinsically motivating. (The extrinsic motivation of making a little extra cash in per diem didn’t hurt my motivation, but it was not the driver).  Also motivating was the threat of having to return to Station Montauk, a harassment-full, manual labor-intensive, ...

“Fisherman hundreds of years ago saw this island glistening with streaks of silver in the sun and named it, “Isla de La Plata,” Island of Silver. It wasn’t until they landed on this little island that they would find out that the precious shining silver streaks were not silver, but historical collections of white bird shit. The Poor Man’s Galapagos was our fix for wanting to keep our trip simple while also appeasing those pesky post-vacation questions, “Oh, you went to Ecuador, did you see the Galapagos?” With this trip, we could answer we most certainly did. The question, though, made it seem as if a trip to the Galapagos wasn't a $500 flight from the mainland, 700 miles from the coast, with its own multi-day hotel/hostel and adventure logistics. It made it seem as if Ecuador has nothing else to offer - which is certainly does, from ‘waves every day’ surf towns to rainforest adventures - there is plenty of Ecuador to appreciate outside of Darwin’s coves. Of course, I am certai...