Sheshunoff - A Beginners Guide to Paradise: 9 Steps to Giving Up Everything

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First published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

First Printing, September 2015

Copyright Alex Sheshunoff, 2015

Maps copyright David Atkinson, Hand Made Maps Ltd.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Sheshunoff, Alex.

A beginners guide to Paradise/Alex Sheshunoff.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-698-19734-3

1. Yap (Micronesia)Description and travel. 2. Sheshunoff, AlexTravelMicronesia (Federated States)Yap. 3. Sheshunoff, AlexHomes and hauntsMicronesia (Federated States)Yap. 4. Young menMicronesia (Federated States)Yap Memoir. 5. AmericansMicronesia (Federated States)YapMemoir. 6. Moving, Household. 7. Life-change events. 8. Burn-out (Psychology) 9. Escape (Psychology) 10. Self-actualization (Psychology) I. Title.

DU568.Y3S43 2015

996.6dc23 2015008757

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Version_4

To my dad

About This Guide

No one really wants to hear about your trip (unless you were the victim of a crime, in which case, they want to hear all about it). So from the start I should say that during the two years or so that I lived in the western Pacific, I was the victim of only one crime. It was minor but culturally revealing. Ill get to that in time, but first a little background.

Back in 2001, I was running a small Internet company in New York City and, confronting a sort of quarter-life crisis, I quit my job and bought a one-way ticket to Yap, a small island about five hundred miles south of Guam. My plan: read the one hundred books I was most embarrassed not to have read in college and, hopefully, find Paradise.

When people hearusually by standing too close to me in a grocery store linethat I once moved to a small island with only three letters in its name, they all have the same questions: How did it go? Was it a mistake? How did you afford it?

The short answers to those questions are: 1) pretty well; 2) for the most part, it wasnt; and 3) by subletting my apartment and office in a good real estate market. But responding that way isnt much fun. Nor does it make me rich, rich, richthe main reason people go into writing. So I decided to create thisa kind of how-to manual for escaping from it all.

My hope is that it might inspire you to do something similar or betterchoosing an island with, say, only two letters in its name. Or you might decide that staying at home is the best choice all along, which is good too.

To make this more fun, Ive broken the process of moving to a small island in the Pacific into these nine easy-to-follow steps:

Step 1: Make Some Big Choices

Step 2: Show Up

Step 3: Find the Right Island

Step 4: Stop Being So Picky and Just Pick a Damn Island

Step 5: Settle In

Step 6: Meet Someone

Step 7: Regroup

Step 8: Build a House

Step 9: Live Pretty Much Happily Ever After

Feel free to skip around. For example, already have an island picked out? Take a pass on the first four steps. Have a partner to do this with but dont have an island yet? Ignore Step 6. Most readers, however, will just start at the beginning, read a few chapters, and then do something more worthwhile. Like help people. Or make some toast.

Authors Note

Every so often, usually by strangers with a conspiratorial bent, Im asked, How much of this is true? The answer: basically all of it. I kept a journal the entire time I was in the Pacific, and Ive tried to be as accurate as possible with everything that gives the reader a grounded sense of time and placeisland histories, politics, physical descriptions, place names, etc. Also, there are no composite characters here; thered be no need to mush personalities togetheras youll see, the Pacific is home to plenty of loons. But I have taken liberties with...

Names: Most of the names have been changed, especially those belonging to people I really skewer. Bruces name, however, is really Bruces name. This will make sense later.

Dialogue: Ive tried to convey dialogue faithfully, but anyone who has ever read a court transcript will understand why Ive had to make some adjustments. As the writer H. H. Munro said on this subject, A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.

Timing: There isnt much correlation between the number of pages devoted to a place and the amount of time I spent there. Thats just the way life is sometimes.

OK, enough of that. Photographs, maps and superspecial bonus materials are available online at either www.abeginnersguidetoparadise.com or www.facebook.com/asheshunoff.

A.S.

What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.

Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make a better soup.

H. L. Mencken, Sententiae

Visit bit.ly/2lYCPbX for a larger version of this image.

INTRODUCTION

SO THERE I WAS, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PACIFIC...

T en days aboard the Microspirit, an aptly named freighter not so much threatened by rust as held together by it, convinced me that it was time to pick an island. Any island. So I picked Pig. Part travel agent calendar and part Far Side cartoon, the island of Pig, itself an outer island of Yap, already seemed from the pictures like a destination so familiar that I wondered why Id even bother showing upI figured I already knew what I was in for.

Id come in search of capital P Paradise. Not a unique mission, but I needed to know if Paul Gauguins Paradise still existedthe one with the flowering trees glistening with recent rain, the beautiful women carrying baskets of fruit, the smiling tigers. And if it did still exist, why didnt people just move there? Was it lack of ambition or too much ambition that kept them away? Or was life simply too hardor too easyin a place like Pig? I didnt know. But I had a hunch that an ideal life is not something you just back into. An ideal life would require some arrangements.