We be me. I’m Ben Vaughn. I’ve lived in Costa Rica’s southern zone since January of 1999. I moved here with my family of 5, plus 1 son in law. So, there were 6 of us.
At that time, we were the only family of expats that I know of. We moved to San Isidro/Perez Zeledon. 6 years later as my 27 year marriage disolved, I moved to Dominical, then later to Uvita.
We came largely for the importance that my then wife and I put on being bi-cultural and bi-lingual for our kids. We did home schooling. I worked building web sites and Search Engine Optimization. You can read more about my story by clicking over to my long-running Costa Rica real estate blog (it’ll open a new window so you can stay here as well).
About this site
Well, its personal.
I have had a number of different sites over the years. At this writing I am 54 years old, but I fear that number will change here at some point.
This point about age is notable because I now qualify for the handle “middle aged man”. I didn’t used to. And I think that it has to do with this point, but I am inclined to ask the question: what do I want? This is one of those really probing type questions, and my answer to the question seems to be in a state of flux that I attribute to middleagedness, and perhaps to a rather severe brain trauma event that happened in May of 2010. I like to call my current state one of “preference shift”. What this means will likely become apparent as the blog develops.
In short, in my younger years, the question of what I want got answered more differenter than how it is answered now. I now think in a more pure sense about the part “I” in the question.
In the past the answer has been tempered with the needs of a family, what others think, and my own self-limiting thoughts – “oh, that’ll never work”. I’m not so concerned about it working, nor what others may think now, for some reason… age maybe?
So, what do I want? I want to do this site. I want to write about life here, as I see it. I like to write.
As I go through my life here in The Zone, I often think about what is happening and that I’d like to write about it. I have written reams of articles about Costa Rica real estate in my real estate blog. It may be the longest running real estate blog in Costa Rica. I used to log the various aspects of my activity in real estate and think in terms of writing an article about the specific topic. That was what I wanted to do, at that time. Now I find a preference shift and I am wanting to write more about “life”.
I kept running up against the prospect of writing about a happening, or thought, or trend that really didn’t fit into the parameters of “real estate”. I want to have a place to write these things.
Funny thing, I have thought that real estate is really at the base, or foundation of nearly everything that happens. I still think this. However, when there is a commercial aspect to a topic, there is a limitation. Rod Martin and I were Guys In The Zone real estate agency, and we prided ourselves on a “full disclosure” approach to real estate. And indeed, anyone who has done business with us will attest to this. However, when writing for the World Wide Web, one may not be entirely “full” in their disclosure of what’s going on.
You won’t find much in the real estate blog about crime, nor some of the truly stupid aspects of life here, nor the more personal aspects of living & visiting here.
So here we are, a blog about what it is like to live here, warts and all.