Yeah, I know, that question is not only dumb, but illogical as well.
Still, when I started this blog years ago, the question at least had a slender thread of relevance to the world of metaphysics and extant technology. But since almost a decade now separates this post from my very first one when the new millennium dawned, much has changed.
I bring all this up today because I’m headed on another trip, this time to the 
mountains and forests of the Appalachian Trail, to test that silly headline and this blog’s raison d’etre.
Both the headline and the premise of this blog are deeply routed in an idea I dreamed up about ten years ago. The premise was simple: Nascent computer technology had advanced to such a degree that you ought to be able to travel the world and pay for your exotic adventures by trading stocks online from practically anywhere on the globe. And back then, that was a challenging notion.
Keep in mind I started writing this blog before smartphones, before wireless platforms on stock brokerages, before tablets, and netbooks. And before the globe was wallpapered with free wi-fi in cafes, airports, hotels, motels, trains and airplanes, and even street corner wi-fi booths.
I have since tested this theory by trading stocks all over the world like a latter-day Jonathan Swift: In hotels and lobbies in Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Dubai; in coffee shops in San Miguel de Allende, and aboard scores of jetliners bound for exotic locales from Vienna to Shanghai. On trains chugging along the California coast and the Great American prairies or in bullet trains in Xian. In ferry boats on the Zhujiang River. From misty outcrops at Niagara Falls. And soon, from the middle of primordial forests along the Appalachian Trail.
But the very success of my trading/traveling exploits only highlight this blog’s perishability: Mobile stock trading has now become so easy to do from just about anywhere, it’s old hat. In other words, while the premise of this 
blog might have been cutting-edge when I first dreamed it up, it’s now as novel as an ATM machine on a street corner in Bangladesh or Thailand. Which is to say, the concept itself has become hopelessly pedestrian.
I guess I can thank Gordon Moore for that. He’s the Intel co-founder who invented Moore’s Law, which suggests that electronic devices double in their capabilities every two years.
That’s made day trading from the far corners of the earth about as novel as getting an email from your Aunt Ludie while you vacation in Disneyland. And if Moore’s law has stripped the technological underpinning of this blog, what’s left? A blog limited to trading stocks? Sorry, I’m just not interested. There’s already too many blogs, too many websites devoted to that subject.
Is the Appalachian Trail Charlie’s Swan Song?
So where to from here? After I spend a few days or weeks hiking the Appalachian Trail and placing iPhone or hotspot trades from my little Acer netbook, I’ll decide whether to shutter this blog or build a new one.
I’m thinking of creating a blog more broadly aimed at those spunky indie travelers who circle the world and make money as they travel using their given skill set. This audience could include, for example, freelance writers, lawyers, architects or artists, wandering minstrels, or those who earn their travel pin money by buying and selling on eBay as they flit across this blue marble.
It would not include those hoi polloi who earn money in fixed positions, such as teaching English in China or picking grapes in Tain-l’Hermitage, France. As far as I’m concerned, earning money abroad in that fashion is no different than taking a full-time job in some distant port; all you’ve done is trade one job, one locale, for another one only this time your living accommodations are likely to be as shoddy as they are temporary.
Anyway, I’ll make that decision about whether to modify or shutter this blog while I’m on my road trip. In addition to the mountains of the Appalachian Trail, l’m going to visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s Johnson Wax building in Racine, Wis., then swing down to New Orleans for some good Dixieland jazz, before conducting some genealogical research on my ancestors in Minden, La.
As usual, I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, but I’ll post a couple of blog/photos of my trip. And when I get back, it’s time to start packing for Europe and a summer of adventure. And if the market has crashed, who cares? I’ll start looking for a job teaching English in Australia. Or is that as dumb as the headline on this blog? You tell me.
–Charlie the R.T.
