Is Costa Rica expensive to live in?

Costa Rica isn’t the cheapest country in Central America, but it’s not outrageous either. Daily life costs less than in most major U.S. cities — especially if you adapt to local food and lifestyle. Where it gets pricey is rent in beach towns, imported goods, and electricity if you blast the A/C all day.

What is the average rent in Costa Rica?

Rent depends on location. In San José, a two-bedroom apartment runs $600–$1,200/month. In popular beach towns or suburbs, expect $800–$1,800/month. Rural areas can be as low as $400/month — but you’ll trade off some conveniences.

How much money do I need to live comfortably in Costa Rica?

A single person can live modestly on $1,200–$1,500/month. For more comfort (A/C, private healthcare, imported snacks), budget $2,000–$3,000/month. Couples usually spend $1,500–$2,500+ depending on lifestyle and location.

What’s the cost of food in Costa Rica?

Local produce, coffee, and seafood are affordable (think avocados for $0.50, pineapples for $1, fresh fish at local markets). Imported items, though, are expensive — a jar of peanut butter can be $8 and wine can sting your wallet. Sticking to the local diet saves money and makes you healthier.

Read My Lips: What That Phrase Actually Means When You're Deaf

Waymon Hudson
Jul 7
5 min read

Before I tell you about the song, I need to tell you what those three words actually mean.

"Read my lips."

For most people it's a throwaway phrase. Dramatic. Political. The thing someone says right before they make a point they really want you to get.

For me, it's a demand the world has been making of me since the day I went deaf.

Read My Lips (Acoustic Version) drops July 17.

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The Thing Nobody Tells You About Lipreading

Lipreading is not the effortless superpower people imagine when they find out I'm deaf.

It is labor. Constant, invisible, exhausting labor that I perform for the comfort of a world that rarely returns the favor.

Every conversation is a concentration exercise most people will never have to attempt. I need you to look at me directly. Speak at a reasonable pace. Not cover your mouth. Not turn away mid-sentence. Not drop your voice when you get to the important part. And please, for the love of everything, don't try to talk to me while you're eating or taking a drink. Because lipreading someone mid-chew is both impossible and deeply unpleasant for everyone involved.

And while you're doing all of that, or more likely, not doing any of it, I'm watching the shape of every word before it disappears. Reading lips I was never asked if I wanted to read. Doing the work of translation so you don't have to feel uncomfortable.

When lipreading works, it feels like magic. When it doesn't... the silence doesn't disappear. It expands. It moves into every other sense. My eyes are working double-time trying to catch what I missed. The room gets louder in all the ways that sound can't fix.

The demand has been there since the day I went deaf. Figure it out. Keep up. Do the work. Make it easier for everyone else.

For a long time, I did.

This song is the moment I stopped.

You Want Me to Read Lips? Read Mine.

Waymon Hudson relaxed in white linen shirt, acoustic singer-songwriter portrait

I wrote Read My Lips during a period when a lot of people were telling me, in a hundred different ways, to make myself smaller. To tone it down. To stay quiet. To be easier to ignore.

And I kept coming back to this feeling I couldn't shake.

I have spent years reading the lips of a world that never once asked if the arrangement was fair. That never considered what it costs me. That assumed my accommodation was just... the natural order of things.

So I wrote the song as the answer I never got to give out loud.

You want to communicate with me now? Good. You do the work. Read. My. Lips.

That's not just a lyric. That's every suppressed response to every person who turned away mid-sentence. Every room I had to work twice as hard to exist in. Every time I smiled and nodded and translated myself into something more convenient for everyone else.

The flip isn't subtle. It's not supposed to be. It's a middle finger wrapped in a melody and I am not even slightly sorry about it.

Stripping It Down to Find Out What Was Actually There

The original version of Read My Lips is a dance track. Big production, driving beat, the kind of thing that hits differently when you feel it through the floor at 2am.

But there was always something underneath the production I wanted to find. Something quieter and more dangerous.

When I started building acoustic arrangements for what will become Through My Skin: In the Quiet, I went back to this song first. I wanted to hear what it said when there was nothing to hide behind.

The arrangement came together fast. Acoustic guitar, light percussion, my voice. And somewhere in the process the song shifted keys entirely without me planning it. The original lives in C minor... dark, driving, urgent. The sound of someone still in the fight.

The acoustic version settled into G Major. Open. Bright. Resolved.

The same defiance. Completely different light.

C minor is the sound of someone fighting to be heard. G Major is the sound of someone who already knows they won.

The song told me where it needed to go. I just followed it.

How a Deaf Artist Actually Records Music

Waymon Hudson in black tank and scarf, queer deaf artist, editorial portrait

Here's something most people don't know about how I make music.

I can't put on headphones, play back a track, and hear whether it works. That process doesn't exist for me. So I built a different one.

I record each element separately. The guitar first... alone, so I can feel exactly how it vibrates. Where it lives in my chest. How the low strings feel different from the high ones against my skin. Then the piano. Then my voice. Each instrument gets my full attention in isolation before it ever shares space with another sound.

I'm not listening. I'm feeling. Learning the specific physical signature of each element before I trust them together.

And then when I assemble the full track, my body tells me the truth whether I want it to or not.

When something isn't working, when an element is off, when two things don't blend the way they should, I feel it before I can name it. The hairs on my arms stand up. The same physical response I get from bad karaoke. My body registers the wrongness immediately, like a warning system I didn't install but have learned to trust completely.

But when it's right?

When it's actually right?

Heat creeps up from my chest. The hairs on the back of my neck rise. My whole body shifts into something that isn't quite a sound and isn't quite a feeling but lives somewhere in between... the place where music actually lives for me.

That's how I know.

Not because I heard it. Because my body told me the truth.

The Moment That Surprised Me

When I recorded the vocal for this version, something happened on the hook that I didn't plan.

Read my lips.

I went into falsetto.

Not because it was written that way. Not because I calculated it. It just came out of me and when I felt the shift in my voice... I knew immediately it was right.

The line that is most explicitly about being deaf. The phrase that has been used as a demand since the day I lost my hearing. Delivered in a register that floats above normal speech. Almost beyond sound itself.

Intentional? I couldn't tell you. But it felt like the truest thing I've ever sung.

What This Song Is Actually Saying

Waymon Hudson, deaf singer-songwriter, black and white portrait leaning on a chair

I don't need sound to feel the beat. I don't have to yell to bring the heat.

Not a lyric. A fact.

I went deaf and the world assumed certain things would end. My relationship with music. My ability to perform. My right to take up space in rooms built around sound. And if I'm honest, for a while some of those assumptions got inside my head too.

This song is the answer to all of that.

Not an explanation. Not a defense. Not an apology.

The answer.

Read My Lips (Acoustic Version) strips everything down to the bone. No production to hide behind. No big beat to carry me. Just the song, the guitar, my voice, and the truth underneath all three.

Upbeat. Defiant. A little bit of controlled rage dressed up as joy.

Because being told to make yourself smaller... and then refusing... and then thriving anyway... that's not a sad story.

That's the best story I know how to tell.

If you've ever been told to tone it down... if you've ever done twice the work for half the recognition... if you've ever proven someone wrong without saying a single word...

Read. My. Lips.

This one's for you.

🎧 Read My Lips (Acoustic Version) drops July 17. Pre-save it now and it lands in your library the second it goes live.

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