Back in the late nineties I was in a meeting with my fellow wood working educators and as we waiting for things to get going the discussion came up under the eternal subject "What Would You Do If You Won the Lottery". The usual variety of answers came up ranging from taking care of friends and family to travel. We hovered around travel for a good bit and the responses were just as all over from living in the Bahamas to being a recluse in a mountain home, and then my partner in crime spoke up.
Marvin Carter (Merv as he was known to us) took a pragmatic pause and said something that has stuck with me for over twenty five years: I've seen enough of this world having been in Vietnam and the military. It's time to see the country that I come from. I to had seen a good bit of this world because of the military and from the moment Merv spoke those words, something changed. I didn't realize what that was but I thought about that conversation for years to come.
I had never been one to shy away from change and that is accurately reflected in my work history as I would quit one job in Connecticut to take another one in West Virginia only then to move on to Maryland when the Federal dollars dried up. It was all one big adventure to me and, although I had varying degrees of success and failures, I kept moving and returned to the place of my birth in Michigan. Some success followed but a lot of failure as well as Iade some pretty dumb decisions in my youth.
When I finally got my head back in straight I took to the road again and landed in Carrollton Georgia and met the woman that would become my wife. We both had interesting and checkered pasts so we "Got It" and knew what we had to do to succeed. We raised her two kids, bought a house, worked out jobs, and we're the modern blended family. However, we were never really settled. We would take family and friends to go camping in the North Carolina mountains, we would take motorcycle trips and camp in some remote location, sometimes we would trailer our bike across the country to Colorado or Michigan for one more adventure.
Then, our son moved out and housing prices soared. We knew what we had to do and without an ounce of fear (or experience) we jumped off.
I've written about how we did that in another post and have already written about our past adventures bit as I sit here enjoying my morning coffee and reflecting on the past and future, I thought it worthwhile to put my thoughts to print one more time.
I hope you enjoyed my reveling and maybe it can help to inspire someone to take a chance and do something adventurous. Have a great day!