This morning I woke up in Sonoma Valley, California.
On a 700 acre vineyard.
In a house that I’ll call home for the next several weeks.
You can ask me how I got here, but I honestly don’t know how to answer. I feel like I’m living in a dream world where things I could’ve only imagined months & years ago are becoming realities every day.
I’ll be honest. When I wrote “Visit Silicon Valley” on my bucket list a couple years ago, I didn’t really know what it meant or where it was. It seemed like this fantasy world where young dreamer-geeks went to live in a garage for a year and emerge millionaires.
And truthfully, I wasn’t too far off.
If you’re on my email list, you know I’ve been doing some videoboard production training/consulting work for the past 2 months. The travel has been intense, but I’ve been having a blast & building my savings account back up little by little.
When I got the call to travel to San Jose, California, I immediately Google’d it to see where I’d be headed. Imagine my surprise when the destination-de-jour popped up as the “Capital of Silicon Valley”!
Usually every year on my birthday, I’ll sit down with a glass of wine, go through my journal and reminisce about everything that happened in the previous 365 days. I’ll look over my goals, celebrating those I accomplished and taking note of the ones I didn’t.
But my birthday was last month, so why am I bringing it up today? It’s been exactly one year since I relaunched SailingBo.com with an entry titled “Start Here”. Before that, it had existed solely as a log of the 2004 Gulf Sailing Trip I made as a junior in college.
This time last year, I was about to start my fourth season in my dream job. I’d just announced that it would be my last season before leaving in January to pursue other dreams. Since then, this blog has seen me make a cross-country road trip from Alabama to Arizona to watch Auburn win the BCS National Championship Game, check numerous things off my Bucket List, get my sister engaged, and explain why I’m not.
I always start out thinking whatever I’m about to write is going to be really horrible, so I make it so illegible that few people beside Tom Hanks & that chick from the Da Vinci Code could read it.
After filling up the first 3 pages with enough grammar issues and misspellings to make my 7th grade english teacher blush (Hi Ms. Dennis!), I get on a roll. Then, 1.8 grande extra hot vanilla lattes later, I’ll open up my MacBook and type my notebook scribblings into this program that blacks out the screen and makes my computer look like something you would have used back in the early ‘90s.
My cousin had one of those Rubik’s Cube toys growing up. You know…those little square things with all the colors that you’re supposed to get to match up on the sides?
I would always just randomly twist the layers and maybe get 2 or 3 squares lined up just right before messing it up and finally just peeling all the stickers off.
Last week I learned something though. And much to the dismay of geeks everywhere, I’m going to let you in on a little secret.
It’s not really that hard.
