I’m excited to tell you that today I’ve crossed another item off my bucket list!
#45: Write something in my journal at least once a day, every day for a month.
I was about 3 or 4 days away from crossing it off last month without even knowing it, but then I missed a day & had to start over. See, I’m not really one of those people who are good at routine. I’m not sure if I get too bored or lazy or what, but everyday for me has to be a little different.
Several years ago I wrote my dad a letter. It was a letter requesting his permission & support to buy a sailboat, take a semester off of college and go sailing. He was pretty shocked, but I already had my mom on board, so after a short family meeting I got the all-clear.
That letter was the beginning of one of the most influential times in my life. I bought that sailboat, took the semester off and went sailing. I left a shy, insecure kid and returned to the dock an outgoing, confident man.
Last year my parents noticed I again had that look in my eye. It was time to try something new…to begin another adventure. So we had another family meeting.
Something I love about living on a boat again is that I feel so much closer to nature. Wind and waves matter. Sunrise and sunset matters. The moon phase and tides and rain. They all matter.
I didn’t realize until I moved back how immune I’d become to the environment. The weather forecast simply determined what clothes I wore, not my schedule. We power through life according to our own plan, regardless of the weather’s cooperation.
Only for the occasional earthquake or tsunami or hurricane or tornado do we wake up to realize that life as we know it could be gone tomorrow.
I was in a coffee shop a while back & there was a group of 5 or 6 girls talking. I couldn’t help but overhear about how this one girl’s family lived in England for a few years as she was growing up.
At that moment, at that table, at that coffee shop, this girl was a rockstar.
She had a story to tell. Her life was interesting. Other people thought it was cool. She exuded confidence and the pride in knowing who she is and why she’s that way and even though as a kid she didn’t want to live in England in the first place, now she wouldn’t trade that experience for the world.
Andy Andrews wrote a short book a while back called “The Butterfly Effect.” One of the stories he talks about in the book is Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain’s role in the Battle at Gettysburg. Josh (can I call him Josh?) was a 34 year old school teacher guy who, at just the right moment, decided to charge instead of retreat.
Forgive me if I’m butchering history here, but apparently people think if he’d retreated, the rebels would have won at Gettysburg and then they would have won the whole Civil War. And I guess that would’ve divided up our country to a bunch of small countries to the extent that our lives & the lives of a lot of people around the world would be so completely different that it’s impossible to imagine.
