A New Directive

I know I've been absent lately, and I have yet to tell about my trip to Italy. I've been working on a different project for a little bit now and I'm feeling pretty good about it. Here is but a small excerpt. 

       Jessica did what she is often times quite remarkable at, and asked me a couple questions that made me think. She asked me first if I regretted coming home from Europe so soon. I didn't. Partly because I felt like I was finished in Europe, but also, I wasn't the type to regret things. I don't know if there was a definitive turning point in my life, if I had gradually evolved, or if I had never really experienced true regret, but I couldn't think of a single thing in my life I regretted doing. Every time I came up with something unfortunate that had happened to me, or a stupid decision I had made, I could think of the lessons I had learned from those incidents and decisions. I knew the outcome of each event in my life and I could either learn from or laugh about each and every one of them. Usually both. Every instance was undoubtedly responsible for turning me into the unique character that I was today, and I was genuinely excited about the person I was going to become in the future. I didn't just not regret coming home from Europe, I was intrigued to see what role that particular decision would play in my life several years down the road.  

The second question Jessica asked me was, "when were you the absolute happiest?" Immediately, my mind jumped to Belize. The first night on that windy, sandless island, sitting on the deck, drinking Belikin. Every five minutes I would get this shit-eatin grin on my face and say, "Dave! We're in fucking Belize!" It wasn't the place, the company, or the beer that made me feel happy in that moment. The reason Belize meant so much to me was because I had accomplished my life long goal. To drop everything on a moments notice and skip the country. To disconnect, almost completely, from the rest of the world. To just decide to leave, and go. It was exactly what I had always wanted to do and I had done it. I kept asking myself, Why did it take me so long to do that? School and work were both valid excuses, but they were still excuses.

Nike's just do it slogan was my new directive. I had just done most everything I wanted for a while, but there were things I had always wanted to do that I hadn't had any plans for accomplishing. Living in Colorado was a big one, and those pieces were finally beginning to fall into place. Do a road trip around the United States was another, and I already had a plan unfolding in my head for that as well. Again, I wasn't sure if this change in attitude had happened at a definitive point or over time, but I wasn't going to sit around and day dream anymore. I was going to make life happen for me. If there was something I wanted to do, or accomplish, I would do it. Whether I had a partner in crime or not was irrelevant. The world was lying at my feet and it was within my ability to go anywhere and do anything I pleased.