Deliberately

I finished up "Into the Wild" this weekend and enjoyed it quite a bit. I realized a few chapters into the book that when this happened in the early '90s, I was about the same age as he was. So while I was winding down my failed college career and starting down the path I'm on now this guy was living out his fantasy life on the road and in the wilds of Alaska.

Not that I would or could have done anything remotely as courageous as he did when I was that age. I've come to realize that I'm about a decade (or two) behind everyone else in my age range as far as experiences and mental attitude go. It used to bother me, but now I'm trying to roll with it and take things as they come. I have a lot of admiration and respect for this guy; he took his destiny into his own hands, lived life deliberately, and savored every minute of it. Yeah he made mistakes and should have done some things differently, but that's not the point. I'd rather live a short life of happiness and discovery than a long life of boredom and monotony.

I'm a few chapters into "Merle's Door" and liking it so far. It's a different book than I'm used to reading, but that's a good thing.

11-11

Many months ago I started seeing the number 11 everywhere. It would pop up all over the place for days on end. Every time I looked at a clock it would be at 11 minutes past the hour; the convenience store bill would come to $11.11; numbers and addresses all through the day at work would have an inordinate amount of 11's. It would stop for a day or two and the numbers in my life would go back to appearing at random. But then it would come back with a vengeance and there would be day after day with the number 11 suddenly everywhere I turned.

Googling it turned up quite a few results of varying believability. Part of me knew that it may have been just a coincidence (once I noticed the first few 11's my mind started looking for them subconsciously and I just thought they were everywhere). But at the same time another part of me thought it was a sign the universe was sending out and I should listen. I decided to take a mid-range approach and use a mix of both to be what I would go with: if it's a sign then that's cool, they'll eventually point me in some direction and let me know what it's a sign of...but if some big sign doesn't happen then it was just in my head and I didn't need to think about it anymore. Naturally the 11s disappeared. I didn't notice when they stopped, they just went away like it had never happened. It was either all a coincidence or I pissed off whoever was sending me the signs by being so apathetic about it and they stopped sending them to me.

Whatever the case, I hadn't thought anything about it again since early summer. Until Friday night. I realized that Sunday (today) was the eleventh day of November, 11/11, and everything came crashing back into my head with an odd sense of urgency this time. I even had some run ins with 11s earlier in the week but I hadn't noticed them until Friday night. I don't know if there was something profound or life-altering I was supposed to do or learn today. I've decided not to let it go this time though. I'm going to treat it as a positive sign and see what happens.

A Grain of Sand

I had a conversation today that changed my entire outlook on my life. Call it not wanting to jinx it, but I'd rather wait a while before putting everything down on paper. I need to give it time to settle in my mind. Could this be Plan B to the lunch conversation with my boss?

The best part about the whole thing is that it was a completely random conversation about a paper weight on a coworker's desk. It had nothing to do with life-altering realizations or deep philosophical topics.

There may be something to this after all.

On Second Thought

Looking back over the choices I've made over the last few years I've discovered that I'm a Plan B kind of person. It's not that my initial plans always suck, but my second ideas tend to be much better (at least in my mind) and are generally the ones I end up going with. And I don't mean Plan B as in a backup plan or the very next thought I have after the initial idea strikes me. It's more along these lines:

• I decide on a course of action
• I start putting it into motion
• I discover a different way to achieve the same (or almost the same) goal, or find a completely different idea along the way
  
• I abandon the first idea and go with the new one.

Almost 8 years ago I had the chance to essentially start my life over again. I won't go into the details but I found myself in the position to change location, start on a new career path, and get myself moving in a different direction. The initial plan was to move to Raleigh, find a job, and get myself back into NC State and complete a degree program. In the beginning everything was going according to schedule. I'd managed to make it to Raleigh and start hunting for an apartment and searching through the Want Ads for a job. But none of it "felt" right. I was back in Raleigh; I was looking in all the right places for apartments; I had gone by State and was stoked to get back into school; yet I felt like none of it was what I should be doing.

I was staying with my sister in Greenville and driving to Raleigh every day checking into things. I'd done this all week and hadn't found anything I wanted to settle with, so I decided to stop in and visit some old friends who had moved back to Raleigh a few years before. And over the course of one evening there I'd completely changed my direction. Instead of Raleigh, I was now moving to Asheville. The other parts of the original plan were still in place in some fashion, but the location had changed. And it all felt right. Welcome to Plan B.

Flash forward seven and a half years and I'm still in Asheville. I know I'm a completely different person than I would have been if I'd kept going the other way. I would have had a different job and different friends, and would have had vastly different experiences. But I chose to come here and have all of those experiences in Asheville instead and I don't regret a second of it. February of next year will be the 8-year anniversary of the move here and will be a milestone of sorts for me. I will have spent more time here than any other place I've ever lived. Even counting childhood. There's something about Asheville and the North Carolina Mountains that draws me in and makes me want to stay. Plan B is working out pretty well.