This post has been in the hopper so to speak for the past several months. It is short but sweet. It has been tougher for me to write as we really have not done much traveling outside of work. I have done a lot of thinking this year, and have gone through some struggles with many different things about life and what I really want out of it. This is not intended to be a sappy post about rainbows, sunshine, and finding a better me. I am no Thoreau or Hemingway. I just like to write about the truth, the nitty- gritty, and the stories that keep me excited to wake another day. The bottom line is that one day there will be no more time to do the things that we always wanted to do. So do them now. Tomorrow is never promised. There is never a perfect time to do the things you always wanted to do. I was watching a documentary the other day on the “Barkley Marathon.” It is a 130 mile run in the mountains of Tennessee, and it was very painful yet joyous to watch the struggles and successes of all the runners involved. They all looked like death at the end.  I won’t get into all the details of the run, but there was one runner’s story that was very interesting to me. His name was Kirk, and he was just a normal guy from NC. His father raised him to get a job, have a family, buy a house, work really hard, and then at 65 when you retire, then you can do all the things that you have always wanted to do. Kirk’s dad died of a heart attack 1 day before his retirement. He had postponed all the wonderful and exciting things for his later years, and never got to do them. So Kirk decided to hike the Appalachian Trail, start running marathons, and do the things that he always wanted to do. Everyone told him that he needed to be an elite runner to complete the marathon, but he decided to train anyway, and he finished the 130 mile run 15 minutes before the 60 hour cutoff. He was doing the things that he wanted to do.

We all needs jobs. We all need money to survive, and we need some sort of structure in life. At the end of the day, you need to do what you want to do and what makes you happy. For me and I would say for Morgan as well, it is not about having a lot of money, buying expensive things, and working hard to live a glamorous life. We strive to live fulfilled, simple lives where we enjoy the things that we do and have personal freedom. For Morgan it is photography. For me it’s running a tree business. For us, it is about living on our 2 acres with chickens and a crazy cat and dog.  I have learned over the past year that bigger is not always better, and just living a simple fulfilling life is all you really need sometimes. It is never really about the money for me. I cannot tell you how many times I day-dream about living out of a Subaru in New Zealand. Those perfect nights when all we had to worry about was if our Ramen noodles were too hard or too soft.  Remembering the look on Morgan’s face when I dropped the keys in the side panel of our car 10 miles from any town. We had to disassemble the side panel with a Swiss army knife to retrieve them. Or the time we stood on the top of Machu Picchu as the sun came up at 6 AM and the fog lifted. I even remember specific meals in every country I have traveled. The taste of real Pad Thai in Thailand with sweat dripping down my face in the hot sun of Bangkok. The list goes on and on. I remember these things, all of these things every day. I don’t really recall the days of work where it was a struggle to get up to face the challenges ahead. I do not even really remember all of the fancy dinners I have attended or the nights at our house in Eads. I remember the simple days, the days where we really didn’t have a whole lot. We had each other, we had places to go, and we had the stories to tell. That is what does it for me. As I look towards the next 5 to 60 years of my life, I want to yearn for those perfect moments, where we both say “I am glad we did that and went there.”

-David