The road less traveled

I have often wondered how any of us end up where we're at and why, and also how many others started down one path, only to find themselves in the thick of the forest with no end in sight? Such is life. A long time ago, I made plans. I was young and such a dreamer. I remember lying in my tiny room (which was a closet) and dreaming of going away to school in a far, far away place where I'd live amongst strangers, learn to speak a foreign language and live a life so grand and extraordinary that I might never return. And then after school, I would a successful career and continue to travel the world and learn all about the places I had only read about in books.

But life has a funny way of throwing fast balls...and sometimes right at your face. At sixteen, everything changed for me. It's a weird feeling to have such a life changing event and also feel so removed from your life all at the same time. I suppose it was too much for my young brain to absorb and process, plus there was so much to do! I was going to be a mom and a wife. Me. The girl who maybe was going to get married after I turned 35, the girl who wasn't going to have any kids and was going to live far, far away from everything she'd ever know. Little did I know then that I was going to move out of my tiny room and directly across the street from where I had lived my whole life. That is where I lived for the next five years, right across the damn street from my family home. And a year later, pack up and leave everything I had ever known behind me and settle in Oregon. It was adventure alright, but not the kind that I had dreamed about when I was little. But oh, one that was just as rich, wonderful and life altering that I wouldn't change one single thing for the world... well, maybe a couple of small things.

Speaking of the world, that would come later. I travel so much for work now that it is just a given that I will gone about a week a month. Funny how life works its self out. I took the road less traveled so many years ago to only find myself traveling all the time now.