Happy Five Years, TtheD

Five years ago I started this blog as a way to let anyone back in the states who cared know how and what I was doing while living in Mexico. I still think the most interesting stuff is back there in the archives, since it appears to me that in those passing five years my life has slowed down. Which happens to everyone as time goes by, but not everyone can go back and see the actual progression from doing fun stuff to doing not that exciting stuff. For the most part, I'm fine with it. I'm not by any stretch of the imagination done, but maybe it just takes a little bit longer to rest between adventures.

I used to hate reading what I wrote, pre-blog. When I was a kid, I'd try to keep a diary (I think I called it a journal, though, "diary" was too Marsha Brady) but I never liked the "sound" of my voice. Now when people read this blog the most common thing I hear is that I write like I talk. So that's kind of fun, especially for readers who have never actually spoken to me. Now you know.

So five years. I'm not sure if I thought I would continue with this thing once the Mexico situation was over. But it transitioned as I transitioned, with re-entry and then back to work and then that whole crazy moving back to Mexico and then moving BACK to Oregon... things were always sort of happening. Now I've been in the same casita for two years (that's not like me), drive a decent car, think I have stability in my career... I'm practically a grown up. That's worrisome.

Five years ago I was six months or so in to the adventure of my life, and by then I was in a good routine with good friends and a pretty decent tan (hm. June? Probably not so much. I'd pretty much tanned myself out by March and had taken a break that lasted quite a few months. No, I'm guessing I was probably fairly pale in June 2005), maybe getting a little bit bored with the lack of intellectual stimuli. Every day was an adventure if you consider running into cockroaches the size of ironing boards or dangling power lines in the middle of any given sidewalk an adventure. Sometimes from where I sit here I wonder how in the world I had the nads to do it to begin with. I couldn't have done it without my friends, that is for absolute sure, so I guess I have them to thank for the support.

Let's not just go back five years, lets go back a little further to see if I always had this spirit. In 2000, I was living in Garden Home, working at Pacific NW Title in Raleigh Hills, had a great group of friends, drank like a fish and always made sure I had at least some semblance of a tanning package to keep me looking less dead. If I recall, summer of 2000 was when my gang of friends started planning a trip to Cancun - I and one friend had been before, though not recently, and the other two had not. Ten years ago the idea of packing up my shit, leaving the working world and moving to a foreign country was the furthest thing from my mind. But I suppose that's where it all began.

In 1995 (it seems like it was so long ago, fifteen years) I was leaving Cleveland (well, Cuyahoga Falls, so I guess I should say Akron) to return to the land of my birth. I'd been living in Ohio and California since I was nineteen and I guess by thirty I must have thought it was time to move on. My reason was probably nostalgia, mixed with itchy feet and a sense of adventure, but what I told everyone was that I didn't want to wake up one day and be forty-five years old living in Akron Ohio.

So instead I'll just wake up in a couple of months and be forty-five years old living in Beaverton, Oregon.

And this was supposed to be an upbeat post.

I guess the moral of the story, here, kids, is that you never really know where life is going to take you. What you didn't think you'd ever do becomes the most memorable adventure you've ever done, what you say you would NEVER do becomes something you can't imagine having lived without doing it, what some call a normal life you call complete boredom. And the adventurous spirit, while still there somewhere, doesn't have quite the wind in its sails as it used to. But I don't think I'm completely done yet. There's still a lot of opportunity out there, and plenty of doors to close to allow others to open.

So happy five years, TtheD, and here's to bringing back a little more adventure to your pages!