Bye! Off On An Almost-Adventure



My dad and his brother.
Almost ready for their first adventure.

 My dad was the type of guy who almost did a lot of things.  That guy lived his stories and could even make an adventure out of dialing the wrong number. How he told it, he almost hung up and then decided she sounded nice so really, he almost never dialed the right number for a few months. Yeah. They ended up married. That was Dad.

He taught me that every adventure begins when you almost do what is expected of you but end up doing something brave and crazy instead. He was almost a lot of things, and every story started with a gleam in his eye and the phrase, "I almost did that." Yup. He was almost rich off a goldmine. He was almost a policeman, a priest and a few other so-not-my-dad things. Each one was a funny story that kept us chuckling. But honestly, he was fearless, or rather, he swallowed his fear, because he taught me that fear is always there, the trick is to think about what you almost lost, not about what you're doing. Make sense? It doesn't have to if it works. 

Don't take my word for it. Try it. When you find yourself stuck in a rut, doing what everyone expects of you, just stop and do the opposite. Open the backdoor. Take the path less travelled, the hard route. Marry your wrong number. I mean really. Who does that? 

And so... (eating my own advice) fearlessly, I am going on an almost-adventure. Adventures can be fun and a little scary, but with an almost-adventure, it'll take courage. When I'm ready to turn right, I'll stop myself and go the way I wouldn't normally. I'll try to make him proud and almost do as much as I can. (You follow that? It's okay, took me 35 years to get it.) I've got my poncho packed, my snowsuit, my bathing suit, and a few necessities, and I'm off with no idea what to expect. I won't have access to the Internet for awhile. (I can't imagine the horror and will tell you how traumatized I am when I return to the real world.)

I'll catch up with you all in March! That sounds so far, I'll miss everyone, but I should come back with some interesting almost-stories, no?


Have you ever almost done something expected of you but lived an exciting adventure by not doing it?