Remembering the Adventure

I think it is helpful, as we near 40 and above and feel like life has gotten a little to predictable (clearly my husband should have tried this) is to sit down with a younger person and remember some of the adventures/trouble of your "youth".

Last night after taking a nice break away, I came home and was chatting with our babysitter. She is 20 and about to move into her first place on her own. She is nervous, as I probably should have been at that age, and i have been assuring her she will be fine.

I told her about my first big move, from Tallahassee, Fl to Albuquerque, NM. I went with a good friend from college. We had no jobs. He had $500 to his name. I had $800. We had very old cars that surprisingly made it. We had no apartment. But we had credit cards and a nice professional outfit.

We knew we could not stay in a hotel for more than a few days as that would blow our savings. So after a night at the Howard Johnson's, we set out with the following plan:

take out a cash advance from our credit card
put it in my bank account so it looked like we had savings
dress up nicely so we looked like trustworthy people

This was 1998 and credit checks did not always happen when renting. Good thing or they would have easily figured out our money trail. While jeans and flannel shirts were our normal attire, we dressed to play the part of the preppy young couple just starting out.

You know what? It worked.

We had a place in under a week. The manager commented that she could read people well and that despite our lack of employment, she trusted us.

Ha!

Then we hustled for jobs. We got jobs pretty quickly. My friend then lost his within a few weeks. It was at a bank and he kept questioning their processes, bringing up more efficient possibilities. But he got a new one. He worked overnights for awhile at a convenience store.

We made it work.

When my husband and I moved to Los Angeles we had a lease for an apartment but even less money in the bank. I am not sure how we paid the first several months of rent. I am not even sure how we had the money to get to LA.

But we made it work.

Aside from my high risk moves, I took cross country journeys, on my own, without a cell phone. Gasp! Sure, I miss that freedom sometimes, but I also know I made the most of it when I had it.

My reminiscing made me feel better about my lack of recent travels (and lack of future travel opportunities).

This reminds me that no matter how hard things are currently, I need to make the most and best of, every day.