Life happens while you're making other plans...

I went out last night for a few hours and got to hang out with an old friend.

I call him old because he kept assuring me that we were, indeed, now old. Who am I to argue? He's younger, so I guess if he says so...

Anyway, the conversation evolved in such a way that we ended up reminiscing about some of the adventures (and misadventures...a tree once fell on us) we've shared.

So many exciting things, stuff that I couldn't even begin to put in fiction since no one would find them believable, and that's just one of my dear friends.

Most of my life, I've been planning for tomorrow. Once I pass this hurdle...once I accomplish this...once I do that...

And, in the meantime, life happened.

I guess my point is that we spend a lot of time planning like that. When we're younger, it's the when-I-grow-up kind of planning. You know what I mean--when I get my license, I'll be able to do such and such. When I get married, I'll do this. When I have kids, I shall proceed thusly.

And then we glance back and realize...
Damn, it's been a helluva ride so far.

The people we planned to be with might not be around for the whole ride.

It's a little like hopping on a plane. You share that particular journey with those people and they might not be the ones you thought you'd be traveling with. Some of them get off the plane and you never see them again. Others stick around for another leg of the trip. Others never go away, always being there for you, whether you thought they were forever kind of companions or not.

I watched UP, too, today. His Ellie...well, when she was younger she behaved much as I did back in the day. Full of enthusiasm, plans, and dragging those she bumped into along for the ride.

Then she dies. Her husband, best friend, and adventure partner is left in the void of her passing. He keeps looking at her adventure book, at the big plans the child Ellie made, and feeling guilty because he never made those dreams come true. He'd promised her an adventure and now she was gone and he couldn't make good on his vow.

Toward the end of the movie, he's holding the book. He starts to close it, after gazing at the page she marked as a partition between her dreams and Adventures I'm Going To Have, and is surprised to see pictures in the section he thought was blank.

Flipping through, he sees Ellie placed images of their lives together. The little things, the todays that made up their lives, and is moved because they did have a good go of it.

On the last page, he finds her words, reaching to him from the grave, to Gibbs smack him into realizing something very important.

Thanks for the adventure--now go have a new one! Love, Ellie

So many have touched my life, have joined me for pieces of my adventures.

To you all, whether you're part of my life now or not, thanks for the adventure!

Happy writing!