When Opportunity Knocks...

I am an opportunist at heart. That doesn’t mean I don’t have any goals. I’ve always had at least one dancing around the back of my mind. It’s just hard to get a bead on it. Because of that I’ve zigzagged from the Midwest to the western coasts, looped around San Diego and gone north. Way north. Alaska north. Where I am now. All in silver Dodge Caravan, all to boost a resume for a future job. It’s just that I don’t know I want it anymore.

After graduating college I was bombarded with some form of the age-old question every college grad has to answer, “So, what are you going to do now?”  Truth be told, I might have panicked at not really knowing the answer to that question. I ended up looking around me, and back at the last six and a half years I had spent at the school and said, “A college Professor.” Seemed like a good answer to me. Got people off my back.

Why not? They get to hang out with cool interesting people (like me) and talk about the outdoors, and be in the outdoors. They still had summers off right? But, shit. I remember having to visit a few of my professors during their office hours. I don’t know if I can handle that. What if I have to go to the bathroom?

Even so, they do get to take—what’s that “S” word? --Sabbaticals? That’s like a paid vacation, isn’t it? As a kayak guide in Alaska every once in awhile I’d get college professors that were on vacation in my group and I’d ask them if they were on sabbatical, and they’d laugh. I’d laugh with them not very sure about the joke. Thinking back, none of the college professors I had tipped very well. I thought college profs made beaucoup dollars. They should have tipped better especially for being on paid vacation.

But I digress.

I’d like to think that if you met me in bar, you’d have no clue I’d plan on crawling into the back of my van to sleep for the night. I’d like to think that should I volunteer that information, you’d by me a beer. Not out of pity. I’ve been invited to many a soup kitchen by many a good people fearing the slumping economy has put yet another handsome devil on the streets, but swear to you I am alright, I am just getting low on my pint. You’d buy me a PBR because you think a guy sleeping in his van is cool. I’d like to think that someone, somewhere will buy me a PBR.

Did I say I digress?

Sorry, it’s happy hour somewhere…

Here I am poised on the verge of my next adventure, about to point the headlights in a southeastern direction and head for the lower 48. It’s the end of another year, and I still don’t have my sights set on any one thing. There are just too many opportunities out there. And I am an opportunist.