Life has been full since my last post. Mostly good things. I survived closing weekend, and I’ve got everything rolling smoothly with the condo situation. Got a little bit of quiet time for the next week, with it being the local schools spring break. Half of town is gone, work will be mellow, and I get to watch Cubby, my boss’s dog, while wife spends her break from teaching in San Diego with Kris. As she’s rolling back in to town Saturday, I’ll be heading out on my first (of many, I’m sure) trip to San Diego, with travel and housing provided by Cruisers and my awesome bosses/owners. Oh, and they’re flying Chan out to vacation with me for half of my trip. I’m not mad about it.

I would’ve never pictured my life to be like this a decade ago. I don’t think I even had any sort of vision of where life was headed, but it’s definitely pretty far from anything I could’ve even imagined. Seven years in, and I still catch myself in awe that I actually live in Colorado. That’s all we’d ever talk about at Snow Trails. We’d make all these plans that we knew would never happen. We’d go on our annual Colorado trips and joke/threaten to not go back to Ohio. So many of those people are still in the buckeye state, which I respect, but I’m constantly baffled that I made it out of there.

Life is funny sometimes. Funny in the sense that one day can completely change the rest of your life forever. In the sense that I’m in a place right now where, looking back, I realize I wouldn’t have this amazing life if we didn’t unexpectedly lose dad nine years ago, two days before his birthday. That’s one way to be epically reminded that YOLO (you only live once, for those of you that live under all of the rocks). Less than a year later, my niece was born. The following year, I was Colorado bound. Here I am, buying a place in Ski Town, USA, with so many incredible opportunities ahead of me, about to get what’s basically a free, paid workcation (obviously working in the new shop part of the time) with my best friend. Life really is silly.

Now, with everything that’s been going on in life lately, this time of the year snuck up on me REAL quick. I spent a good chunk of this weekend trying to figure out what I wanted this post to say. I don’t want to get too deep into anything, I kind of just want to encourage everyone to push through the lows. Sometimes bad things happen to good people for no reason. Don’t take life too seriously because YOLO.

Obvs, this one goes out to my old man, David H. Brinkley (April 21, 1953 – April 19, 2010), who has a front row seat of this ridiculous life of mine. Happy birthday, dad!