Choose Your Own Adventure

When I was in elementary school there was this book series I loved to read called Choose Your Own Adventure.

Wikipedia explains, (since I'm too lazy to), "Each story is written from a second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character's actions in response to the plot and its outcome."

The book covers exclaim, "You're the Star of The Story!" and that you get to choose from 30 (sometimes more) possible endings.

Several years ago I heard Erwin McManus give the same talk twice - and both times he handed out chess pieces to remind everyone




Every day we are given the opportunity to choose our own adventure. And most days, there is little adventure at all, and for some, months, or even years pass by without some sort of sense of anything... except perhaps boredom, or routine, or

This evening I chatted (on facebook) with an aquaintance who I met on a ski lift last winter while snowboarding in Southern Calfornia. He currently lives in Louisiana and creates special effects for a living. (In a couple of weeks if you watch the movie The Mechanic, you can even see his name appear on the screen when the credits role.)

Today just so happens to be his birthday and he informed me, "I celebrated by jumping in a 40 degree lake with 40 degree air outside right at the minute I was born. It was . . . brisk."

I'm not recommending that you choose to catch pneumonia or hypothermia in your attempts to live an adventuresome life, but I am saying that maybe we need to consider switching things up from time to time - doing something out of our comfort zone, or...

Amsterdam

Don't worry. I didn't eat the brownies.

But I did spend several hours meandering about the city and touring its canals, all the while considering old e-mails from a certain someone who mentioned visiting my relatives in Germany someday.

And so on my layover in Amsterdam, on my way home from visiting relatives in Germany, I considered that he was supposed to be there with me.

But he wasn't.

But I at least I was - because a couple of months prior, I wasn't sure I would be...

3 of Diamonds

Fresh Footprints

In the Snow...

Central Park.

Stuck In An Elevator

Free Palestine

Street parades, street performers, street vendors, homeless men, policemen, good looking men (lots of them), tourists, tourists, and...more tourists - just outside of my apartment building is one of the most active and crowded intersections in the world.

Honestly, I never know what I'll find when I walk outside my apartment building's door.

This afternoon I went out for a jog along the Hudson River and when I returned I was confronted by a group of people chanting. Their cry: Free Palestine. A larger banner explained that a Free Palestine Rally was taking place from 3 to 5.

As I passed by I thought - gosh, I really suck at knowing what's going on in the world. I didn't know that Palestine was taken, but I will say that at least I knew that Palestine was a country, and not the name of a person. ;)

A couple of years ago, I made it my New Year's resolution to stay more on top of what is happening in the world. After all, I reasoned, how can you be a world changer if you don't know what's going on it?

So I started subscribing to this magazine called The Week...

The Cellar

I had back up plans - just in case I needed them.

And as I anticipated, I needed them.

I got stood up tonight.

The plans hadn't been set in stone, but the date (as in the day) had been established - the 8th.

But by 8 pm, as I was finishing up a Chinese food dinner with a friend, I still hadn't heard from him. That's when I finally acknowledged what I already knew to be true - he's just not that into me. He wasn't going to call.

But after tonight, I'm thinking should get stood up more often, because I had a really great time this evening.

My friend Melissa and I ventured into Manhattan and made some new friends along the way...