Adventures, Not Vacations

In the summer of 1993, my great-grandma bought me a round-trip ticket to Germany. I was 10. I flew alone.

My grandparents were stationed at Bitburg Air Force Base and I spent the summer with them. We traveled. Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg. Castles, hikes, walks, countries I’d never heard of let alone could pronounce.

That adventure is probably why I love to travel. There’s something about discovery at that age, realizing how big the world actually is. That was also the first time I ever journaled, on the flight over. All of it rewires you. Today we half-joke that we don’t take vacations. We go on adventures. Summer of 93 started that.

And as with anything in life, there’s always a complicated part. Life took them somewhere I will not follow. But that trip still happened, and I refuse to let today’s complications erase what it gave me. The 10-year-old version of me didn’t know any of that was coming. He just knew he was so grateful flying across an ocean by himself, and that was only a small fraction of what there is to see.

That’s kind of what this blog is.

My randomness. Travel, careers, leadership, video games. It’s all that weird intersection where one part of life bleeds into another. My interests are all over the place. They always have been. My name is Randomly for crying out loud!

Welcome to my randomness.