Two very different and almost identical travelers, David Abel and I.

We both explore and breathe curiosity. David is demonstrably ambitious, I more demonstrably gestalt. His childhood Dickensian, mine bourgeois, yet each gave birth to a hunger for experience and a reasonably ambiguous approach to normal.

Signposts in our conversation turned us toward learning we couldn't hold back our own tides, being told we were 'very average,' and the insight we each felt when we realized we couldn't remember the 'last time I had heard my footsteps.'

Competition, grace, breathing, and the wonderful insight that the point of maximum fear is the point of minimum danger. Travel with us for a bit and put up your feet (then listen to your steps!)

Never know what's going to show up when you click 'record'!

As Lauri Smith and I traveled together for about an hour, I watched in my mind's eye a slide show of my childhood. We both were fine playing alone, we loved acting out stories and episodes. Both introverts. Both shy. Both actors and performers. Both empathetic, sometimes awkwardly so.

She told me about how she lost my way doing the good girl thing and how heavy the armor in front of my heart can become, at the end bringing these together around the quote attributed to Victor Frankl:

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

Come along for a brief shared journey - put your feet up and just listen.

Thanks.

Laurie Gardner and I share the dearth of a concept: career. We could be politely described as peripatetic, by others taken with sarcasm as short attention-spanned.

Laurie has tended bar around the world, including competing and doing well in mixology competitions. He has been cabin crew for an airline, and even worked in the construction industry for starters. We cover money, 'too much truth,' being a contrarian (that's a librarian who breaks the rule of silence :), 'too nice,' psychological safety, the loss of a value-driven society, and the 6th creature.

Please join us for a tilt-a-whirl journey as we enjoy being wildly curious.