Give Me an L! LIFE

Welcome to The Blogging A-Z Challenge April 2012! Some of the most popular posts here at The Shellshank Redemption are the Motivational Mondays. So, after consulting the tortoises, we decided to make April our Motivational Month! Please join us for this (almost!) daily dose of alphabetical inspiration. We hope you enjoy it!

* WE MUST BE WILLING TO GET RID OF THE LIFE WE’VE PLANNED, SO AS TO HAVE THE LIFE THAT IS WAITING FOR US. (Joseph Campbell) *

If you’d told me I would live in Florida one day, I would’ve laughed. I grew up in New York. Most of my family and friends lived in the tri-state area (and still do.) Yet, one day, when I was about fifteen, I was taking the bus to my friend’s house and I looked out the window and thought, I am going to live somewhere else. That’s it. I had no idea where or when but I just knew it deep down.

Then my family moved to New Jersey (see, tri-state area.) But that wasn’t what my gut meant. It meant for me to go somewhere else, somewhere different, because I was meant to be different.

When I visited my then-boyfriend/now-husband in Florida where he was going to school, he picked me up at the airport and then we drove over this huge expanse of blue-green water - the sun blasting a warm welcome, the sky shimmering, the breeze whipping through the open windows and I felt…alive. 

Now, I don’t know whether it was the place, or my best friend in the seat next to me, or a combination of the two, but that same voice that spoke to me back when I was teenager spoke up once again and said, Yes.