High School Ruenion

I know I have been putting off writing a new post for a while but I finally found some time to do so. So here is what has been on my mind the last couple of weeks. Three weekends ago I went back up to my 1o year high school reunion and it was everything that you would expect from a small town Arkansas high school and I loved it. I hadn't kept in touch with too many of the 53 people I graduated with, alright maybe I just kept in touch with two of them, at the most. It's just that i felt that I moved on from then and that I didn't think anybody really was interested in what I was doing. It was held at one of the nearby Country Clubs, and I got there early at 10:00 in the morning and it felt awkward at first because I was pretty much the only one there that hadn't been keeping in touch with them. Nobody knew I lived in Ft. Worth or even graduated college, I think that surprised some people. As the day went on I got to know them again and it was as if I never left. It even included the awkward high school sweethearts couple that broke up and then showed up with their new significant others. I really thought at one point that I was going to see a cage match for free, but we were adults about it and just talked about the other ones behind their backs. I won an award for the Most Eligible Bachelor, now I am just waiting to get a call to go on the Bachelor reality show, getting the award has to have some credibility. As the day ended I vowed to myself to stay involved and to even go back two or three times a year instead of waiting another ten years. I really have no reason for not doing so in the first place, I wasn't unpopular in high school. It was too small of a school to have cliques so everybody knew everybody. We had a guy there that wore some kind of camouflage, either hunting or military, everyday it seemed like. We took the first weekend of deer hunting season off as a holiday because more then half the school wasn't going to be anyways. When I was there, we still used to get swatted as punishment, I got swatted 10 times my freshman year, one of them by the baseball coach, now that hurt. It was just fun sitting back and reminiscing about old times. I was probably one of the only ones that didn't have a kid and it was great seeing my classmates as parents and getting to meet their families. That is probably one of my biggest regrets in that when I left Horatio, I really left Horatio.

Bad Brad the Nomad

What is a nomad, well wikipedia defined it as people who move from one place to another without permanently settling down. Up till about a year ago, that is what I did. From April of 2005 to March of 2008. And let me tell you some of my so-called adventures, they are really quite lame, but they were fun. I lived in North Carolina for about three or four months in the spring and summer of 2005, to work at a wilderness program for troubled teenagers. I loved it at first. I was making good money and getting trained in some cool stuff. And I was also working long shifts. I was the head of a group of 10 guys who have had a history of being in gangs, drugs, violence, and even burglary. I had help at first, maybe for like the first two weeks and then they turned the reigns over to me and I'll tell you what, teenagers smell fear like bears. It really made want to travel on my days off, which were short and rare. And I did, I traveled the beaches, the steakhouses and even went to the Duke and UNC campuses and NC State as well. I left to go back to Texas to work at a much more rural wilderness program in the Davey Crockett National Forest of east Texas. I had a job where the average stay at the job, wilderness field guide, was 3 months. I stayed there for 30 months. For two and a half years, I led groups of very well to do kids, into the wilderness and hiking at least two maybe three miles a day with at least 30 or 50 lbs of equipment on your back. The one thing I liked about this job, is that I worked eight days on and got eight days off. There was this one time where I worked 21 days without a break and I almost went crazy when that shift was over. But anyways, I traveled the great state of Texas and occasionally up to Oklahoma. I didn't pay a rent bill for over three years when I had these jobs. It was awesome. I had friends in Ft. Worth and Austin. I had family in College Station, west Texas, and Oklahoma.

But throughout all this, I found out who I was what I stood for. I had a lot of free time on my hands and sometimes I used it wisely like when I was out on the golf course or in a small prayer group with loved ones. I rediscovered my desire for nature and learning lots about the surrounding areas. I learned how to make fire with a string and sticks, it was awesome. I started reading a lot and it is something that still do. I think in 2007, I tried to remember how many books I read and I think it totaled somewhere near 40 or 50, no joke. I loved just waking up early some mornings and watching the sunrise by a fire and thinking how grateful I was for the new day. I have lost that after being in the city for a while now and I need to get that back in my life. I take stuff for granted these days and I worry about a lot of pity stuff like when will I be able to go to the gym or what am I going to get to eat and at what fast food place. Out on the road and in the wilderness, I was free and I was comfortable with just being one with nature. I forgot all the media and the happenings. I didn't watch the Super Bowl from 2005 - 2008, because of work and I didn't care. Jesus tells us in Matthew 6 to not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. I know it is a lot easier said then done. But it works, at least it did for me when I was Bad Brad the Nomad, and I don't think I have ever really been more at peace then I was during those Wilderness years, except North Carolina, I fell apart and had to rebuild myself up, it was a long hard process but I am stronger for having gone through it. I want to quite worrying about the national championships, I will still cheer my teams on, but when they lose the big one or when I'm watching them on T.V. I won't get upset and let it ruin my day if things don't happen the way I want it to. I am going to quite making sports my world. Here recently I quite softball, and I love softball, to make time for some prayer time with friends on Thursday nights and it was a lot easier to give it up then I thought it would be. Softball and sports won't always be there for me but my Lord and Savior will be.