Sometimes you just get lucky

Needing some outside air after the K12 Online Conference over the last couple of weeks, I headed out the front door Sunday morning to go for a walk in the park. Yikes, our car was gone. What was I thinking? My wife had it in Portland where she was doing a performance. No problem, thought I, I'll just walk the neighborhood. Then I thought - why not just walk to Lincoln Park?

I walked there in 20 minutes , and it was beautiful. Red breasted mergansers and harlequin ducks have returned to Puget Sound, gorgeous muted fall colors were on the trees. I walked around the point on the water, past Coleman Pool, an incredible outdoor saltwater pool, closed now for the season. I looked west at the Olympic Mountains, seeming to rise 8,000 feet right out of the water, some snow still visible on the peaks, even at the end of summer...

We found Lincoln here. Or rather, he found us. I've written the story of that event many times with my kids at school. Perhaps I'll post it here sometime. It's a good story.

Lucky, lucky, lucky.

My school is a mile and a half from our house. I ride my bike there every day. I found that bike with a "Free" sign on it a couple of blocks from our house - I had to put some air in the tires.

This is my 17th year at my school. I actually mentioned this at our open house a couple of weeks ago. I recorded my little speech and put it up as a podcast on my classroom blog. I could not possibly have landed at a better school.

Lucky, lucky, lucky.

I kept thinking about these things as I walked today. In this day of always trying to multitask so you can *maybe* get everything done, it was nice to just walk. No earbuds in my ears, only the sounds of community and wildlife that I chose to pay attention to. I just got to think.

Maybe it's because so many things have been going so badly lately, I don't know. But all I could think of today was how lucky I am... to live where I live, to work where I work. As I peeled off layers on the walk back UP to our home (huff, puff...), I thought of where I live, on this itsy bitsy speck of the earth. And I thought about how much I have. Only a very small fraction of the over 6 billion people on this earth have what I do.

Well sure, I have worked hard. But so have billions. And somehow I have ended up here, at this point in time and space. I shake my head and smile. I feel this huge wave of gratitude wash over me.

I said this at the open house, and I say it to myself almost every day:

Sometimes you just get lucky.

(I am going to remember this post at Thanksgiving!)