This blog will record reflections made during my travels. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I am enjoying living it—living it while I am alive. While it is meant to be lighthearted my hope is that it will also be inspiring and provide a reminder to live fully “while” we are alive.
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Childhood Wonder
I was probably six or seven when my fascination with the world really took hold. My mother got me two subscriptions—Highlights for Children and National Geographic for Kids. Every month I raced to the mailbox, grabbed the magazines, and disappeared until I had read every single page. I studied the photos for hours—flowers, insects, fish, wildlife, and places that felt impossibly far away. Deserts. Jungles. Mountains. Oceans. I didn’t just flip through them. I memorized them. Those glossy pages felt like little windows into a world much bigger than the one I knew.
At home we also had our Britannica encyclopedias and other reference books, but it was the atlas that fascinated me most. I loved opening it and seeing everything at once—the countries, the oceans, the shapes of the continents. Sometimes I even propped a page up on the wall so I could step back and see the whole world spread out in front of me, all in one view.
For my tenth birthday, I asked for a globe and a world atlas. I wanted to see, visually, where my life might take me. I loved flipping between the globe, the atlas, and the encyclopedia, learning everything I could about the countries I discovered. Yes, I was quite the book nerd, but I truly loved it. I loved learning. And I loved dreaming.
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Stories From Afar
My father traveled extensively with the military and was gone for months at a time. When he came home, he brought stories and treasures—dolls from Italy, Japanese pajamas, wooden carvings from the Polynesian islands. I didn’t fully understand where those places were, but I wanted to.
I took whatever bits of information I had and tried to make sense of it all. First the globe. Then the atlas. Then the encyclopedia. I wanted to know what the people were like, what the landscape looked like, what they ate, and what animals lived there. Even as a child, I was building a picture of the world in my mind, piece by piece, the only way I knew how.
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Practical Adventure
Those early experiences sparked something in me—a quiet curiosity, a steady pull toward somewhere else. But when it came time to make real-life choices, I was practical. Careful. Sensible.
Even my choice in college shows that. I picked the school that would take me the farthest from my hometown without leaving the state—Pensacola. Out-of-state tuition wasn’t feasible, so instead of staying close to home, I went as far as I could while still being “responsible.” I knew absolutely nothing about the town. I simply showed up and figured it out as I went.
Even then, I was ultra-conservative and sensible, following logic more than adventure.
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Beginnings of Running Rita
For a long time, I didn’t fully understand it, but even back then, when I raced to the mailbox, grabbed my magazines, and disappeared into my room, something had already begun. Life was quietly showing up, as it does for most kids around that age—shaping them, challenging them, taking pieces of their dreams and childlike wonder. I didn’t know it then, but those moments in my room, immersed in maps, atlases, globes, and the glossy images of faraway places, were the start of something. That’s when Rita began turning into Running Rita, even before I knew what that would mean—a small, secret escape, a running into imagination. My life was already starting to take right turns I hadn’t planned, unexpected directions I didn’t yet know what to do with. And even then, I was beginning to realize that sometimes you don’t need a detailed map—you just need a compass and the willingness to keep moving.
