I don’t know what it is about a movie that features a shut-down character who blossoms through travel and adventure that RESONATES so completely with me.

Who could have seen that coming?

I loved this movie.

We got our passports this past year….and we got a new baby, too.

There’s all sorts of adventures.

We’ll have to get Sparrow a passport, too, one of these days soon.

I had a surfboard that I had hung up on my wall for a long time….thinking that maybe I’d learn to surf in the early stages of my adulthood.

I never put that surfboard in the water.

I hope that these passports aren’t like that surfboard.

They need to be used.

It’s hard to get a day off in edgewise at the post office sometimes these days.

It’s hard to get away.

So I’m like the character in this movie….imagining what it would be like to be on the road….experiencing something bigger than a 67 mile loop everyday.

That’s an old story, though….the “how you gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Pareeeeeeeeee” song just going through another replay.

I’ve seen things….been places.

Maybe that’s the problem? Like taking a bite of the apple….maybe I’d be better off if I didn’t know that it was possible?

This movie was a really nice surprise.

I expected something that might be kind of funny….might be a good diversion for an evening…but it was more than that.

I loved the conversation that Ben Stiller’s character has with Sean Penn’s photographer character towards the end of the movie….especially when the photographer leans back and doesn’t “take the shot”…and then explains why.

Knowing that the world is BIG shouldn’t be a measure for what a person thinks they don’t have.

I am BLESSED where I stand.

My life is a good life.

I do get myself into trouble when I imagine what it would feel like to pull over into some Idaho rest stop….make some sandwiches, look at the mountains, feel a drier breeze blow across my cheek.

I imagine what it would feel like to….feel that again.

But…you can’t spend your life feeling like you’re missing something.

That’s a crappy way to waste your time.

This is the kind of movie that helps me.

It reminds me of something that I already know.

It’s all so big….

Stay Alive-Jose Gonzalez