Jen's Column / Albi

One of the questions I’m most asked by readers is this: Where do you find the time to do all the things you write about?

Well, I guess I could spend my columns waxing poetic on my action-packed days of picking Lincoln Logs off the floor and packing healthy-yet-kid-approved snacks for my grade-schooler. I could document the internal struggles I wage when deciding what to make (or, on a good day, order) for dinner.

But I’m thinking those aren’t the stories you want to read.

The truth is writing this column gives me a great excuse to try new things — things I justify because, “Hey… I could write about that!”

Harvesting new topics isn’t the only reason I make it a life goal to try new adventures and have fun.

I’ve had one particularly great teacher in the school of living life.

When I was in college, my husband’s best friend was a guy named Albi. And, Albi, my friends, was one of those people who really knew how to live. You know the type.

This was a man who was known for throwing the best parties and for being the most loyal friend. A man who could go on a joyride with friends — and end up in the Black Hills for a week. A man who, while the rest of us worried about not leaving gaps in our resumes, took off for Alaska the day after our college graduation. Because that’s what you do with life dreams. You follow them.

Through the next several years, we received regular phone calls and letters. Albi would send pictures of himself hiking in the mountains, fishing for salmon, canoeing in pristine waters.

“You guys have got to come out here,” he’d write. “It’s unbelievable.”

“We’d love to,” we agreed. “We’ll try to make it next year.”

But excuses are easy to come by. Each year we had a different one. We didn’t have the money. We didn’t have the time. We were busy planning a wedding. We were starting careers. We were saving for a house. We were stocking a nursery for our first baby.

“Next year,” we’d say. “We’ll make it next year.”

And then we got the phone call. Albi had died.

Suddenly we weren’t too busy or too poor to make the trip to Alaska. We spent eight days traveling the Kenai Peninsula — traversing the same roads Albi traveled. Visiting the same sites. Fishing in the same turquoise rivers. Memorializing him on his favorite mountaintop with his family.

And wondering why we didn’t make this trip when Albi was alive to serve as our tour guide. Kicking ourselves for not following his example of living life while it’s here to live.

It’s been nearly nine years since that first trip to Alaska. And I’ve tried to grasp more opportunities for living life since then. I don’t always succeed. It’s easy to get wrapped up in “I’m too busy” or “I’ll get to that later.”

But I try. That doesn’t mean I scurry off across the globe at a moment’s notice. That will come in time, I hope — when the kids are older. But I do take the initiative to get out and break my comfort zone with my own little adventures — whether that’s parasailing with a friend on a weekend’s getaway or stomping through puddles in my own front yard.

And, besides, sometimes even little adventures make good stories.