About six months ago when I decided to exit the employment race I found myself with a shopping list in my pocket, access to my wife for clarification via cell phone and on my way to the grocery store. I felt perfectly confident I could manage the assigned task with little trouble. Heading west on 3500 South in West Valley City, Utah I pulled up to the stoplight at the intersection with Bangerter Highway (Named after the Governor who was in office at the time the monstrosity was created). Bangerter is a road that should have been a freeway instead of a six lane highway with cross streets and stoplights forcing traffic to halt every few minutes both on Bangerter and on the cross streets.
As I sat at the intersection and waited, grundles (more that oodles less than tons) of cars flowed through the intersection going north and south on Bangerter. It's a long light and the more I waited the more I thought, Should I be headed north or south not west? Everyone else seems to be going in that direction. I could follow the crowd. What do they know about north and south that I don’t? Didn’t Horace Greeley say, “Go west?” I don’t think he said anything about north and south. I then thought, Wait a minute, if I head north and follow the crowd I could end up somewhere in Idaho or worse, lost in the frozen Canadian wilderness. And, if I did the same going south, I could find myself in Las Vegas, or Guatemala, or Tierra del Fuego.
Luckily the light changed interrupting my dangerous stream of consciousness and I was able to proceed the block and a half to the store without taking any unforeseen side trips. Which only proves, if you have a destination in mind (retirement) and focus your energies to get there, you have a greater chance of arriving where you were intending to go.
Robert Frost said it this way:
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