Never Say Never

By now, I’ve all but lost track of just how many times I’ve said, “I’ll never…” and then done that exact thing.  There are the more obvious ones like marriage and having kids.  There are also some weird ones that have become apparent recently.

For those of you who may not know, roundabouts are hugely popular here in Spain and in Europe in general.  As a red-blooded American male I never thought I’d come to prefer them to traffic lights.  Can you imagine?  There are a couple reasons that make sense to me; no head on collisions like at traffic lights and you don’t have to wait forever at a red light.  

In the same vein, I never thought I’d drive a stick shift.  Well, I do that regularly now.  Never thought I’d learn how to drive a stick shift, particularly as a 35 year old male  :)

When people used to ask me if there was anywhere I didn’t want to travel to, I’d answer quickly with “South East Asia.  I have no desire to go there.”  Then I end up spending 10 months over the course of 2 years there.

What do I end up doing over there?  Helping out at an entrepreneurship school.  Which leads me to my next example; when I left for college I didn’t know what I wanted to study but I was certain I never wanted to go into business.  For the past several years all I’ve wanted to do is help others start businesses by any means possible.

Most recently is a partial vegan diet we’re doing.  I’m normally a carnivore who loves meat.  However, after watching another food documentary (What the Health?) I’m more and more convinced cutting back on meat intake is a good idea.  So, we’re trying to eat vegan during the weekdays and then on the weekend let up on the gas and have a nice burger or other animal product.  We’ll see if we can keep it up.  So far it’s working great; I’ve lost 24 lbs and am almost never hungry since we’re getting all the proteins, carbs and fats still.  I think anytime a diet is ‘no ____’ it’s more likely to fail.  So, I call this our ‘low meat, low sugar’ diet.  Hopefully it will be more of a lifestyle change as a direct result.  Last week I wasn’t so hot on the low sugar part of it.

Maybe I’ll even get down to my high school weight and waist.  I remember thinking in high school I never wanted to have a larger waist than length on my jeans.  I was 32 x 32 for a long time.  No mas  :(  But, I did recently have to buy a new pair of jeans bc I lost at least a couple inches.

“Never say never” - there’s a reason that cliche exists, isn’t there?  :)