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Embracing the Possibility of a Moment Can Forever Change Your Life
A European life spawned by a fateful beer and a strange taxi ride.
When people ask me how a surfer from Texas ends up landlocked in Romania writing for a living, I tell them it began with a beer in Salt Lake City, Utah.
There wasn’t anything special about that beer and I don’t put much credence in the idea of things happening for a reason. However, opportunities do pop up in the strangest of places and sometimes we have fleeting seconds to pounce on them.
It’s all about recognizing and then acting on life’s possibilities, such as a beer on an autumn day, a chance conversation in a California taxi, or a New Year’s Eve invite to Bucharest.
Take Your Coat and Go!
It was a chilly Saturday morning in Manhattan Beach, California when I stepped into a taxi to talk about possibilities. I didn’t know that was the topic of the ride. In fact, I was cold and brooding over some bad luck and wanted nothing more than a silent trip back to my car.
The previous evening, I’d been at the birthday party of one of my friends at a dive bar in Hermosa Beach called Barnacles. I’d stayed the night in my friend’s guest room in Manhattan Beach and woke up early to return to…