Simple questions with far reaching answers

There I was, balancing the books one evening, all pleased with myself at the nice little nest egg I'd built up for a rainy day when the thought suddenly popped into my head: what are you actually saving for? You've got enough squirrelled away to cover yourself for a few months off work here even if it does rain later.

Which led to a relatively simple question: so if I don't have to go to work for 5 months, what could I do?

Try it now for youself. If you didn't have to work, what would you do?

Take away the constraints of having to pay the bills and keep the treadmill turning and suddenly a whole vista opens up. What are the things that you enjoy, that you would choose to do? What are the things that are meaningful to you, the experiences that make you feel alive?

If you're lucky, then you may already be doing some or all of the the things that really matter to you (and ideally getting paid for doing them).

If not, the brilliant film that is Ferris Bueller's Day Off has some advice on life:

"You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it".

So, I decided to stop and look around.

Part 1 of my sojourn into Stuff That Matters ^(tm) involved going back to school, a lot of paradiddles and occupied the first 3 months of my sabbatical.

Part 2 would involve combining some of the other things I love; driving, wild landscapes and the mighty beef burger.

Where else to could I go for big skies and big burgers than the US of A?

The mission is simple; hire a car and go hunting for landscapes from the movies and the best burgers west of Rockies.