Put a Dagger in the Steering Wheel

A few months ago I was on a business trip in San Francisco having dinner with a friend who'd spent a number of years working in Kazakhstan. He said to me, "sometimes in life Deep, you just have to put a dagger in the steering wheel". After a moment of staring into the air picturing my high school 75 Ford Maverick with a butcher's knife in the steering wheel and a stack of pizza boxes on the passenger seat, I said, "Eh?"

Recently, folks have been asking me how I could just pack up and take off for over a year with a wife, 2 kids, a mortgage, dog, blah and blah; I do remember feeling overwhelmed by the forthcoming details about 4 months ago when we finalized the decision; so instead of doing what comes naturally to me and analyzing myriad complicating factors, I thought of Patrick and decided we just need to focus on the dagger. So we sunk a bunch of cash on pricey non-refundable plane tickets, and then, the mortgage, dog, kids schooling, house, and all the remaining hoo hah just became part of the path.