CityView Magazine

in the marketplace Get Lost BY BRANDON PLOTNICK so I didn't budge. Thankfully, it led to a life lesson that has made my life a little sweeter. See, all too oſten, it's easy for us to fly through our lives and O miss the forest for the trees. We never stop to smell the roses. (I'm sure I can come up with some more clichés to illustrate the point here.) We stress because it's Monday at work. We complain be- cause it's only Tuesday. We gripe because it's Wednesday and we've got too much to do before we hit the weekend. We gen- erally like Thursday, though we anxiously ask it to be over ne of the best pieces of advice a mentor ever gave me was a simple one: Get lost. I suspected my mentor was just trying to get rid of me and my obnoxious questions, about 879 different directions you can go (and that's just to get to Owen Drive). Take one of those roads and just see where you end up. Maybe you'll find yourself in Sanford for the Farmers Mar- Just jump in the car and drive. In our location there are ket or the Pottery Festival. Perhaps your journey will wind you over to Southern Pines and Pinehurst where you can experience some of the best restaurants in North Carolina. Maybe you'll end up near Lillington, where you can hike around Raven Rock State Park. Just get lost. Learning to get lost was one of the best life-altering courses of action for me. I've lived all over this country and have made it a point to get lost everywhere I've lived. I'll pick up my cam- era and just go experience the region surrounding me. It's It's easy to long for some far off tropical vacation to charge our batteries, but it's even easier to just get lost and find it right here at home. so it will be Friday. Then on Friday, we're thankful that the blessed day has come. But then what? If you're anything like me, our weekends aren't necessarily times that we spend grabbing life by the ears and shaking eve- rything we can out of it. There are errands to be done, laundry to be folded, yard work that has to get finished. Our weekends fly by so fast. Heck, we even spend half of Sunday just com- plaining that the following day is Monday. Stopping to smell the roses isn't as hard as you might think. It's really as simple as that little piece of advice: Get lost. What my mentor was trying to tell me wasn't that I was bugging him, it was that everywhere around us there are op- portunities to just get lost and experience life a little bit. 18 | September/October • 2012 easy to long for some far off tropical vacation to charge our batteries, but it's even easier to just get lost and find it right here at home. The lyrics to my favorite song of all time ("Pure Imagina- tion" by various artists) sum it up rather nicely, actually. "If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view ordinator for the Fayetteville-Cumberland County Chamber of Commerce. He can be reached at 910.433.6766 or at bplot- nick@fayettevillencchamber.org. it. Anything you want to, do it. Want to change the world? There's nothing to it." Now go get lost. CV Brandon Plotnick is the Marketing & Communications Co-

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