Some of the best purchases I ever made don’t have anything to do with physical objects. (Although certain books have made a huge impact on my life.) My best purchases are the ones where I did something for my education, or enrolled in a writing class, or trips made with family and friends.

Even those seemingly little things-a family pool pass for the summer, for instance, gave us so much enjoyment and time together. It didn’t hurt that we lived in a small town at the time, and the cost wasn’t too crazy expensive!

Purchases like a reservation at a state park for the week are among my favorites, too, because that time spent in the woods was (almost) always so enjoyable.

Even the times that were “bad” make for good stories twenty years later, like the time a horrible storm rolled through the woods we were in. It was so bad that the forest ranger was driving around making sure that everyone wanted to stay. We did and ended up being the only ones left by morning. A tree had fallen right on top of a campsite a few spots down from ours. A raccoon ran off with all our fish that we were trying to cook over the fire. I had to go use the bathroom in the middle of the night and it was so dark and stormy we couldn’t see more than 5 or 10 feet away and couldn’t find it. But we survived. We packed up our dripping wet gear the next day and drove home. It was quite the little adventure, and one I’ll never forget.

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