Wise Words Archive

On my 16th birthday, I went straight from the driver’s license bureau to the Howard Johnson’s by the interstate and got my first job.

Back then, that’s what teens did. They worked in restaurants and were grateful for the opportunity.

I spent Friday night babysitting a lizard for my daughter who turned 23 Saturday. Both halves of that sentence are improbable sounding to me. That I would babysit a lizard and that my oldest child would turn 23.

When you are in the first blush of parenting, it seems they will be little forever.

For the last eight months, I’ve been immersed in the worlds of Navarre and Santa Rosa County.

It’s been fascinating and challenging to understand the smaller community of the area stretched along U.S. Highway 98 and the county, which includes everything from high-rise condominiums in the south to agriculture in the north.

Almost as soon as we moved to the area 25 years ago, we started getting occasional calls for “Dr. Rudman.” People wanted to make appointments or cancel them for this doctor who shares our name. At the time, he was in Walton County.

We didn’t know him or anything about him.

A life fully lived is one where you have proven yourself wrong dozens, maybe even hundreds of times.

I’m not talking about giving a cashier the wrong change and then catching your own error. I’m talking about at every stage of life making pronouncements about how you’ll never do this or you’ll never feel like that and you’ll certainly never become THAT.

When we moved to Northwest Florida more than 20 years ago, it looked very different.

There was more “old Florida,” the buildings were shorter and the pier in Okaloosa County was still damaged from Hurricane Opal.

Every day several times a day, the Apple watch my kids got me last year sends me an annoying reminder.
Breathe, it tells me. Just breathe.

My immediate impulse is to argue with this piece of technology.

Many of you have been driving up and down U.S. Highway 98 for decades, trying to keep a safe distance from the car in front of you and an eye on the rearview mirror to make sure no one crashes into you from behind.

It’s a road that is both monotonous and terrifying.

As I write this, almost exactly to the day one year ago, I got my family back.

They hadn’t abandoned me. They were out doing what they were supposed to be doing – growing up, making mistakes, finding successes and inching toward that end goal of being their own person separate from their family of origin.