[eweissenbach]

We all had dreams of things we wanted to do or become when we were younger. Some of those things morphed into goals and you worked hard to achieve them, while others remained dreams that never quite came to fruition. I am happy with my life and wouldn't change the things I did for the most part, and I realized most of my dreams and all my goals, however....................There is one dream that never came to be. I wanted to own and operate a family resort in Northern Minnesota. There were a couple times I thought that it would happen. First, when my kids were still young I considered getting a coaching job in Minnesota, taking the money from my teachers pension, and putting a down payment on a resort. I felt the teaching/coaching job would keep us afloat from a cash-flow standpoint, and offer summers free to run the resort. (Northern Minnesota has a short resort season, basically from Memorial Day to Labor Day) I also thought it would give my kids the oldest of whom was almost a teenager, to learn how to deal with the public and help run a business. I sent off to real estate firms in the area to get information on resorts for sale (no jumping on the computer and getting reams of information instantly in the late 70s) and looked for the teacher / coach position. Well, I did not find a suitable job in the area I was interested in and returned the next fall to my coaching/teaching job in Missouri. The second time it almost worked was when I was a field manager for New York Life in Kansas and the same position opened in Fargo ND, where I had been Managing Partner ten years earlier. My regional VP had verbally assured me that it would be mine if it opened up a year earlier. I put in my letter of intent, and started looking again at resorts in the Minn. lakes area which is an hour away from Fargo. I found one that fit perfectly and was ready to pull the trigger the moment I got the word that the job was mine........Alas, they gave it to a younger guy who was already there, and wouldn't require a $25K - $40K relocation. So, I retired from NYLIC, changed jobs and moved to a lake in NW Mo., which is as close to a resort as I could get, since we have company almost every weekend in the summer. Anyway, too late for a long story, short, but just was thinking about it as I manacured the lawn for the weekend, and wondered what unrealized dreams others have in their lives.