Monday marks another one of life’s milestones as I’m not turning the big 3-0, but rather the more insignificant 3-2.

That’s right almost 32 years ago, I was blessed to be born in the Northeast Texas town of Paris, and the world hasn’t been the same since.

With more than 30 birthdays to my credit, one thing I’ve become more and more certain of as time has passed is that’s it’s not how long you’ve lived, but what you’ve done with your time on this earth.

That being said, I really didn’t start living until I found this nasty habit called journalism at the tender age of 16 amid the wheat fields of Kansas with 31 of my classmates.

All it took was one story and I was hooked. Gone were the dreams of being an engineer and designing roads like the State Route 305 widening project, which Little Norway is smack dab in the middle of.

This 16-year journey, with a self-induced six year hiatus, has taken me places I never thought I’d go as I’ve tasted the big time before settling down into community journalism.

Through it all I’ve never gotten away from governmental reporting or from being the reporter asked to do what the rest of his colleagues found their way out of.

One year after the Oklahoma City bombing, I was the one called upon to call families from a list of people willing to talk to the media, even though I was lost in Lubbock, Texas at Texas Tech University.

Less than a month later, a local TV reporter’s presence on campus gave me the scoop that the university president had suddenly resigned.

After throwing tortillas at my graduation in 1998 as my parents watched in horror, I ended up in Waco as the young gun copy editor before deciding to join the Army three months later.

But as fate would have it George Wallace decided to die on my last night on the desk, so instead of celebrating I worked until 3 a.m. before leaving at noon to take up my rifle and my ruck.

Yes, I have marched 20 miles with everything needed to go to war across the hills of South Korea. As my old First Sergeant often chided me, “What’s your degree in? Journalism? Because it’s sure not infantry.”

After Korea, I made a go of a “military writing career” at Fort Lewis, but after seeing the unpreparedness of the stateside Army on Sept. 11, 2001, I’m glad I left in April 2002. Sure it was fun shooting video with bullets and artillery and mortar rounds overhead, but everything has to end some time.

Then it was two years of blue-collar labor before I made my return at the Bremerton Patriot and watched the opening of the Norm Dicks Government Center.

Dicks’ wife used my suit coat to keep her lap warm on that breezy October afternoon, while I shiverishly took notes and got the story.

Eight months later, it was up to Little Norway in time for Viking Fest and lots of lutefisk.

With more than a year doing my best to provide citywide coverage on all the news that’s fit to print, I guess you could say the rest is history.

History waiting to be written, but we’ll see what happens in my next 32 years.