Why Now?

Part I

To understand how I could ever even contemplate turning 2017 into a Gap Year, I probably need to provide some background. And, boy, do I love me some background!

In fact, I love background (or as I sometimes call it "backstory") so much my kids usually asked me questions with a preparatory wince on their face. They had learned to brace themselves for backstory.

In the usual course of things, young people are typically able embark on a Gap Year journey because they meet all of the usual Gap Year criteria:

1. No one they care about is depending on them to be wherever they currently are on an every-day basis. That means no kids. No contrarian spouse who is saying "you are doing what? leaving our home AND ME for a year??" (Now, don't get me wrong. Some spouses might go with someone contemplating a Gap Year. Others might say "sure, see you in a year!" But, in my experience, both of those would be a pretty rare occurrence. NOT impossible...but rare)
2. No commitment to a job/career
3. The financial means to, generally, not work for a year and still meet whatever financial obligations they may have. And since Gap Years are typically undertaken by people just graduating from high school or college, they have precious few financial obligations: no mortgage, maybe no car payment, no orthodontist's bill for their kids' braces, etc..

So, at 54 years old, how is it that I meet all of the above criteria? Well, here is the backstory:

No one is currently depending on me
When I graduated from college in 1984, I got married three days later. Now, getting married doesn't always mean having kids right away. In fact, these days, many couple choose to spend several years as "just them" before they begin their families.

Not us.

At the time I was an Army officer. We were also Mormons. The combination of those two cultural influences meant that EVERYONE we knew was newly married and having their first child. Now, we didn't start having kids simply because "everyone was doing it," but it is true that there wasn't anyone telling us to slow down either. No, a big part of my personal reasons for wanting to start having kids right away was that my father was a bit older when I was born (37), and the entire time I was growing up he frequently didn't want to do things like play catch because he complained about "being too old." That had deep impact on me and created a burning desire to be a YOUNG man when my kids were growing up.

My first child...our oldest daughter Caitlin...was born when I was 22 years old. My oldest son Zach was born when I was 24. My youngest daughter when I was 25. My fourth and final child, Ethan, when I was 28.

Let that sink in a bit. In today's world, having four kids by the age of 28 is as rare as a lottery win.

But that start lead directly to today in that when my youngest son graduated from college, I was DONE in terms of the major "commitment" portion of raising a family and doing all I could to fund their educations. All of my kids weren't simply "out of the house;" they were all self-supporting and on their own career paths.

2015. My oldest son Zach and I posing with Ethan, my youngest son, just after he graduated from the University of Utah with his software engineering degree.

So, by the time I was 52 years old, I had no children left to financially support. Nothing is more critical to the complicated answer of why I can contemplate a "Gap Year" now than that.

But that, in and of itself, still didn't push me completely into the Gap Year zone...

{stay tuned tomorrow for Part II: my marriages and how I'm not married}