It's all so romantic.

Maybe I’m a romantic idealist more than anything. I’m also a political liberal and a spiritual free-thinker. But first and foremost, I’m a romantic idealist. I sense a romantic aura to life. It’s as if romance is in the air. No matter where I go. I didn’t always feel that way. Wasn’t until I grew up. I wanted to be a writer. For newspapers. Maybe because I thought that was a romantic occupation. And I wanted to move about the country. To travel. To get out and about. Even when I joined the Army. I thought of it as a romantic pursuit. Because it would take me places. I joined in peacetime. I didn’t want to go to war. Because that wouldn’t be romantic. It’d be obscene. And a waste of life. Instead, I spent most of my army career as a sportswriter for an Army weekly newspaper in Frankfurt, Germany. That’s my idea of a romantic pursuit. Making the most of an unusual opportunity. On and on my life goes. All sorts of adventures. Like now. Living half of the year in Italy. Traveling to exotic places. Having an Italian true love. Living a storybook existence. It’s all so romantic. –Jim Broede