Well, it looks like a great time to be involved in something besides houses. Based on the latest data released statewide, the sales are down significantly in July and possibly in August, too.

However, I can't be concerned about what other people are doing and their results. I'm more concerned about what I'm doing and my results.

Along those lines, I'm figuring that I don't really need to be too awfully concerned about things, especially since I can't change them if it were my most heartfelt desire to do so.

I'm of the mind that things happen in their own good time. People come and go, houses sell and rent, markets go up and down and so forth.

What good would getting concerned about those things tend to do? Really none.

It's roughly the equivalent of sitting in the dark at 3 a.m. and wishing the sun would shine. While it will eventually work, so will sleeping. When it is time, the sun will rise, just like when it is time, houses will sell and the economy will improve. And all the wishing in the world won't change that.

However, this is an ideal time to find new sources of revenue and opportunities for the future. My pastor often mentions Isaac planting in the famine, sewing seeds in the dusty soil despite the fact that there was no apparent chance for success other than the promise he was given.

He eventually had a good harvest and found much success due to his timing. Obviously he had the only tomatoes between Jerusalem to Cairo. My guess would be that those fruits commandeered a great price, most likely making him a wealthy man. However, as I look around this dust bowl that is our economy, it's hard to figure out where to sew seeds and what kinds of seeds to plant.

I had a good idea the other day about stimulating the housing market, but I'm not sure if it will work or not. There's probably only one way to figure that out and I'm not really sure if I'm willing to take the risk.

In fact, that aversion to taking risks has been a big problem for me for many years. For instance, I could have been involved early on in one of the first bottled water ventures in these United States. "Bottled water," I said, "is a ridiculous idea that will never catch on. Why would anyone want to buy bottled water when they can get perfectly drinkable water out of any tap or fountain?" Up until that time, I had not been on ‘city water' or any other municipal water source. Obviously, my clean and pure well water was excellent and, in fact, was the very stuff that people were bottling up to sell.

On another incident, I saw shares of what was then Dominion Bank selling for a mere pittance in the 1980s and thought about buying in, but didn't. "Who knows, they might go under," I said. The stocks shot up to about $30 each within a week of that very date.

And land? I bought land early on and made a handsome profit, but failed to realize that river land would be the future. In fact, as a young boy I was always told that the river land was useless. "You can't even build a house on it," I remember hearing, "without it washing away every few years." I stayed away from that, as did most locals. However, the few farmers who used that land to grow corn and such are the ones who came out like bandits, buying up that bottom land for next to nothing and likely retiring on the proceeds, if they played their cards right. Or maybe they too underestimated its appeal and ended up selling it to some developer for a song. I don't suppose it really matters, since I wasn't in on the action.

I once had a job offer to work for Lowe's Hardware, but turned it down for another job with slightly higher pay and less benefits. At the time, I figured that retirement was something for those really old people to worry about, just like that health insurance stuff that I didn't figure I'd ever need. "La, la, la, la-la-la live for today.'

Who knows, I might be out at the country club sipping lemonade today instead of typing this had I taken that position back in the 1980s. I definitely would be either retired or very close to it.

That's like the old joke that has a man's friend coming in to find him crying. "Why are you crying?" He asks. "Well, I had to decide whether I would marry my wife or kill her some 20 years ago today and I decided to marry her. She's been with me ever since."

"Well, why the tears then?"

"I would have gotten out of jail today," the man replies.

Another time a friend suggested I buy stock in a company called Wal-Mart back in the late 1980s, noting that it was really an up and comer. "There even going to build stores in Mexico," he told me. Shares for the Mexico venture were $1 each. It's now trading for over $22 a share and has split several times, as I understand it. A mere $1,000 investment then would have likely made me at least a lot richer than I am.

"Why would anyone want to compete with Roses and Hecks?" I wondered then. I grew up shopping at the 5 and dime and little general stores that seemed to have everything then but would look like they have hardly anything by today's standards. Just go down to one of our two local grocery stores and look at the tea—you can get 50 different varieties at either grocery store. Rewind 30 years and you'd have a hard time finding anything that wasn't designed to make iced tea.

Where was I when all these fads came about? Somewhere else, apparently.

Gee, that sounds brilliant today, doesn't it? Or so I thought as I sat in my car, sipping a bottle of Sam's Choice water in the parking lot of the local Wal-mart. Well, not really, but that would be ironic if it were true.

However, instead of looking back on the foolish opportunities squandered in the past, maybe I should be looking forward and figuring out which ones I might be missing now. After all, if my speckled history of past failures have taught me anything, it's that opportunities will keep passing you by as long as you keep watching them leave.
 

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