Getting to know Shadrach was like re-reading my favorite story again for the first time. He is full of love, adventure, curiosity, joy, bravery, and such kindness. He has served our country for six years and his contract is coming to a close in just a few months. Shadrach has spent his years in the military saving and filling glass jars with money that he has set aside for the adventure he may take one day when he gets out. Now that his exit date is coming soon, he has begun filling his bookshelf with authors who have quit their jobs and traveled the world, vagabonding. His "one day" dream is filled with much of the adventures that those authors have sought out and experienced, and now he has his chance to write his own story in a sense. Though society likes to tell us just exactly where we should be, what we should want, and what boxes we should have checked at the age of twenty-six, Shadrach doesn't follow suit with what society says. He inspires me in that way. He reminds me that we each have a choice on what exactly we want our lives to be and what story we want to tell with our trips around the sun. So I gifted him the CREATE key so that he would always be reminded that he will forever be the captain of his own vessel. I wanted him to never lose the sense of possibility and authorship of his life. Shadrach has given me inspiration and motivation to chase my own sense of adventure and to be okay with not fitting into a box at twenty-six years old.
-Taylor
