Yesterday I was too tired when I got home to be thankful for anything but the opportunity to relax so tonight I will catch up on my daily item of thanks.

Today I’m grateful for street smarts and blue highways. In my experience people have either more street smarts or more book smarts. I have more street smarts which I equate with common sense. I’m never going to be a Rhodes Scholar or a winner on “Jeopardy” unless they let me compete on kids week, and I’m fine with that. I’m content having common sense – sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts. Sadly no one asks if you have common sense when you are on a job interview. Hard to highlight it on a resume. Certainly we need both but I’ve found I’ve used my common sense many more times in life than stuff I learned from a book.

In William Least Heat-Moon’s book “Blue Highways” he chronicles traveling on the “blue highways” of America – the back roads that on maps, are indicated in blue. I’ve taken the blue highways professionally and like the back roads of America, it has been a colorful adventure.

I’m not someone who really knew what they wanted to be when they grew up and I’m still deciding today. I wanted to be a paramedic for a while, but mostly so I could ride with Johnny Gage, the character on “Emergency.”

I earned a degree in Mass Communications, with an emphasis in advertising but I’ve never worked in an ad agency. I’ve used those creative skills in other jobs and in volunteer positions. I started off after college doing special events at shopping malls. I decided to seek other employment the year I was jealous of the Easter display at another mall. Jealous of a better Easter Bunny costume. That’s when you realize it is time to get a real job.

The “real” job I took was a seminar coordinator for a company that specialized in competitive intelligence, more or less, legal corporate spying. I spent the next 18 years in that industry. I did everything everything from meeting planning, marketing, conducting secondary research, and early on, running the business for about five years for an absentee owner.  Through a number of sales and acquisitions, the company we knew was gone and finally our group was cleared out.

After some time free-lancing as a secondary researcher, I took the job with the Washington Ireland Program and then after a few years moved onto my current position. In my current job, I’m able to use a lot of the skills I’ve picked up along my blue highway travels, and have carved out an interesting role for myself.

Some people were made to work one place in their careers and I admire that and have at times, envied that but truthfully, I’m thankful for the path I’ve taken, the people that those travels have allowed me to meet and am excited to see where those paths lead me going forward.

So today I guess I’m thankful for the street smarts that have allowed me to survive and thrive along the blue highways.