The "I'm Gonna Live My Life Like A Jimmy Buffett Song" Story

 It was an ordinary day.  First evening on the Caribbean island of St. Martin and we are making a change in our seating at Le Piment Restaurant in Orient Village.  Seems likes the rain is blowing just enough to make our French bread turn to mush and our Lipton's peach tea taste even more watered down that the glass of ice.  Our waitress grabs our salad while we head into the interior of the restaurant, away from the blowing wind and rain on the outdoor seating area.  We sit down next to a younger couple who seem to be in their .... well they are much younger that we are.   I immediately notice that the girl is texting.  And, texting.  And ..... I think you get the idea.  Nothing bothers me more that being with someone who constantly has a cell phone in front of their face or attached to their ear.  How anti-social can you get?  Anyway, after our meal Carol and I start talking about the old Village Night Club in Lancaster, PA.  I told her it was on the corner of Christian and Chestnut Streets in downtown Lancaster.  As we continued our conversation our neighbor, who was with the cell phone girl, asked us if we were talking about Philadelphia.  He was from Philly and was a bartender in a club, but didn't think Christian and Chestnut intersected in the city.  After telling him we were from nearby Lancaster, we had a nice conversation about his life, and yes, about his girlfriend's life.  The more we talked and I listened to his young life's story, I thought I had heard this story before.  Later that evening, after returning back to our villa, I picked up the book I had started reading around the pool a few hours earlier and realized our dinner conversation with the young couple matched the book I was reading.  I'm Gonna Live My Life Like A Jimmy Buffett Song was written by Anthony Bjorklund and his title character, Jack Danielson, reminded me so much of our dinner partner and his girlfriend.  In the book Jack, a former bartender, works for a Public Relations firm and hates his job.  

Anthony Bjorklund

 He has a girlfriend who he is living with who loves to spend his money and Jack is tired of his life.  After a near-fatal auto accident, he decides it's time for a change in his life so he quits his job, sells his possessions, dumps his girlfriend and follows the titles of Jimmy Buffett songs to lead his life in a new direction.  Wow, why didn't I think of that?  I'm a big fan of Jimmy Buffett and since becoming a fan about a dozen of years ago, I have often wondered what it would have been like to live in the world he sings about in his songs.  My only problem would be that I'm not the heavy drinker that is portrayed in quite a few of his songs.  With chapter titles in the book such as - It's Monday, and it's not all right; One Peculiar Harbor; The Weather Isn't Here, But It's Still Beautiful; Mistakin' Jamaicans; and Ragtop Night, Jack ( Anthony Bjorklund) takes you on a trip that makes you wish you were with him.  I finished the book the next day, probably in record time for me.  When I reached the end I was pleasantly surprised to see that he has a few other books, with Jack And Di Rum Song being next in line.  Already on my Kindle.  Makes a great read while sitting under the yellow umbrellas of Orient Beach, St. Martin.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.The