It's an adventure!

I'm sure I'm not the only one who heard this phrase growing up.  Whenever something new was happening or there was something not-so-fun on the horizon, my mom would smile at us and encouragingly say, "It's an adventure!!" and we (mostly me) would roll our eyes and sigh and usually say something like "I don't really want an adventure!"

In hindsight (oh, wonderful hindsight), I totally did want the adventure.  Every change in my life saw me dragging my feet and complaining about how much I hate change or putting off a major decision until the last possible minute, but it was all quite adventurous.  I traveled to Germany for two weeks at age 11 to visit my sister.  I stood on a stage for a spelling bee in middle school and failed fantastically.  I survived heart break, loss, and a major car accident all before leaving home at age 17, braces still shining brightly, to start college across the country from every single person I had ever known.  I did fun things and hard things and kind of boring things that don't even bear repeating.  I have done things I don't even remember until someone I haven't seen in over ten years says, "I just found pictures of us from that one time...."  And then, after being reminded of how embarrassing those pictures must be, I fervently pray they are miraculously sucked into a black hole never to surface again on this earth.  There are countless adventures I could recount, and the few examples I have mentioned don't even venture into my post-high school adult life.

This brings me to my point.  I found this photo floating around the internets (I apologize for the lack of linkage) and emailed it to myself a couple of weeks ago.  I struggled for a minute to come up with an answer.  I couldn't remember the last time I had a good adventure.  I eventually landed on lighting and sending off floating lanterns on my birthday, but this still seemed too tame.  It wasn't sufficiently adventurous or significant, certainly not formative or life-changing.  So now I have this nagging feeling that I need to find a new thing to do for the first time.  Maybe it will be something fun. Maybe it will be something kind of scary.  Either way, it will be an adventure.