I’m something of an adrenaline junkie. I get bored easily. I want life to be bold, exciting, colorful.
In college, I spent a semester in Europe. It was a blast. I loved random trips to other cities. The adventure of finding my way around a place where I couldn’t speak the language. Getting lost and eating weird food with my friends.
I spent my 20s traveling a lot. Moving a lot. Hanging out a lot. Dating a lot. Not as “adventurous” as backpacking across Europe, but still exciting in many regards. A lot of ups and downs. I made some art. Fell in and out of love. Found the woman I’d spend the rest of my life with.
By the end of that decade, I had settled down. I had bought a house and gotten married.
Two weeks after my 30th birthday, my first child was born. Needless to say, the adventure of my 30s has been much more domestic. More stressful in a lot of ways. Job changes, more moves, more babies.
I don’t get out much now. An adventure now is fixing a flat tire and trying to figure out how to pay for a new one. Taking my daughter to the art crawl. Watching my child take his first steps. Listening to my little boy talk in paragraphs about sea monsters and pirates.
But what’s funny is that 15 years ago, I never imagined that I’d be at a corporate desk job, painting occasionally, raising a family, and LOVING IT.
Soon we will go on a quest for a new chest of drawers to replace the one handed down from my dad that he had as a kid. It’s in my daughter’s room. It broke, probably beyond repair, and fell on my daughter when she was trying to put away her clothes while my wife and I got the boys ready for bed. That was scary. A crash and “help! help!” from a curly-headed little one holding a chest of drawers on her shoulders.
My life is still very much an adventure, just different. Sometimes a lot scarier. But just as fun and crazy. And that’s part of growing up.