My life is not the daring adventure that it was 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago, for that matter. These days, I live in a quiet house in the woods with a loving partner and dog, surrounded by towering Doug Firs and the curvy contours of a mountain range. My weekends are more often spent gathering firewood or working around the house, than traveling to unfamiliar landscapes or going on adventures with friends and strangers like I once did. My weekdays are spent at an office job.

All of these things are choice as much as circumstance, but I have found it difficult in the past couple years to reconcile where I’ve landed, after spending so much of my 20’s living a wild dream I once only imagined. This is not to say my adventures are over, but I’m also not one to believe that you can ever “go back” to something you once had. Things will always be different.

So right now, I’m working on finding the adventure and novelty in my life as it stands now. For, as Henry David Thoreau said, “There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.”

With the end of this decade also comes the end of my 20’s. In about a month, I’ll be turning 30, and I’m not really sure what to do with that. I want to make it count. I want this next decade to be as meaningful and exciting as the last, and to use all the things I’ve learned to make it even better. So now I sit here wondering how to do that, and what that will look like.

What will that story be? How will I write it, live it?

What will your story be in the next decade? How will you write it, and live it?

I’ll leave this question here for you to ponder, just as I am now, for myself. Maybe leave me a comment, and let me know your thoughts. 🙂

Happy end of 2019, internet world. See you on the other side.