What’s an interesting adventure?
It’s a question I’ve been repeatedly asking myself since finishing the Continental Divide Trail. What do I find interesting, what’s next?
For a while, not much was very interesting, adventure-wise. But the worry was that if nothing was that interesting, I must not be interesting, and what if I never find anything that captures my imagination again?
So I looked at what other people found interesting (answer: anything involving a packraft is automatically interesting, or anything involving fatbikes, or anything involving rigid adventure bikes or anything involving lots of suspension and bright colors). But just because other people are interested in it doesn’t mean it’s interesting to you. Often it wasn’t to me.
The cycle has been, variably, to try on different suits: from chunk rider to packrafter to runner to trail advocate to racer to who-knows-what. Maybe I just need more ideas, and surely one of them will ‘lock’ in and be declared interesting enough to pursue. I kept trying to look at the logic of why things were interesting to me.
And while you can dissect it in that way, explaining why some endeavor holds your interest, there’s so much more going on in our little minds than we can understand, let alone articulate. Sometimes things are simply intrinsically interesting. They are interesting to us because they are. When they are, you know it, and don’t need to list the reasons why. It just clicks.
And other times, like when you are recovering from a 4 month journey, nothing really clicks that much. It’s hard to think about what’s next in comparison to something that was so big and so fulfilling. You need distance from it, and time to process it.
Running around frantically hoping something is going to inspire you as much as the past did, immediately, is just foolish and counterproductive. The worry of unfulfilled potential is perhaps the most unfulfilling of all.
Of course, it’s easy to look back and see wasted energy and worry, now that certain things are starting to click for me (perhaps even a little packrafting, or fatbiking, or wearing of bright colors!). I can feel it coming back, and am back to wishing I had more time in this life to do all the things I want to.
But as often in life, it’s another lesson in patience. Everything passes. Passion and fire come back.
Life is just too short for patience, sometimes.
(photos from – running Agua Caliente (that one crushed me), Sweetwater trailwork, Hidden Canyon, Ruffian’s Ridge and Wasson Peak)
I’m finding myself in the same kind of place after a busy (for me) fall season. I don’t have any desire to do things that I love. Overtraining, burnout, whatever. Right now the main thing keeping me from being one with the couch is knowing how much it sucks to start over from scratch.
I imagine for you the key will be doing what you do/want until something grabs you and you know, kind of like the way you dont find love by looking for it so much as by lucking across it while you’re living your life.
“I imagine for you the key will be doing what you do/want until something grabs you and you know, kind of like the way you dont find love by looking for it so much as by lucking across it while you’re living your life.”
I think that’s a good way of putting it. I know something will eventually grab a hold of me, and that it won’t be long. I just need a little bit of patience, which is fine because I’m pretty wrapped up in many of the other things I do.
Thanks for the comment — good luck keeping it going until something grabs you, too.
I live in Queensland, Australia. You might find it interesting to spend a couple of weeks with the Mountain Biking Community here. We promise to send all visitors home sunburned, bruised and smiling 🙂
Definitely very interested, Neil. I need to make an OZ and/or NZ trip happen, and soon.
To be a good cyclist you almost need to have a bit of OCD. Variety isn’t a bad thing for those so afflicted.
I like when you justify your interest by, “it just clicks”. You ever watch a dog run through a field, watch it meander left, right, fast, slow, sniff, stop, run. I love watching that. Or when a horse rolls in the grass scratching it’s back and then basks in the sun. I love that, too. Stimulation and decompression are both necessary. When I was young, too young to have a license, I would take my Dad’s car out on reckless missions. He had a Pacer, the body was much wider than the axle widths. We lived in the north and the snow plows would make big continuous snowbanks down either side of the street. I learned early, that if you took your hands off the wheel and stayed on the gas, you would deflect randomly left, right and back again, but you always stayed the course as long as you stayed on the gas. Life isn’t any different. Let the reigns go, just keep moving. Trust your intuition. I’ve made it this far trusting my sixth sense, and I plan on going the distance. I’m in awe of all you do, and envy your ability to articulate so well. Hope to ride with you again soon!
Thanks for the nice words, Rob. I would say you are quite able to articulate!
No plan but to keep going forward and trusting the process. I like it.