Tag: adventures

Bonus Day

Hi. Happy last day of February! Even with the special bonus day, February seemed to cruise along a lot faster than January did, right?? We are one sixth of the way through 2024. How is it going for you?

I’m exhausted, and yet exhilarated and rejuvenated, all at the same time. That’s typically my experience with travel. There are very few experiences that deplete you and energize you, all at the same time. Giving birth and perhaps running a marathon (although I wouldn’t know anything about long distance running. I won’t run to my mailbox) are the only other experiences that I can think of, off the top of my head, that could fall into this same category. I suppose winning an Olympic medal would be the extreme example of instantaneous exhilaration and exhaustion, but again, that is way out of my level of expertise.

When you add new experiences to your life, you add new layers to yourself. And some of your other layers get sort of reorganized with perspective changes, as new information gets assimilated into your being. Travel changes you. Travel expands you. I rode in a helicopter for the first time in my life this past week. My late uncle and my sister-in-law were military helicopter pilots and they always spoke so fondly of the specialness of flying in helicopters. I totally get it now. It was incredibly thrilling. It was an experience that I won’t soon forget.

Give yourself new experiences every day. You don’t have to travel far to try a new coffee flavor, drive a new way to work or to school, talk to someone whom you have never met, read a book that isn’t your usual genre choice . . . . The expansion of yourself from your experiences is really the point of “it all”, isn’t it? At the very least, expanding yourself is deliciously exhausting and invigorating, all at the same time.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

1547. What gives you zest for life?

Reminiscence

I was twenty-five when I had my first child. He went everywhere with his two young parents – weddings galore, hiking adventures when he was just a couple months old in a colorful baby carrier, and a trip to Puerta Vallarta, Mexico where his favorite part was the bumpy ride on the public bus. Yesterday, when we were reminiscing with him about these times, before his three younger siblings were born, it occurred to me how somewhat reckless and fearless (and maybe even clueless) we were, and yet thankfully, it all turned out just great. Our eldest son is as independent and adventurous and “alive” as they come, and we still have a blast adventuring with him. Sometimes I wish that fearlessness and that bravado of my youth would come back to me. I long for that inner assurance to trust life, and to go at it with pure gusto. I desire to easily let go of so much caution, and to allow that caution to be thrown to the wind. Interestingly, I do feel my courage circling back again, now that I am into the first few months of my empty nest. However, it’s not blind anymore. This courage is not a cocky courage. This courage is full of knowledge, experience, and wisdom about the frailty and the preciousness of life, and all things in this life. And thus, it is a clearer courage. My middle-aged courage is clear and conscience about risks, and also clear and conscience about what you miss out on, when you don’t take risks.

I am headed out on an adventure with my curly, ginger haired 26 year-old baby boy today. He towers over me. My son teaches me a lot about the things that are popular with his young generation. Yesterday, he ordered a rare Korean thistle for dinner. (and I tried it and it tastes like chicken – kidding, it tasted like spinach) When we go on our adventures for today, we will both be brave and excited. He will have that fresh, free, unscarred curious courage of youth, and my braveness will come from my wisest most weathered place in my heart, which fully understands the risks of almost everything, and knows that it is important to take some of these risks in order to experience the uncontrollable exuberance of a fully lived life. The circles of life constantly circle back, in slightly different form, but always with the same simple lessons: to live fully, to love unabashedly, and to trust the experiences you have in life, and all that these experiences have to offer you.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Scrapbooks and Cherries

I Am Pieces Wall Quotes™ Decal | WallQuotes.com

My daughter and I are headed on a mother/daughter road trip this weekend, starting today. My daughter turned eighteen in March, and she is starting college early this June. We have been planning this getaway for a while, just the two of us. I never believed in raising your kids like they were your friends. My husband and I definitely leaned a little towards the strict side when raising our four children. In retrospect, I think that is why it has been so easy to become friends with them now, as we are all adults. There is a mutual respect. They are all adults whom I really like, and whom I find interesting and fun to be with. And by the excitement which my daughter has shown for this trip, she must feel the same way about me. This feels wonderful. Like Brooke Hampton states in the quote above, I am going to be adding another page in the “scrapbook of me” this weekend. And it could likely end up being one of those pages which I turn to again and again, to relive the fun memories in my mind. And while my daughter and I have a lot of fun destinations we plan to go to, and to explore each day, the entire journey is really made up of all of the little stuff: the songs we will sing along to on the ride, the giddiness we felt while planning and anticipating the trip, and the funny little anecdotes that will happen that we could never have planned on experiencing. I think this is why trips are so great. Trips are really a microcosm of all of our own lives’ adventures. We decide to become mothers, so we get pregnant or we adopt a baby, and mothering is all that we experience on the long and windy road to getting our children securely to their adulthoods. We decide to become our career choices, so we apply to schools, and we learn the lessons and the skills of the trade we want to do, and we take our first jobs, and once again, the real experience is the journey of where our jobs and careers take us. The final destination of anything in life, is always just the small delightful cherry on top of it all. And we savor the cherry. We chew it up, soak up the juices, and then we quickly tend to start all over again, planning a new destination to achieve, because the adventures which take us to our chosen destinations are really what life is all about.

120 Best Quotes About Journey and Destination - Quotesjin

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Friday, Friends and the Freakin’ Weekend

“The only trip you will regret is the one you don’t take.” – unknown

“Cheers to the freakin’ weekend.” – Rihanna

Happy Friday, readers and friends!! I am writing this from afar today. I am on a weekend trip with my best friends from college. We do this trip every year since we graduated and sometimes it feels like we are still back in school. It is such a blessing to reflect on life – life’s adventures, life’s misadventures, life’s sorrows and life’s greatest joys, with people who have known each other since the dawning of each other’s adult lives. It makes today a very special Favorite Things Friday. For new readers, I usually describe three favorite things, websites, songs, products, etc. on Fridays. Please see previous Friday posts for fun and helpful ideas. Fridays are always light, pleasant and airy here at Adulting – Second Half. But today, I am going to do it a little differently, in honor of my dear friends who knew me in my Adulting – First Half.

Here are my favorite things about being with really good friends. I hope this list will spur you on to make your own list about your friends and you will carry those warm feelings with you all of the way into a wonderful weekend.

My favorite things about being with my friends:

  • Feeling like you never left off. Even if you haven’t seen each other all year long, you come together so easily and happily, it’s like you just saw each other yesterday.
  • All of the inside jokes. Long histories make for crazy stories that never seem to lose their luster and novelty for the people who have shared funny times and hilarious memories.
  • The feeling of total acceptance. Your long-time friends know almost everything about you and love you anyway.
  • Knowing that you have a big group of gals who “have your back.” The wonderful feeling of being cared for and supported and the good feeling of being that same source of support and caring for others, in their times of need.
  • Making more fond memories with new shared adventures, that will add to the cache of inside jokes.
  • Really good insights and ideas and perspectives about situations going on in each other’s lives, that come from people who know each other well and earnestly care for one another.

I could go on and on, but I don’t like to get sappy on Fridays. Let’s just say that this wonderful group of women are treasures to me. They were a huge part of my first half of adulting and I look forward to all of the fun, joy, tenderness, reflections and wisdom that we will share as we travel together on this journey through our second halves of adulting.

“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A friend is a gift you give yourself.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

Letting Myself Be Lived

I’m posting this in the wee, small hours of the morning, today.  I’m headed out on an adventure this weekend.  I’ve been pining for this adventure for a while, but considering our loss of our beautiful dog, Lacey, I realize that I need this adventure more than ever.  Change of scenery is a good cure, for a home full of constant reminders of who you are missing.

I’ll be writing my blog away from home for the first time since I started writing it.  My husband bought me a new computer and this enormous, curved monitor when we both started to realize that me writing my blog was no longer a whim or a passing fancy, but more of a necessary passion of mine, here to stay.  I’m going to miss the “Big Screen”, but I fully intend to continue to blog every morning.   I’m not sure how much, or if and when, I will choose to share my stories about my adventure, but I’m definitely taking my computer along for the ride.

I love the anticipation of trips.  I read recently that if you stress too much about something before it happens, you are actually putting yourself through that stress, two times.  I like to think then, that it follows, if you are eager about heading out on an adventure, you are putting yourself through the excitement, twice!  I don’t have any expectations for this getaway other than an eager interest  in the unknown and the prospect of surprise.  I’m going somewhere that I have never been to, and that is my favorite kind of experience.

When I go on trips, I don’t have a set agenda.  I won’t be crestfallen if I don’t see certain museums or landmarks or shows.  My favorite part of exploring new areas, is the overall ambiance.  I love to observe and soak in, the atmosphere – the people, the preferences, the smells, the sounds, the shared community’s prides and loves, the food, the weather, etc. all related to the place that is new to me.  Every place has its own nuances.  Every place is like a world unto its own.  This doesn’t only apply to faraway places, in distant lands.  Every city is broken down into neighborhoods and smaller towns that are distinctly their own places, rich with culture and quirks, quite individual to that “place within a place.”  Even unique homes and families are their own corners of the world.  I’m good at letting go and letting Life explore itself, through me, when I go on outings, exploits and trips.  Maybe that is why I love adventures so much – they are the times in my life that I completely let go, and let myself Be Lived.