25 Years Later, a New Chapter
When I started my current day job back in the 20th century as a news and public relations writer and event planner for a private college, I had no intention of spending 25 years doing it.
It’s not even like me. I crave variety in life, of experience, geography, flavors, relationships and knowledge. Spending 25 years at one place didn’t fit with my life narrative.
It was 1997 when I joined the college, armed with some newspaper and freelance writing experience, having spent a decade traveling and living around the world. The U.S. was on a roll, guided by President Bill Clinton and an economy that lifted all boats. I had entered matrimony and invited a new child, Elliot, into the world the year before, with a second, Olivia, on the way. Raising them to adulthood has been its own, wonderful adventure.
I’ve never viewed spending 25 years at the same job (basically) as any kind of adventure. But I can allow how I might be corrected on that spurn now. Adventure? Not sure, but it has certainly been a time of personal and professional growth.
Now, after 25 years at the same job, it is beyond time to move on, to begin real adventure, new horizons. When I recently announced my retirement from this quarter-century employment, I viewed it as a grand step toward that endeavor.
Let the adventure begin.
4 Elements
To explain what I mean, I refer to my four conditions of adventure, four tenets that I define must be present in order to refer to an experience as adventure:
- Challenge – it must include some kind of challenging goal, something to overcome and achieve.
- Risk – let’s face it, without at least a dose of risk, an activity isn’t an adventure.
- Out of the ordinary – it’s got to be something that you don’t do routinely, something distinct from everyday experience.
- Movement or travel – some kind of transportation from one place to another, whether that is virtual or actual.
Working the same job for 25 years is a lot of things. It’s a living, it’s a platform for professional advancement and a source for funding life’s necessities. It also includes aspects of adventure, such as challenge and, at times, some risk.
But, I argue, it does not meet the definition of adventure per se because it lacks important defining characteristics of that term. Movement, for one. My day job has not involved a lot of movement or travel, not enough to term it adventure. And as for being out of the ordinary? Well, remaining in the same job for 25 years is the antithesis of extraordinary. Rather, it defines ordinary by its nature of repetition.
Onward to Adventure
The way I see it is, I am leaving the ordinary for the extraordinary. Adventure is what lies before me, beyond retirement. This will be the chapter that includes challenge, risk, most certainly, living out of the ordinary, and lots of movement.
The challenges of my next 25 years will be multiple, intentional and unforeseen. I will purposely plot and tackle physical challenges, beginning with a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. And because it’s life, I know I will encounter challenges that I can’t imagine from this current vantage.
As for risk, there’s no question that the act of stepping off the financial cliff of a regular paycheck and venturing into the unknown is risky. Though I will maintain and pursue other forms of income, there are any number of ways I could fail and return to destitution I once knew, in my youth.
Shifting gears after 25 years of doing the same thing is the definition of living out of the ordinary. Moreover, my next 25-year chapter plans aim to avoid things from becoming too ordinary, to keep it fresh and malleable, to always invite change and new experience.
And movement. This is perhaps the most important aspect of adventure for me. Moving is my element. When I’m on the move, I am most fulfilled. Therefore, my next quarter century will be a series of movement, travel and various forms of locomotion: walking, hiking, biking, driving, boating, riding, flying and training.
Crossroad
Retirement is a demarcation. It marks the end of one road and the beginning of another. I know what is ending, but unsure what is beginning. Within that transition is always opportunity for adventure. The unknown. The abyss.
That is where I’m voluntarily heading. Into who-knows-what and where. Wide open.
Now that’s adventure.