Back in 2016, shortly before meeting Raven, I was in a pretty bad point in my life. Sparing the gruesome details, I was alone and heartbroken in an area I didn't know, stuck with a pretty sizable mountain of debt, and with a job I took out of desperation. Years before, in the slow build up to this milestone of my life, I had taken to making lists and tracking my routines in various ways to help keep me mindful and lend assistance to pulling myself out of ruts. I did this to help stave off the inevitable depressive episodes.
Fast forward to the spring of 2016, at the height of this low, I took to the one thing that could keep me mentally afloat; making a list. This list was different, however. It would set me on a two year journey, sending me down a path that would change how I lived, completely revise my outlook on life, and put in motion an event critical to making me the person I am today. I created a list of 50 places and experiences to explore, with a goal to complete it by 2018.
The List
Sitting in my room following a short day trip to Antietam National Battlefield Park, I reflected on other recent short trips I had been on with friends who were trying to pull me out of a serious depression. I started making a list of places I had been. There was no real reason for it. I was just bored, and diverting mental energy to making a list would mean there was less energy to overthink myself into a low.
As I wrote in my notebook, out of nowhere I decided I would make a promise to myself. I had wasted a fair amount of time waiting on others, or things to be "Just right" to see and experience certain things. I noticed with the list I was making, some of the things I had done didn't take as much time or effort to see and do as I had previously thought. I had recently listened to the audio book of Level Up Your Life by Steve Kamb, the creator of Nerd Fitness. Inspired, I challenged myself. I gave myself 2 years to see 50 new places. I took my bucket list and started going down what I could reasonably do, added already planned trips with friends, and tacked on a few things I had recently discovered and had wanted to check out. The list was short at first, only about 20 items, but I assured myself that while I was working on this short list, new things would pop up.
My list created, I worked my way slowly ticking off one after another. But things were about to change. My life was about to be catapulted down a path I would never have expected.
Enter Player Two
Around the same time that my friends were trying to get me out of the house, I was trying to keep my life somewhat in motion by sticking to what was left of my normal routine. Part of this routine was doing volunteer work with local anime, video game, and other fandom conventions. It was at one of these conventions I met Raven. After an initial exchange of social media contact information, we didn't really talk much. Aside from a single date and online chatting, we pretty much went about our lives on our lonesome.
That summer, however, still chipping away at my goals list, I reached a place I didn't want to experience alone, but couldn't find anyone in my normal group of friends to join me. On a chance, I asked Raven if she would like to join in visiting Monticello, and she agreed.
The trip itself wasn't too special or exciting. Raven had been wanting to learn photography and I hadn't done any serious photography work since summer of 2015. We played with my DSLR and a point-and-shoot, strolled the gardens, and took a tour of the house. A small anxiety attack cut our tour and the day short. While we had to get Raven away from the crowds, it gave us time to bond over our mutual struggle with things like anxiety, depression, and a somewhat rough childhood. I told her about my 50 New Things goal, and explained how experiencing new things is nice, but I wanted to share them with others. We never really did have an official day we started dating, we just sort of fell into it. That day, at Monticello, we realized how much fun we had together and decided we would start doing my list together. A few months later, we had a conversation which acknowledged the joint understanding that we were pretty much doing all the things people in a relationship do. We discussed a few topics of what we were both looking for, whether monogamy or non-monogamy was better for what we were doing, and touched on other things we hadn't already covered while on our various day trips. We were both uncertain about what the future held for us, but we knew one thing, we wanted to do it together. Almost as important, I would not have to adventure alone anymore. I had found someone who could provide a complimentary but different view of our adventures, variety to our various quests for discovery, and motivation to better myself and not give up on my goal no matter how hard it got.
A New Outlook on Life
As we continued to check off and cross out things on my list, it became so much more. My life slowly went from a checklist and a goal, to being completely focused on discovering new things, exploring places off the beaten path, and experiencing everything I could. In 2017 Raven and I planned a trip to Chicago to see her favorite band and check off something on her bucket list. That adventure gave birth to our YouTube channel. Bitten by the travel bug, with a whole new view of the world around us, Raven and I charged through my list, completing it months ahead of time and over shooting the goal of 50 by a few extra places. At the end of 2018, my goal complete but not ready to settle down, we made another list to complete by 2020, and set out again. Over the last two years, we have seen and done a plethora of things from Hiking Mt. Hood in Oregon, to taking a weekend trip to Rehoboth Beach, DE (the place that inspired the show Steven Universe), summitting 3 of Virginia most scenic mountains, to flying kites on the dunes of North Carolina's Outer Banks. Our list pushed us to focus on making better videos, publishing the photos we were taking, and even gave me the push I needed to buy a Van and begin converting it into an RV to give us more trip opportunities. Most importantly, it gave me the inspiration I needed to finally start this blog.
This past weekend, we met our goal of another 50 places, completing the list with 51 check marks, 3 weeks to spare, and no sign of slowing down. Closing this year, we are grateful for the opportunities we've had, thankful for the support from our community, and utterly amazed with what all our hard work has helped us accomplish. And I am excited to say, moving forward, we will be ending the year happily starting our new list of 50 places to see or experiences to have by 2022.
There is so much we've been able to take away from the last 4 years of adventuring. We have countless lessons about motivation, personal growth, and self improvement. If there is one thing we hope you get out of this story though, it is this: The smallest of goals build into some of the biggest adventures and character developing life changes.
댓글