In a strange reversal of middle-school literary precident, your adventure chooses you. Pikachu.

Even on Mondays when my dad's out of town, and I get my whole lunch at my desk, it's hard to get good writing done here at work. It's easily our busiest day of the week. And most of my calls were very attention-intensive. So, I'll keep what I have written for today's post for another day (just like I'm keeping the remnants of last Thursday's post, doncha know) and come back to it later. I've got all kinds of great ideas for things to write about from this weekend, it's just been a busy day.

So what I want to do before I head home is to jump off of what Adam was saying in the comments of the Friday post. At first, I skimmed what he read, because I am always nervous putting out a post where I didn't have as much time as I would like to revise. I feel defensive when I read any comments on those days. But that isn't the exercise, is it? One post, every day.

Anyway, I came back today and re-read his comment, and I think he's got some good ideas:

If we're supposed to be living an adventurous life, what kind of adventure is it? What kind of adventure do you want it to be? I think different people have different adventures that they want to live out. I also think that we talk ourselves out of doing something adventurous. There's a dirty side to adventuring; it gets messy and doesn't look very pretty, and we let ourselves pass things up because it didn't quite look like the thing we had in mind. Maybe if we talked more about the adventures we want to live, we could talk each other into actually doing them instead of individually talking ourselves out it.

So, I'll ask you, here on the cold internets, before I ask many of you in person, what adventures do you think your life could have in store for you? Ones that you keep wanting to talk yourself out of?

I have a few.

I want to be a writer, but I keep telling myself I'm not good enough, and keep putting off the doing of writing in order to either spend time with people or dink around 'relaxing' or getting entertained. Ask me why I don't like to watch movies, and I'll tell you it's not relational enough Part of what I don't say is that I've got stories of my own to tell, and seeing other people's makes me sad that I haven't told enough of mine yet.

I want to live in a bad part of town so I can identify with people who live there, but that usually means getting a house that requires a lot of fix-up, and I'm not very handy. Remember how I cut corners in Scrabble to play above my ability? And how Halo 2 made me actually work? I don't do so well in situations where I have to just get it right, where thinking outside the box isn't helpful. Like drywalling s room for example. Or carving. I'm way to impatient to ever carve anything. I cut too deep to get done quicker.

And also, I want Jill to feel safe. It's easy enough to say that I can trust God and let bad things happen to me if need be. But what does it mean to be in authority (and by authority, I mean only: having the responsibility of covering protection) over someone who I can't always be there for to step in the way of bad things that might happen and take them on myself?

I want to live simply, but I don't know what else to cull from my life, and especially what to keep that assists in hospitality. Anymore, I mostly keep the X Box, and Nintendo and N64, in order to play with people who come to my house.

I also want to live in physical community, but I value our privacy and our emotional space to make that sacrifice right now. We got so close to dropping into that half-pipe, and at the last second, we didn't. Now I feel like street courses are good enough for me. No need to go back and brave the dangers of vert. As it were.

I want to work hard, but my job trains me to put things off and be easily distracted have you seen how good Married to the Sea has been lately? Which I do well enough already without that help.

I think there are many more, but I am afraid that if I draw them my mind clearly enough to be able to write them down, they will blow away into dust. This is partially, as I've briefly mentioned before, and said I'd come back to, and haven't yet, but will now, that I think my Blyian/Eldridgian 'father wound' is that I always feel like I'm failing at everything I'm part of. That my hand in a process guarantees doom. Not that I can point to a specific time in which I was wounded, or a particular person who wounded me. For example, I can recall no time, my father, although imperfect as all fathers are, emotionally wounded me in any deep or lasting way.
In fact, I think I may have caused this 'wound' myself in some way. But that, again, could be part of the same thing. Ahhh, psychology, is there nothing you can't twist?

But I'll try to come up with more adventures I think my life is made for, and try to share them with you. But enough about me. I talk enough as it is. How about you? Any adventures calling you from the deep?