I have been dramatically vacillating between routine and adventure for all of my life but especially the last two years. I’ve concluded that while some routine can help during an adventure, that consistently mixing the two ends of tanking the advantages of both of them.
Let me explain what I mean with a story. I tried to live a life as a digital nomad by bike. The idea was that I would bike around every day and work and sleep someplace different every day or week. I tried all levels of remoteness and invested several thousands of dollars on gear and experimentation with different remote Internet access options (modems, Starlkink). I made sure to pack enough gear to do the GDMBR and still work an honest amount of hours every week, including mandatory meetings. Ultimately, the thing that killed it was power. Even with a Starlink Mini and massive batteries and solar it is impossible to power more than two days while fully remote. Besides, I would have to resupply on food and water as well. This meant remote DNB living was absolutely out of the question.
I even allowed myself to have a much, much higher budget (150/day) for lodging so that I never had to sleep in a tent, but even then the logistics of finding and booking it just took all the fun out of the adventure part of it. The routine of daily work life chewed away at my fun until almost no fun was left. That was very frustrating to discover. I nailed all the technical things, the gear, the health, the logistics, but then I just realized not only was I not enjoying it, but I was personally declining in several areas of my life. My work was minimal, no time or ability to work in a home lab or improve my skills. My relationship with my family and wife was reduced to a phone call every night. My friends from my live stream were there, but not nearly as much as they could be if I were doing coworking streams which I could no longer do. I stopped doing Beginner Boost because I just didn’t have time. Perhaps most unexpectedly, my health even began to seriously decline, both physical and mental. The loss of routine that had built those gains was no longer doable. Everything started to cascade and combine. Here I had conquered this idea from a technical level, but I had missed the important thing, the loss of routine.
I have seen several “why I have up van life” videos and they are all the same. One guy said I just felt “stagnated” while living in his van. He nailed it, but felt his career and life were not progressing, both professionally and personally. All the others say pretty much the same. They always justify their very long adventure by saying something like that. “It was a great adventure and we saw everything we wanted to see and now it’s time to move on with life.” And therein lies the truth of this idea.
There are a hearty few who actually live their entire lives in their RVs or vans or even traveling the world on their bikes. It is their life and for most it is also their job. Steven K. Roberts was one of these guys, but even he had to have a place to build out his amazing creations. It is no surprise that he lives on a boat now, sailing wherever he wants.
I tried living from the car as well. Living and working remotely from the car with a Starlink is absolutely easy for someone working on doing it by bike. I actually got so used to sleeping my Outback that I looked forward to coming back to it like “home” after going out for long rides or whatever. So doing digital nomad stuff by car is definitely doable, by bike, however, not so much.
The conclusion is simple. Routine leads to gains. Adventure leads to fun. Too much routine and days blur together (like Hesse’s Steppenwolf in the early pages). Too much adventure and everything collapses into chaos (like in Steppenwolf’s ending pages). Therefore, the best life mixes these. But how?
People generally mix them by taking big vacations every year to different places. Vacations are a mild form of adventure for most. They are a break, a vacation from the routine. This is probably way this mixture is so codified into work/life balance everywhere. Humanity has figured this out. I was personally fighting against it. My wanderlust is real, but not perpetual. Could it be that humanity already figured this out and I just had to realize it for myself? Probably.
Ever since returning to routine my gains, relationships, job and happiness have shot up. But now I can expect the wanderlust to overtake me sometime next year and have be training for another adventure. In my youth my sporting events where like miniature adventures that would keep me motivated. These days a multi-day trip someplace interesting motivates me much more. Ironically, I’m writing this on the first day of TwitchCon for which I paid for tickets—including the after-party—but decided I could not attend because couldn’t manage the bike trip because of weather, Covid, and cost of the trip). Maybe next year. I think a bike adventure down the Pacific Coast Trail leading to TwitchCon could be fun. But I’ll need to take off several weeks to do it, unless, humm, I’m already doing it, planning my next major adventure. But its the planning that is as much a part of the fun, so I can just let go and follow that plan as much as possible but let the unexpected just happen when adventure time finally comes.