Adventures in Overachieving
How to outsmart your future self by ignoring all your research
It finally dawned on me. That thing I forgot as I tried to remember all the adventure things, the thing I wondered about as I got in and out of Home Depot as fast as humanly possible, the thing I halfway saw as traffic piled in around me while making my way out of the city and into the mountains.
As I clicked the metal legs of my art table/outdoor kitchen into place and flipped it right-side up in the sandy dirt, my memory clicked—I had forgotten my pots and pans and all I had was food I absolutely did not want to eat cold. I’d rather down all the Ensure I’d stored in my car than eat cold f—ing pasta in this beautiful place.
So silly…
I didn’t even try to problem-solve.
The internal energy specifically dedicated to genius-level problem solving had been generously donated to the long line of slow-moving RVs and Teslas totally going the speed limit all the way out of Denver. And then I tried the experiment I’d been planning all week. Because commitment.
I wanted to try something new, camping further from the trailhead so I could explore a two new places instead of just one, basically doubling the adventure factor of the whole experience.
Am I an overachiever? Yes. Unarguably so, but not always intentionally so.
About thirty minutes down a rutted-out dirt road the creative experiment went . . . arry.
Some lessons wanted learning, I suppose.
While I’ve never considered it a life goal before now, I’m “happy” to report I can successfully perform a 20-point turn without losing my shit on a road I have no business being on. So that’s winning at life, right? You want the details? Yeah, me neither. Let’s just stick with “I can now successfully perform a 20-point turn on a road I have no business being on without losing my shit.”
Also, let’s acknowledge the dozen or so promises I made to myself about what roads I’ll venture down in the future, and which ones I’ll back down from so I don’t actually have to back down them or do a 20-point turn on a road that’s two inches wide. Pretty sure there’s a metaphor in there, but let’s not talk about that now.
The distraction of it all sapped me. The distraction of universal randomness meeting my own humanness sapped me.
So when the click of the art table clicked my memory into place, alerting me to the fact I would be eating cold AF pasta in a beautiful place, I didn’t even try to solve the problem.
I’d done all the trying I was going to do for the day and was just going to set up an outdoor kitchen I couldn’t use.
Could I take the rutted out, washboard county road back to town with dust riding my tail to fix the problem? Sure. That sounded completely appealing after 4+ hours of annoying traffic and making harrowing choices on a shelf road without losing my shit (a.k.a winning at life). With midwest clarity the innermost part of my being said clearly and concisely: “Yeah, no.”
Did I stop the silly business of setting up a kitchen I couldn’t use? Nope, I hiked up my dust-covered pants and went back to the car to grab another load of camping kitchen whatnots. For what? No pots or pans in there.
Silly.
So silly.
Why am I doing this?
This is ridiculous on top of the ridiculous that led to that 20-point turn…
Then it dawned on me.
Two years ago when I knew nothing about camping outside of collecting alllllll of the pins, posts, and blogs about what to do and what to bring I decided to buy a set of metal dishes. I thought I was being so smart when I bought the set (even though I barely looked at the research I did). So what were my top reasons for buying it? First, the color is a really pretty speckled cobalt blue and reminds me of Colorado Bluebird Days where the sky seems bluer than any sky before has ever been or will be. And, I wanted to cook delicious food on plates the color of the sky while sitting under a sky that color blue. My second super-smart reason was a suspicion that metal dishes might heat up with hot food in/on them and form a mutually beneficial relationship whereby I got to experience hot food while slowly swinging in my hammock or sitting by a rushing stream.
Clearly I am a genius both ahead and behind my time. But at least this genius got to eat hot food in a hammock in a beautiful place.
So what’s the point? (aka lessons learned)
Avoid solving your actual problem by doing silly things that make no sense in the moment. Don’t actively try to problem solve.
Ruminate on moments when you chose courage over fear. All of them. Over and over again. Ruminate.
Wallow in appreciation of the contrast created when your humaness forges an alliance with universal randomness (for the betterment of all, presumably).
Do it all again.
What’s a time where your best intentions led you down the “wrong” path? What was the journey like? What was the impact of your experience?
