The Adventure I Punished Myself For And Why Balance Took Me 25 Years to Find
The routine vs. adventure debate is a trap and you're probably on the wrong side of it
My mother’s words hit me like a physical thing.
“I’m so disappointed in you.”
I was fifteen. Freshman year of high school. I’d spent an entire semester ditching classes to party with friends, pulling off what I thought was the perfect crime until my grades arrived in the mail.
She was my only parent. Her words carried the weight of two people’s expectations.
It gutted me.
So I did what any terrified teenager would do—I got serious. I turned school around. I made it to college. I became the responsible one.
But something else happened in that moment, something I wouldn’t understand for two decades.
I stopped believing in adventure.
I Became a Routine Addict
For the next twenty years, I became obsessed with predictability.
While my friends were kicking it up in their twenties—traveling, taking risks, changing careers on a whim—I fell in love with the safe and steady. Steady job. Steady home. Steady relationship.
I equated adventure with chaos. Chaos with stress. Stress with that gut-punch feeling of disappointing the person who mattered most.
So I chose safe. Comfortable. Boring.
I was miserable.
But at least I was taking care of life, right? At least I wasn’t the irresponsible kid partying through freshman year anymore. At least I had my shit together.
Except I didn’t have my dreams. Those got filed away in the “someday when I have more time” drawer.
The Three Times I Broke Free
There were only three moments when I said screw it and jumped.
The first was when I moved to a small town from the city. We moved without a plan or a job. We got rid of most of our belongings and only kept what fit into two trucks. No safety net. No backup plan. Just trust and a wild hope that things would work out.
They did. Beyond any expectations I could have had.
The second time was when I stumbled into my transformation process. It wasn’t a conscious decision—more like falling into something I didn’t fully understand. That journey lasted 25 years. Twenty-five years of unraveling, rebuilding, and becoming a person I was born to be.
I flourished in ways I couldn’t have imagined when I was playing it safe.
The third time was when I quit my job of 10 years. That was just shy of three years ago now. I walked away from security with nothing more than a determination to finally do all the things I’d been putting off “until I had more time.”
I took music lessons at a college level. I started my textile arts. I picked up sketching and piano.
But the greatest thing to come out of this time? I finally started writing. In a direction I could never have imagined when I walked out the door of that job.
What I Got Wrong About Everything
Here’s the truth.
I was going to write an article about how routine saves us from chaos. How stability gives us rest and healing. How adventure is for the young and routine is for the older and wiser.
But that’s the thinking that almost killed my dreams.
Because adventure isn’t the enemy of routine, and routine isn’t the enemy of adventure.
There is routine in adventure. And there is adventure in routine.
They’re not opposites fighting for dominance in your life. They’re dance partners. They anchor each other.
When I moved to that small town with no plan, I had to build new routines to survive.
When I spent 25 years in transformation work, there were practices, patterns, rhythms that held the chaos together.
Even quitting my job—the ultimate abandonment of routine—required me to create new structures to hold my days.
And the flip side?
All those years I thought I was safely locked in routine, there were small adventures happening. Tiny rebellions. Moments of spontaneity that kept me alive even when I was trying to play it safe.
The problem was never choosing one or the other.
The problem was taking them both to extremes.
The Balance I Wish I’d Known Sooner
I have these sayings I love—the kind that help me keep perspective when life gets lopsided:
There is freedom in slavery and slavery in freedom.
There is rebirth in death and death in rebirth.
Now I can add: There is routine in adventure and adventure in routine.
Or maybe better: There is stability in chaos and chaos in stability.
These aren’t just clever word games. They’re reminders that life isn’t about eliminating one side of the equation. It’s about finding the balance point where both can exist.
When your routine becomes suffocating, you add some adventure—not to destroy the stability, but to breathe life back into it.
When adventure becomes overwhelming, you add routine—not to kill the spontaneity, but to give it ground to stand on.
They each anchor the other. Without adventure, routine becomes a prison. Without routine, adventure becomes exhausting chaos.
I spent decades believing I had to choose.
Believing that one day in freshman year, I’d chosen wrong and had to spend the rest of my life making up for it.
But the real mistake wasn’t the adventure of ditching class or the routine of getting serious.
The real mistake was thinking they were at war.
When Fear Lives in Both
Here’s the honest truth.
Both routine and adventure include fear.
Routine feels safe, but the fear is there. The quiet terror that you’re wasting your life, that you’re playing small, that your dreams are dying while you stay comfortable.
Adventure feels exciting, but the fear is loud—the uncertainty, the lack of control, the possibility of failure or loss.
I’ve learned that the fear doesn’t go away when you choose one or the other. It just changes shape.
The question isn’t “how do I avoid fear?” The question is “which fear serves my growth right now?”
Sometimes the fear of staying stuck is bigger than the fear of change. Sometimes the fear of chaos is bigger than the fear of boredom.
Both are valid. Both are information.
How to Know Which One You Need
Pay attention to what you’re resisting.
If you’re drowning in chaos and your life feels like you’re constantly reacting, always in motion, never quite landing. You probably need more routine.
More structure.
More predictability to give your nervous system a chance to settle.
If you’re suffocating in routine—your life feels like Groundhog Day If you can’t remember the last time something surprised you. Or your dreams are collecting dust—you probably need more adventure.
More risk.
More uncertainty to remind yourself that you’re capable of more than you’re currently living.
The beautiful thing? You don’t have to blow up your entire life to add what you need.
A routine-heavy life doesn’t need a dramatic adventure. It needs small ones. A different route to work. A conversation with a stranger. Saying yes to something that scares you just a little.
An adventure-heavy life doesn’t need to lock everything down. It needs small routines. A morning practice. A consistent anchor. One thing you can count on when everything else is spinning.
The Dance Between Both
Three years into this latest adventure of self-employment and creative work, I’m still learning this lesson.
Some days I crave more structure. I want clear boundaries, predictable hours, a routine I can count on.
On those days, I build it in.
I create containers for my chaos.
Other days I feel the walls closing in. I need to break my own rules, try something new, let myself wander. On those days, I give myself permission to be surprised.
This isn’t about perfection.
It’s about awareness.
It’s about recognizing that you’re a complex human who needs both stability and growth. Both predictability and possibility that have roots and wings.
The adventure continues in my life now, but there’s a routine to it.
I write regularly.
I have practices that anchor me.
I’ve built structure around the uncertainty.
And within that routine, there’s adventure. New directions. Unexpected discoveries. The willingness to pivot when something calls to me.
The trick is to not get too stuck on one side or the other.
What This Means for You
You don’t have to fear either one—routine or adventure.
You don’t have to choose between them.
You can use both to create a life that’s both grounded and expansive. Both stable and surprising. Both safe and alive.
Look at where you are right now. What’s missing?
If your life is all routine, where could you add a small adventure? What’s one risk you could take this week that would remind you you’re still capable of growth?
If your life is all chaos, where could you add a small routine? What’s one practice you could commit to that would give you something solid to stand on?
You don’t need a complete overhaul. You just need to notice the imbalance and adjust.
Because here’s what I’ve learned after playing both extremes. The fullest life lives in the middle ground.
Where routine gives adventure a foundation to build on.
Where adventure keeps routine from becoming a prison.
Where you’re neither running from fear nor controlled by it—you’re just living, fully, in partnership with both sides of yourself.
That’s where the real transformation happens.
Not in choosing one or the other, but in learning to dance with both.
We were trained to stick to routine at a young age. After all, what was the alternative? Join a commune like a hippy (lol)?
Such a beautiful reflection and how you can have come to discover balance. I have a similar background with my parents and it's been a journey to find "fun" and when "fun" has been work- it's a interesting challenge when people judge. If you (we) are happy- that's all the matters! Thanks for sharing this!