There’s a line in the movie The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey that gives me such a thrill. As Bilbo Baggins rushes by—pack on his back, big feet flying—one of the villagers calls out, “Mr. Bilbo, where are you off to?”
“I’m going on an adventure,” Bilbo shouts back, as he hurtles headlong into an uncertain fate.
That line and image pop into my head often. I like to approach life as one grand adventure, but sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s tedious and routine and I find myself daydreaming about a more exotic existence.
I took some time off over the holidays and found that re-entry into my work life was much harder than I had expected. Why? I love my work. I’m excited about my projects and those of my clients. But after two weeks of living outside my basement office, I found it difficult to trudge down those stairs again and sit at the same old desk, facing the same old piles of unfinished work and an inbox full of e-mails.
It’s not that I want my work itself to change, but it’s getting a bit old rising at the same time each day, doing a few exercises, eating breakfast, and then working straight through until dinner time. Life is feeling a bit too routine lately.
Maybe this all has to do with watching my children move into new stages of life, which I mentioned last week. My son is graduating college and moving on to who knows what. My older daughter is moving out of the dorms into a more independent living situation. My youngest daughter is graduating high school and already knows what career she wants to pursue. Part of me is longing to make a big change too, to challenge myself in some grand new, even scary, way. Another part of me wants to keep doing what I’m doing, but with more focus and attention.
Whether I decide to up and move to some new city for a while or just rearrange my office, a new year is stretching before me filled with infinite possibility. It is for you too. And whether the changes that are coming will be unexpected or determined by your choices and actions, the wheels are in motion. The adventure has just begun.
