How to Be Adventurous
The slowest way from Alaska to Tennessee, and a few things learned along the journey.
*Originally presented June 7, 2013 at Pecha Kucha Chattanooga Vol. 13, as 20 slides x 20 seconds each.
I’m not by nature a very adventurous person, though I’m often mistaken for one. The truth is, most of the adventure in my life has happened by accident. So I’m going to share with you how I learned to be adventurous. Also titled, “The slowest way to get from Alaska to Tennessee.”
Everyone starts somewhere.
Everyone has a story. Mine started here — in the middle of nowhere Alaska. I spent 7 years of my childhood growing up in a little quonset hut on the tundra, with no trees, very few people, and a black beach for my front yard.
I didn’t know that was adventurous. Because at the time, it just seemed normal to me.
I grew up without a tv, and before the internet — but I had a mother who read to me, and a dad who told me stories about growing up on a farm. I read stories in my schoolbooks about Dick & Jane. And the more I heard, and saw, the more I learned that not only was my life not normal, it was actually kind of strange.
Normal is different everywhere.
I started to realize that growing up with moose as regular visitors wasn’t normal everywhere. I used to wonder what it would be like to live somewhere with white picket fences and paved streets. What it would be like to have my dad put on a hat and go to work in the morning instead of flying off in his airplane to hunt for our dinner.
I started to want to experience someone else’s normal.
Even my name wasn’t normal. I used to sign my diary with a different name every night — Amy, Lisa — nice, normal two-syllable names nobody got confused about or asked you to repeat.
But somewhere along the way I decided it was a good thing — that having an unusual name gave me something unusual to live up to. I was the original Princess Tianna.
Imagination is bigger than fear.
I lived in a big state, but a small world. Thankfully, I had a huge imagination. I knew there was a big world out there that I wanted to see, even though it scared me to death. But in the end I was more afraid of what I would miss out on than I was of the unknown.
My curiosity and my imagination propelled me past my fear.
That’s how I ended up going to a college in the Midwest that I’d never visited, where I didn’t know a soul. That’s how I decided I didn’t want to be an accountant, I wanted to be a graphic designer. I needed something with more imagination.
And that’s when I learned that if you don’t know where to go, follow what you love.
Follow what you love.
I didn’t know if I had what it took to be a graphic designer. I just knew creating beauty was what I wanted to do. So I graduated and spent 3 years working hard to earn my chops as a designer. And when I’d gone as far as I could go in one place, I decided I wanted to travel, wanted to do something worthwhile, and wished for it to have something to do with a boat.
The summer I turned 26 I ended up here, on a ship, halfway across the world, as a short-term volunteer with a hospital ship organization called Mercy Ships.
It was going to be great — just a few months of travel and a few months helping them out in their off season. I specifically picked the three months they were going to be in Europe, because I really didn’t want anything do with Africa.
One adventure leads to another.
But adventure always has a mind of its own. I tried to go home, and I was miserable there. I no longer fit. Next thing I knew, I was back on that ship headed south to Africa, as a two-year volunteer.
When you become part of something bigger than you are, it will take you places you could not have imagined.
So there I was in West Africa, a graphic designer on a hospital ship. I ended up running the communications department — a miniature news team and creative department onboard. I wasn’t medical in any way — in fact I couldn’t stand blood. And I was scared to death of Africa.
That’s when I learned that the best adventures are made up of the most difficult things.
The best is the unexpected.
I never dreamed that I would spend 3 years on the coast of Sierra Leone, a war-torn country at the bottom of the UN Human Development Index. I saw and heard things I didn’t want to believe were real.
For much of that time I kept myself at a distance, behind the scenes. But then I made a choice to build at least one relationship with an African before I left. I thought I could do at least that much.
Little did I know that one little person would change my life. This is Adams, an orphan baby with a cleft lip who I met when he was 3 weeks old.
Adams is his own adventure, and his story is too long to tell here. Today he is a happy, healthy 10 year old*, and he lives in my hometown in Alaska, the adopted son of my childhood best friend, and a permanent part of my life.
Know when to change course.
That ship was the place that connected me to everything since. It was hard to leave, but eventually I outgrew my role onboard and moved to a land base in Switzerland to take on an international role as Creative Director. My job was to create communication materials for 13 nations in 7 languages. This was not an easy task.
But I got to live here. In this storybook chateau, on the edge of Lake Geneva and the French Alps.
The thing I learned most living in a foreign country, is that it’s very humbling. Every day you reach the limits of your communication and find ways you don’t belong. But it’s also very empowering.
Every day you accomplish something you’ve never done before. Every day expands who you are.
Expect places to change you.
Switzerland was in some ways the opposite of Africa, but it was challenging in more invisible ways. I needed every bit of the beauty to keep me going. Eventually 5 years of trying to save the world wore me out, and I knew it was time to move on. But to where? I could try to go back, but I would never fit in those places again.
Without exception, every time I’ve had to take a leap of faith, I’ve landed somewhere better than I could have dreamed up on my own.
If I hadn’t wanted to see Europe, I would never have ended up in on a hospital ship, and I would never have met the friends I eventually moved with to Washington DC to freelance and start a hammock business.
Had I never experienced a difficult ending that turned my life upside down, I might not have left DC and started to look for a place that felt like home.
Dead ends open new roads.
The good part about endings, are that they make way for something new.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, blue is one of my favorite things. From the beginning of my life, it’s been the color that connects my worlds.
Had I not had years of experiences and wandering different worlds to think about what home felt like, I might not have recognized it when I came to Chattanooga.
Adventure doesn’t come through one giant step… it’s a thousand little decisions you make, that add up to a journey.
It’s looking for the blue sky on ordinary days on any side of the globe. It’s organizing a rainbow hammock flash mob on a bridge painted the perfect shade of blue.
The best part is when you land.
The best part of an adventure is when you get to where you’re going, for however short or long that might be.
I am all the places I’ve ever been, and all the steps and missteps I’ve taken. Had I missed one step I might not have ended up exactly where I was supposed to be, right here, right now.
Chattanooga is not where I ever expected to end up. And that’s why it’s perfect.
(Currently living and writing Part II.)
