I never considered myself to be ‘the adventurous one.’ I'm a total and complete introvert who likes days off where I can read and relax. There's a part of me, though, that has finally come to the conclusion why I get so restless on the weekends: I need adventure.

I would’ve said that the adventure was all in my brother. When we were little, my brother Max was the one who would chase the ducks around the lake we lived by (was he trying to catch them? I'll never know). I’d try to calmly feed the ducks. Max was the one who had stitches three times before he was three, and I didn’t have stitches until I had surgery when I was sixteen. Max wore his heart on his sleeve and made split second decisions, while I thought through every decision I made carefully, quietly, and without drawing attention to myself.

Then, things changed. I don’t know when, and I don’t know how, but they did. All of a sudden, I was the one who wanted to adventure and get out there and DO THINGS while he was the one who wanted to stay closer to home.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with being a homebody. I admire those people. I just expected that I would be like that, because of how cautious I was growing up. But when it came down to it, I was the one wanting to move away from home. I was the one who had an urge to travel and an aching to do things that required some sort of minor risk. And I'm like that more than ever now.

Now, I want to go swimming with great white sharks.

I want to climb every mountain I see, and I constantly wonder how long it would take me to get up it.

I want to jump off cliffs.

I want to trek through the forest with no reason to go anywhere and no path to follow.

I want to road trip from Alaska to Panama.

I want to go to India, and Thailand, and Australia, and South Africa, and places that seem to call me every second of every day.

I want to do stupid stuff like this, but I also want to find adventure in everything that I do.

And, well, that can be hard.

In college, there are always so many things to worry about. There are tests, and homework. There are papers and projects and adulthood obligations. There are nights where everyone wants to sleep. There are nights where I know I shouldn’t still be awake, but I am. There are responsibilities, like eating healthy and making sure you’re hanging out with good people. And if you get sick, there’s a clinic, sure, but you have to treat yourself, really.

So that’s why in each of these things I’m trying to find adventure. My most recent unexpected thing was getting really, really sick. Not exactly an adventure I wanted to be on, especially because the weather was good and hiking trails were calling me. It was a learning curve, one that exhausted but tempted me.

I was told not to push myself by the nurse practitioner, so I haven’t been. I’ve been inside, mostly. I’ve been told not to ride a bike, because that has the potential to hurt my stomach (a potentially enlarged spleen lasts for how long?!), and not to push myself too fast.

But the only thing I really want to do is go outside and climb a mountain.

I’m the spontaneous one, without a car. Which is another problem. So, that means having to find adventures closer to me, and I did, a few weekends ago, where I went on a long walk. It wasn’t all that exciting. I’d driven there before, but I still got a weird sense of excitement and freedom in doing something out of the ordinary.

I am the one who, if I had a car with me, would go on multiple adventures every weekend. They don’t even need to be huge. Something little, like asking fifteen minutes before the sun set if anyone wanted to go take some photos with me at the Whitman Mission.

Any opportunity I get, I will adventure. I will be up for almost anything if I don’t have prior arrangements made.

Someway, somehow, I turned into the outdoorsy, adventurous kid no one really thought I would be. I turned into the one wanting to constantly move around and explore. I turned into the one who fell in love with spontaneous adventures.

However that happened, I’m glad.

Because I need adventure.

I love spontaneous ideas that turn into memories.

And, now that it’s almost spring, it’s time to get outside and let my free spirit be totally free.

And I honestly cannot wait for the adventures that spring, and especially summer, have for me.