Meet The Accidental Adventurer

Confronting fear, one adrenaline-soaked escapade at a time

   

         The door to the airplane banged open. I looked down and saw a lake, a checkerboard of farms and ribbons of gray roads stretching across rural southern Michigan. There was a man sitting to my right. I had never met him. I did not know his name. I had no idea of his credentials, other than guessing that because his title was “jumpmaster” he must be an expert. So when he barked instructions at me, I followed them.
            At his behest, I swung my left leg through the open door, out of the plane and onto a step. Then I swiveled my hips so I could reach my arms out. Left hand first, I grabbed the strut that holds the wing to the body of the plane and pulled myself out.
            Now I was standing outside of the airplane. While holding on to the strut with both hands, I dangled, at his command, first my right foot and then both feet off of the step they had been on. The plane was 3,500 feet off the ground and moving at 65 miles per hour. I flapped in the wind like a flag on a car antenna. A static line connected the parachute pack on my back to the plane. When I let go of the strut and fell, the static line would become taut, which would yank the parachute out.
            That was the plan, at least.
            As my hands strained to squeeze the struts to dust, I was, to say the least, questioning my decision making.
            The jumpmaster gave one last instruction: “Let go!”
            I acted like I didn’t hear him. I refused to let go.
            That was June of 1994. I was never that scared again until March of 2013, when I was a writer at Sporting News. One morning I got up early to drive to an assignment. My boss called to tell me I needed to attend a meeting in the office that afternoon. He would not tell me what the meeting was about, and by not telling me, he told me everything. I was going to be laid off. I returned home to squeeze the struts of my career for a few hours before being kicked out of the proverbial airplane.
            I was (and remain) a married father of two. Providing for them was no problem when I had a job. But what if I didn’t?
            Fear sped toward me at 32 feet per second squared. I applied for 18 openings without getting so much as a rejection letter. I don’t want to sound self-defeating, but even if I had gotten a job, the journalism landscape was so bad there was no guarantee I’d keep it. I had enough of being enslaved by that fear. I decided to launch my own writing business.
            There was only one problem. I had no idea how to do it.
           

I wore fear like a second skin. I was afraid of failing, of being told no, that I would never sell a story and that even if I did, it would be my last.
            Being on my own was isolating. I thought I could learn how to run my writing business only from other writers. I was so wrong about that—so very, very wrong—that it’s embarrassing to admit I ever thought it. And I learned I was wrong in ways I never would have expected: By putting myself in dangerous situations, as I recount here. Slowly but surely, I started to conquer my fear of the business world by facing fears in the physical world. The lessons I learned have steeled me for whatever adventure may come, and I hope they can serve you, too, as I share them in this newsletter.
            By now you might be asking what this has to do with MABA (Make America Burpee Again), the former subject of this newsletter.
            The answer is nothing … and everything.
            The newsletter formerly known as MABA existed only because as I learned to love adventure, I realized my lack of fitness limited how adventurous I could be. Getting in shape led (in a roundabout way) to MABA (which I explain here). If you enjoyed our MABA journey in January — if you’re the type of person who thinks doing 3,100 burpees in a month is fun — you’ll enjoy this newsletter.
            I rechristened this newsletter The Accidental Adventurer as a nod to those early days, when I was scared out of my mind about failing at work and pursued adrenaline-soaked assignments solely because editors would pay me to do them.
            I had no intention of adventure becoming a way of life, but it has. And now adventure is no longer just happening to me. I pursue it, as often as I can, and I write about it, as often as I can (see here). In this newsletter, I will take you along with me. I will write about striving and fear and failing and what can be learned from all of them. I will write about surfing and rock climbing and ice climbing. I will take you onto a dog mushing sled and inside a Humvee during military training and into a P51 jet flying over a NASCAR race.
            I will take you along as I fall on my face in new and different ways. I will try new products and visit far-away places and scare myself half stupid, all for you, dear reader.
            My bucket list will get shorter. My goal is that by reading this, yours will get longer. Long term, I envision a time where you will literally join me on trips. I’m not ready for that yet. But I’m working toward it.
            I eventually let go of that airplane, of course. I’m still learning to let go, and I hope you’ll come along with me as I do.