It's Been a Long Time
Sep 29, 2024: A Note from Jordan
When I regularly spend time outdoors, adventuring, I experience a positive momentum in my life. When I don’t prioritize it, I tend to feel stagnant and uninspired. But how does anyone prioritize time in nature with a 9-5 desk job?
I respect those who choose not to spend hours behind a computer. My career path has led me into marketing, and a job where I sit at a computer 40 hours a week. This choice has many pros, but I wrestle with managing a desk job and ensuring my value of outdoor adventure is fulfilled.
In 2022, this wrestling brought me and Eva to work remotely from a 20ft travel trailer. We spent six months on the coast of Texas and six months in Montana, Utah and Wyoming. If our previous, 2015 year on the road was a 10/10 for adventure, it was a 4/10 for sustainability. I’m not sure I could sleep in a tent forty nights in a row like I did when I was 26, and I couldn’t sleep inside a two-door Jeep Wrangler in a Cracker Barrel parking lot either. Besides, we barely made enough money to cover our expenses doing freelance work, so saving was out of the question. This 2022 travel trailer year on the road was more like a 7/10 for sustainability, and a 6/10 for adventure. We had to make compromises, primarily where we were physically located and when for my work. But I believe there are 8 and 9/10 versions out there for both sustainability and adventure. And I'm curious, who has crafted situations like this and how do they make it work?
That question drifts into my mind often. I’m not talking about professional outdoor athletes, or NatGeo photographers, but those of us in another bucket. Those in pursuit of a less extreme, but adventure-filled life, who desire regular, quality time in nature hiking, running, camping, fishing and exploring. Not hardcore adventurers, but...mediumcore adventurers?
Maybe it's the mixture of freedom and joy, or the clarity nature provides. The dose of cold water over the head which makes the seemingly important feel trivial. One of my great curiosities in life is how easy it is to lose sight of how incredible it is to be alive and how many amazing experiences are waiting for us. In nature I feel closer to this feeling. I can listen to Jose Gonzalez or watch Walter Mitty and catch snippets of it. But, to get back out and experience it regularly is completely different.
Eva and I continue to think about OFF & OUT’s role in our lives. The way we structured it originally wasn’t sustainable for us and running it started to inhibit living into the value of adventure ourselves. But OFF & OUT is, at its core, a direct extension of our belief in the value of spending more quality time outdoors. After a pandemic and a couple more years, we still don’t know exactly what it could be but we know we want it to be something, a channel for us to pursue adventure alongside others. And maybe, like me, you want a place that isn't your social media feed to feel a little closer to that.
Which leads me here, to a goal of writing more about the pursuit of the non-extreme, but adventure-filled lifestyle outdoors. Sharing the ups and downs, the successes and failures in hopes we can continue to pursue this "mediumcore adventurer" life together.
Borrowing from Life Magazine’s motto expressed in Walter Mitty, “To see the world, things dangerous to come, to see behind walls, to draw closer, to find each other and to feel. That is the purpose of life.”
In the meantime, you can still rent gear from us this fall as camping weather in Austin approaches. We'll be out there in a tent soon.
To shared trails ahead. #offandout
Jordan