What’s Your Quest?

I’ve written before about the importance of staying active – both physically and mentally – and about having purpose, and I figured the start of a new year is a good time to address this again, particularly since there are New Year’s resolutions on the line.

This time around it’s about having a quest (goal or mission also work if quest is too “Lord of the Rings” for you). I wrote in my Year End post about friends who are on a quest to visit every microbrewery in NJ. A worthy but daunting undertaking as there are over 130, with more to come. They are doing this slowly by taking weekend day trips and by combining other in-state getaways with brewery visits. Whenever they talk about their latest leg of the journey, the joy they get out of it is evident, even if the beer wasn’t necessarily worth the trip. Not content with a leisurely quest like that, a friend in Colorado has set a more challenging goal - to summit all the 14.000 foot peaks in the state. All 58 of them! At last count it was 14 down, 44 to go. Quite and undertaking for someone who lived at sea level in the Florida Keys for many years. For these friends, the quest itself is the goal – something to plan for and look forward to. Much like my eventual Route 66 trip.

I am hopeful that the Covid craziness will subside enough to allow me to at least get into the serious planning phase soon. That in itself will keep me occupied for quite some time looking at maps and identifying sites I want to visit along the way. This one will likely be a quest I take on alone, much to the dismay of many people I tell about it. Getting out on my own for a couple of weeks with a general plan but no commitments to be in a certain place at a certain time appeals very much to me after so many years on other people’s schedules, and after reading about Neil Peart’s adventures by bicycle and motorcycle. Unexpected side trips can be the most fun part of such a trip and being tied to a strict schedule restricts the ability to take them.

Of course a quest doesn’t need to be as complex as planning a cross-country trip. It can be as simple as visiting all your local – insert your own category here, getting a NJ Winery Passport and filling it with stamps, playing as many disc golf courses as you can in a season (a previous quest of mine). That last one is getting easier on a local level but harder across the state as more courses are added each year. Yes, NJ has a lot of wineries (with pretty good wine!) and a lot of disc golf courses. It isn’t called the Garden State for nothing, you just have to get off the Turnpike to see it all.

Other worthy quests include visiting all 50 states (I completed that with my wife in 2018 in Oregon), seeing a game in every MLB or NFL stadium or NHL arena. Many people have completed those, often a father-son team or group of friends – which makes such an achievement even more fun and meaningful. There are plenty of local / regional stadiums and arenas too so you don’t have to travel the whole country to complete such a quest. Speaking of regional, my wife just suggested an early summer quest for us – a lobster roll hunt in Maine. That not only sounds delicious, it also sounds like a blog post, so stay tuned.

If travel is not an option, how about learning a language or developing a new skill? Volunteer for a local organization as part of a quest to make things better for someone else. The possibilities are endless, and it’s not about the destination, it’s about how you get there. Pick your quest and launch yourself into it. Along the way you will find purpose, learn new things, meet new people, maybe even step out of your comfort zone, and definitely have a lot of fun – all the things that make us tick.