If you’ve been reading my posts these last couple of weeks, you may have already guessed my word for 2025.
Advenire: Latin for “to arrive” or “to reach.” But other meanings for advenire include “to develop” "to set in", or "to arise.”
Advenire is the root for the English word Adventure!
Because that’s what I want this year to be — an adventure.
At the core of the word “adventure” is the idea that this experience is somehow new and exciting! Perhaps unusual, possibly hazardous? Maybe woven through with with daring! Absolutely demanding thought and enthusiasm.
A grand adventure!
It’s the way I want to approach life this year, and I want to do that every single day because every day is a grand day for a grand adventure!
Why wait for a vacation to have an adventure? Instead, realize that adventures can happen anywhere!
So far this year I’ve gone through grocery store backwards from the route I usually take. It was an adventure, and I found some delicious sunflower seed cookies!
We’ve taken different routes home from town as we go to and from the post office or running errands.
I’ve engaged in a kitchen adventure by trying some new recipes. So far I’ve been perfecting my homemade pie crust (one for a cherry pie with streusel topping and another for a French green bean casserole shepherd’s pie), and I can definitely see progress in getting a flakier crust!
I ordered something besides “the usual” the other day when I went out to lunch.
I started a brain adventure by listening to a new podcast (The Rosary in a Year).
Another adventure is learning a new skill! I’ve crocheted all my life, but I’ve never done Tunisian crochet (it’s the one that uses those long crochet hooks and looks more like knitting). So, in the spirit of adventure, this year for Christmas, my gift to myself was signing up for a Tunisian crochet sampler where I’ll get a new kit each month for 10 months!
It’s the end of January, and so far I’ve learned three new Tunisian stitches —simple stitch, knit stitch, and purl stitch. Even though I’ve spent about as much time ripping things out as I have crocheting, it’s been a fun challenge to make my stitches even.
And I’m getting there!
As I’ve adopted this adventure mindset, I’ve been reminding myself every day that adventure is about so much more than just what happens during any given day: it’s about how I decide to react to what happens.
Approaching everything (the good AND the not-so-good) that happens as simply another adventure along the road changes the way I experience things. In short, having an adventure depends more on where my mind is set than where my feet are at.
So this year, I’m choose adventure!
What do you think?
Want to come adventuring with me?