Jonathan Bitz - Creative Adventuring: A Field Guide For an Inspired Life

For Grandy and Pops

Without you, none of this

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A NEW WAY OF LIFE

Inside all of us is fear. Inside all of us is adventure. Inside all of us is A Wild Thing.
Maurice Sendak

I remember standing at the kitchen sink one day in 2019, after our third baby was born, and thinking, This is not how I want to live. I was so empty and tired of the cycle: waking up at all hours of the night, poopy diapers, pee in the beds, vomit, breakfast, cleaning, school, lunch, cleaning, crying, naps, more crying, more poop, more tears, more food, more messes, baths, reading, cleaning up, bedtime. Thinking of the next decade of this repetition exhausted me even more.

I knew something needed to be done to break this cycle of mundanity that was breaking me. It was breaking all of usand had been for generations.

I started putting together lists of museums, parks, hiking trails, natural wonders, and day trips, anything we could do to change things up, to activate our potential, and to give us something to look forward to outside the grind of daily life.

We all needed it. We needed to be injected with some inspiration, with daily meaning and creative goals, not just living for getting to the end of the day without a calamity. Living is different from surviving.

The hectic schedule of owning two businesses in addition to caring for three young children took a toll on my marriage, and my wife and I slowly lost our connection and sense of partnership. I found myself fighting to keep us together, but really I was just fighting to live the kind of life I had always wanted, the kind of life that was inspired and interesting.

Because I believed it was possibleI just didnt know how to live that kind of life.

But I knew one thing was certain: the babies deserved it.

The babies, as I have called them for so long, are now toddlers: Gemma, the older sister, is six years old. Silas Sawyer is four. Harlow Bear is two.

Sometimes the Hardest Thing Is the Best Thing

Then, a divorce happened.

It was the hardest thing Ive ever done. Its the hardest thing Im still doing, over two years removed from the day that I left my familys home for goodthe same day we sold my dream, my business. The timing was unspeakably brutal, and I felt composed fully of loss and heartache. But beneath the feeling of having lost everything at once was the deeper knowledge held by the fallow earth in winter: that the inevitable spring holds a garden of possibilities, new growth, and new brambles to tend or let run wild.

How could I hold myself accountable? How could I reconcile my past choices with whom I wanted myself to be? And how can I best exemplify that ideal for my children? After all, they are impressions of who I am, where I came from, and where I am going. We had a fresh start, and we could live in any way we wanted to.

That was it. This was the imperative, the fresh start. It was time to change our mindset as a family. It was also time for me to change my mindset as a father and to embody the spirit of leadership I know has always been within me, the leadership that dwells within us all.

I was determined to change our lives, our direction, our swagger and style, and our outlook. I intended to infuse our lives with meaning.

I wanted virtues exemplified. A family crest. Cohesion. Direction. Inspiration. Adventure.

I wanted a new life, but I wasnt sure how to go about creating it. Still, through the darkest night of my life, with the support and grace of family and friends, we both gradually and immediately started to shape a new vision together.

Curses Become Blessings

We got one long summer together to learn how to live the life I wanted us to always live.

I took the babies to every museum we have in town. We moved to an area laced with great parks and paths and pools and creeks and open spaces.

We created a scooter gang. My posse and I packed lunches and hit the sidewalks and trails. We came home sunburnt for the boys afternoon naps. After we ate supper, we rode into the sunset and came back after dark.

And I relished stepping into the archetypal role of the hero, finding things we lost in the journeylike my five-year-olds lost Barbie shoesomewhere in the nighttime mile behind us. Ill never forget my daughter exclaiming over and over that first time: Dada, you get five congratulations!

It felt as if we were finally doing something. The scooter wheels were churning toward the horizons of our design.

Then winter came. We went indoors, and with the help of my mother and father, we found new tools for the kids to stay inspired and educated and growing.

I was hungry for more outings with them. I wanted them to continue to have exciting days with me.

Then, COVID-19.

All of a sudden, the spring we were all looking forward to no longer existed. We couldnt go back to the playgrounds. We couldnt go back to the museums. We learned a lesson about expectations.

I had to discover some other way, without predesigned amusements or curricula.

Or rather, I had to let this other way discover me.

In the natural flow of our life, an organic mindset started emerging: lets go. Lets go on adventures. We still can.

The novel coronavirus forced me to become more creative, more novel.

What initially felt like yet another curse blossomed into a moment of profound blessing; this was the precise mountain that I needed to climb.

Instead of relying on the basics like playgrounds and pools and public places, we leaned into the natural world. We started finding places to go where nobody was. Turns out, theres a lot of places where nobody is, where kids can find exactly what they need.

With no school for the kids to go to, I started putting lesson plans together on what was around us: the robin and its nest outside the window, the lilacs at the mansion that we picnicked at, snails, toads, and the raptors we delighted in locating, as they soared overhead.

At this point, my babies can identify more flowers, plants, and animals than I could as a teenager. Why? Because we creatively adventure. We go out and explore. We go inward and explore.