I agree with Annie’s assessment of feeling alive:

Because, I guess, not only do I want some amount of challenge but I want challenges that I choose, not just the random ones that happen.

Self-prescribing challenges—and then meeting those challenges? Yeah, that’s some good stuff. The liquor of empowerment, a sense of efficacy in the world. A feeling that you can, indeed, do hard things.

We had this feeling recently as our 4+ year challenge to devise a 100-day overseas trip finally came to fruition. While daunting, it’s also made us feel a bit more alive. That, yeah, we can pull off some cool shit. That we have choice in this world, and perhaps even in how things play out. We’ve re-inspired ourselves.

I’ve also learned (though I still don’t quite believe) that achievement is not the endgame here. The outcome is unimportant. The benefit comes from the process of tackling the challenge, doing the difficult things it asks of me. It makes me feel alive. It’s exhilarating. And exhilaration is worth pursuing, or at least exploring. Feeling alive is where it’s at. Not feeling good (although that’s nice, too). Feeling alive. Sometimes feeling alive doesn’t feel good. But it’s still good, somehow.

That sorta sums up many of my travel quests. Is it exactly fun flying around the whole damn world just to get to some tiny specks on the globe? Trying to visit every single goddamn county in the US? Nope, not really. Travel often includes significant discomfort, boredom, hardship, anxiety, and unease. Much of the value of one’s travels occurs later, sometimes years later, when those good moments are recalled, or perhaps finally appreciated.

It’s not because of the resulting achievement, though. It’s because you did the thing. You experienced it. You lived it. It was something new, and it changed you. The process of doing, of enduring, of experiencing, of growing…that is, indeed, “where it’s at.”

When I finished my nearly-lifelong quest to visit all 400+ national parks in the US, I expected to feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment. I had made it, completed something very important to me, and also something quite rare. When I followed it up a few months later by being the first person to visit all 490 Treasured Places? You’d imagine that I was over the moon with joy.

Nope, not really. Sure, I was proud of doing all that. But living was being in the middle of it, not having done it. That’s what was exciting, that’s when you felt more alive. Accomplishments were in the past, and being alive…well, that’s in the present.