10 Ways to Seek Adventure

I think that the world is a crazy, scary, fun, adventurous, spontaneous place. That is a lot of adjectives to describe something that everyone views differently. We all have our own take on the world. We all view it as a place that is nothing we have ever encountered before. Therefore, I challenge everyone, including myself, to go out there an live. To go out there and go on an adventure. I think that we can find adventure anywhere we go. Adventure is something we seek, even if we aren't daredevils. We can still find something fun and crazy and totally not ourselves to go do. Adventure doesn't always have to be adrenaline driven either. We can read a book, listen to music, go out to eat. That all qualifies as seeking adventure if it is something we don't always do with our life. Go out there and seek adventure, have fun on your journey of life. 

I challenge every single person reading this, and all of their friends, to use one of these 10 ways to find adventure in this world we live in:

1) Move Across The Country:

I think the easiest way to find adventure is to move. What is more thrilling than picking up your life and moving to another city, state, or country? Nothing. It gives you a sense of adventure. You have to find a new job, meet new people, experience new things. You are forced out of your comfort zone. You are forced to experience life on a whole new level. It is the most obvious way to seek adventure.

2) Conquer a Fear:

Conquering a fear is something that everyone should do at least once in their life. Fears are not something that someone wants to have all of their life. I know I have a fear of heights. I would never been caught dead sky diving or bungee jumping. This is a fear I should and could get over quite easily. It would give me a sense of adventure to be able to overcome it. Go out there and conquer one of your biggest fears, who knows, you may just fall in love with the fear.

3) Go on a spontaneous trip:

Go on a trip. I don't mean a trip that is planned months in advance and you know exactly what you want to do and when you want to do it. I mean, spontaneously plan a trip and go. Pack your bags with no destination in mind. Plan something the day before. Just go out and explore. These usually end up being the best trips as it is anyways. Why not just have some fun and live a little bit. Whats the harm?

4) Make a new friend:

Making a new friend is a way of seeking adventure. You are putting yourself out there to be social. I am probably the quietest person on the planet, I know this. I don't make friends easily because of it. I think it is a way to mask my insecurity. By going out there and making a new friend you are finding someone new to come into your life and do things with. This new person may just be someone that you go on adventures with. You could have the craziest stories with this person.

5) Change Careers:

This one may be a little extreme, but it is adventurous. Most people are stuck in jobs that they truly don't love. They either don't have the passion, they don't like their coworkers, or it just isn't what they want to do with their life. Well if you are one of those people, make a change. Change your line of work to something you are more passionate in. Change your job so that you like the people you work with. Find that passion, that drive again. Make a change in order to truly live your life. It is adventure we are trying to find and you can find that in your daily job.

6) Go for a hike:

Hiking is one way to find adventure. It doesn't have to be a crazy hike that is in some jungle in some foreign country. It can be a hike in your backyard. Just being outdoors is a rush for many. You can experience life outside. It lets you clear your head. You find out what is important in your life and what you are missing in life. Hiking is a great outlet. It is a way to learn about yourself and learn about who you want to be. You get a rush, maybe not an adrenaline rush, but a rush of the outdoors when you are hiking.

7) Go to a sporting event:

A sporting event has a lot of adventure within itself. You have the thrill of your team playing another team. You get to experience it all first hand and in person. Not many people get to do that. Even if it isn't your team, you get to see live action. If you are lucky, you get to see a really memorable game or a rivalry game. These are always the best games. You get the thrill of being there, the atmosphere, the fact you can see other fans. You get to have stories that come out of it. You get the adventure of thinking that maybe one day you will know someone out there playing. It is a thrill I know I get every time I attend a sporting event.

8) Go for a drive:

I think the best part about living in California is being able to drive up the coast. Now, not everyone gets to do that, but everyone can go for a drive. Even if you don't have a car, just pick a spot and call a taxi. Have them drive you there. Or drive yourself if you do own a car. When you go for a drive then you are able to be with yourself. You really do learn a lot about yourself. Roll down the windows, blast the music, and just drive. This is adventure in itself. It is the adventure of learning who you truly are inside. It is something that I would love to do some days. 

9) Treat yourself:

Treat yourself to lunch, to dinner, to a museum, to an amusement park, to anything. Just go out there and treat yourself. Plan what would be the perfect date for a guy or a girl and then go out there and do it. Who cares what it looks like to others, you are spending the most quality time you could ever have with yourself. Who better to plan the perfect date for you than yourself. That way when the next suitor comes along and asks what your perfect date looks like, you can tell them exactly what you want to do. Yes, it is nice for someone else to take you out, but once in a while we all need to treat ourselves and learn about ourselves. We all deserve it. 

10) Live:

I think the best way to experience and seek adventure is to just live. You just have to go through every day with a goal of staying alive. With a goal of doing the best you can do. You may be having the worst day of your life, but you know what, you are living. You are able to walk around. You are able to do anything you want. You could go try out one of the other nine ways I mentioned of seeking adventure. I think that the best quotes I have read was: "To live would be an awfully big adventure". This doesn't mean you go day by day doing the same things in your life. This means that you are living, you are changing up your life. You are looking for something new to do. You are actually living your life like you are supposed to.

I challenge you all to go and live. To go out there and seek adventure. Accomplish something in your life. I know you will feel some sort of relief. You will be able to find something that you learn out of it all.

Sushi, Disneyland, and Supporting Friends

Well hello there little world,

Today's post is going to be a little bit different. I am going to talk more about my pretty amazingly, fun, epic day yesterday. So yesterday I went to Disneyland with some of the people I work with. We were having a mini girls day. The whole thing started because I wanted to go support one of my best friends in this little show called Flashback that Disneyland Cast Members put on for friends, family, and other cast members. I asked my lovely friends to accompany me on this little fun night out. We turned it into more of an afternoon, night out. It was a nice break from work and school, let me tell you.

First though, Me and two others went to Sushi. Now, I am a fan of sushi, but not a big fan. I am more of one of those very picky sushi eaters, but my friend asked me to tag along, so I decided to join before we met up with everyone else. This place was like a Chipotle for sushi. It was pretty amazing. So they have 5 different stations and you go down the line to create a sushi bowl. You can also get it in a wrap. It was called Pokinometry. I think I have fallen in love with sushi after eating here. You start with if you want salad, rice, or chips, etc. The next step you let them know if you want crab meat, avocado, cucumber, or onions. Then after that you choose your meat. You get 2 scoops for a small, 3 for a medium, or 4 for a large. I got a small so I could choose 2 meats, or just one and have two scoops of it. Being the picky eater that I am, I chose a simple cooked shrimp. You could choose from so many options though, I will have to go back and change it up. You could pick tuna, mashed tuna, octopus, albacore, salmon, and a few more that I can't list off the top of my head. After that you let them know if you want spice or not and they put the sauce on it. I chose no spice, I was trying to stay reserved cause I was a little weary of it all still. Next time though, I may go with no sauce because my bowl was filled of just juice and it started to overpower my food. After that you put on your toppings. This is where they have the seaweed, wasabi, ginger, etc. I just put on sesame seeds. It was pretty big bowl for me to eat, but it looked oh so good. I didn't devour it, but it was amazingly good. I would definitely go back there again. It is located in Downtown Anaheim about 5 minutes from Disneyland if you are ever in the area and want to go. For the small bowl it was $7, so reasonably priced, but not the cheapest. It was a cute little neighborhood, with the downtown feel. The only bummer is parking isn't close unless you are lucky to find street parking.

So after we finished our sushi, we headed to Disneyland to meet up with the other two people we were going with. Now try going to Disneyland with 5 cast members. It is not the typical experience of, lets get on every ride we can. Instead, we strolled in and went to California Adventure first. We hit Tower of Terror and then park hopped to Disneyland. Here we went to the Haunted Mansion and Space Mountain. We took our time, said hi to people we knew, and just slowly walked through the park. Some of us wanted Ice Cream and someone else wanted food, so we grabbed some ice cream and some food and sat and ate it for a bit. After this we decided to go to the front of the castle and take pictures. We took about 10 pictures until we were all content with how they turned out. We went to go on Indiana Jones. We got in line and less than 5 minutes later the ride broke down. Our little Cast Member senses were working because the second the music turned off, we knew. We exited line and the people who had gotten Ice Cream decided we wanted food now. We went to Bengal Barbecue and got some skewers and sat down. From here we decided to go head over to California Adventure to watch Flashback. It was held in the Hyperion theater. We went inside and found some seats and less than 10 minutes later it started.

The show was amazing. All of the cast members in it did a fantastic job, as well as the behind the scenes team. I was there to support my best friend and luckily she was on the team that the people from the area I work in are from.  They ended up winning it, so that was fun.

Now here is our little life lesson for today's post: I was there to support a friend. I had brought my other friends with me to support her. I was her cheering squad for the night. We all need someone to support us in life. We all have times where we need someone to be there for us. I was there for her last night. She asked if I wanted to go and I went. I know she didn't need me there, but in a grander scale, I would be there for her if it was something that she really needed me for. If she really wanted me somewhere I would be there. I know she would be there too, if I needed her. Even though it was just a little show that I was supporting her in, it reminds me that we always need some support, even for the littlest things. It really lets people know you are there for them.

So, through my girls day, I learned the lesson of supporting friends. I think we all learn a lesson, every single day, I can't wait to see what today's lesson is, but I know it will be a good one.

XOXO,

Jordan K.

Stages of Gaining Confidence

Confidence is something that everyone strives to have. I think it is the biggest thing that any 20 year old girl struggles with. I like to think I have the confidence that everyone strives to have. I mean, I am not one to really care what people think of me, so I am one to do anything. Want me to march up to someone and say something to them for you? Sure. Want me to go ask that guy out? Why not, what do I have to lose? I think that being confident is being able to be yourself. To be able to do what you want and not have a fear of rejection. In relationships confidence is some thing that both parties should have. Both people need to be confident within their own lives in order to be confident with each other.

I think that confidence comes in stages. I think there are 3 main stages of what brings confidence to a person. Here is my take on those stages:

1) Accepting Yourself:

I think that the first stage of gaining confidence is to be able to accept yourself. I think that accepting yourself is hard within itself. I am the first to admit that I am insecure with certain things about myself. I feel like my personality is very loud and out there, because of this I get insecure that it will scare people away. I think that being able to accept your insecurities is key. You may never overcome them, or be able to shed them completely. However, you can accept them. You can accept yourself. You are perfect just the way you are. You are the best version of you out there. I think that this is something that everyone needs to realize. There is no one out there that is you, or better than you, or worse than you. There is only one you. Once you are able to accept yourself then you will have amazing confidence within yourself.

2) Accepting Others:

The next step is to accept other people. You will need to accept what they look like. You can't just judge them by their cover. This kills people's confidence and you wouldn't want anybody to kill your newly found confidence. I think that you have to be able to get to know people. You have to get to know their personality. I think that someone else's personality says a lot about them. I am not saying you have to be best friends with them, but once you get to know more people, you learn a lot of people's stories. This is something that is important. The more people you know, the more stories you learn, the more you see the world. This helps build your confidence and theirs. You are building your confidence because you are learning that it is okay to be insecure about certain things, but it doesn't mean those insecurities have to hold you back. You learn through other people's stories that they weren't held back. You help build their confidence because you are there to listen to them. You are there to reassure them, to get to know them, this could help fix some of their insecurities. I think that once you get the chance to accept other people you will find more confidence in yourself and the good in yourself.

3) Accepting Opinions:

The final stage of gaining confidence is to accept the opinions of others. The opinions of others are usually what kills confidence. I think that if everyone just kept their opinion to themselves, then people wouldn't have to be searching for confidence. That isn't the case though. Instead, you have people telling their opinions to everyone. These opinions are what hurts someone. That famous saying words kill is very much real. Words do kill, maybe not literally, but they do kill someone's confidence. You have to learn to not let opinions of others get to you. That is the key to having killer confidence. I mean, I know, it isn't as easy as it seems. We are always looking to please other people and make sure their opinion of us is a goods one. But in reality, is it really bad if someone doesn't like us? If someone thinks of us one way? No, it really isn't. In all honesty, the opinion of one person, two people, ten people, even a hundred people, means nothing in the end. As long as you have the confidence yourself, that is all that matters. You have to realize that you have to have a good group of friends, accept others, and a good mindset of yourself, accepting yourself, in order to accept other's opinions. Don't let what someone says get to you, it isn't the end of the world.

In the end confidence isn't that hard to achieve. It is all about how you view yourself. It is all about how you view others. And it is all about how you handle other people's opinions of you. I think that everybody can find confidence in themselves. It may be difficult, but everyone can accomplish it. The three stages of gaining confidence are only my opinion. They are what has helped me achieve the killer confidence that I have. I think that it can help other people achieve the confidence they are struggling to find. So just remember, it doesn't matter what other people think of you, just remember it is what you think of yourself and others. You just have to identify and try to accept your insecurities in order to start the move to gaining confidence in your life.

Finding Joy

I think that everybody has somebody in their life. I don't mean just family. I mean, everybody has somebody that isn't of blood that they have found to be friends with and to share their life with. Everybody has a friend. This person can be your boyfriend, girlfriend, best friend from kindergarten, or best friend from yesterday. This can literally be anybody. The truth is though, as much as you say you don't have someone you do have someone.

There is a difference though. You can still feel alone if you are missing someone in your life. If you are missing a significant other, a best friend, or a family member. If you are missing someone to be able to share your life with. I think this is a feeling I know too well. I think everybody knows this feeling. Everyone goes through the stage of their life where they are looking for their joy in life. I know my joy is making other people happy. I know the times I have the most joy is spending time with my family and my friends and having a good time.

I think that my life is different than I want it to be, because sometimes I have trouble finding that joy. Like today for example. I found out that I got the opportunity to interview for an internship that I have wanted since January. It has been a long time coming to finally get to this point of just an interview. The minute I hung up the phone and I told my mom was the moment I realized I am searching for the next person to bring me joy in my life.

With my best friend across the country, my other best friend going rogue for a bit because of our lives just being too busy, and my other good friend being in another state. I just realized I have no one to run to with this news. I have no one that I can jump for joy with in this very second. I think it is something we all struggle with while in college. Especially when you stay home for college.

Everyone is always searching for the thing that brings them joy. They are looking for the next thing to take on in life. This is what happens at 20 years old. You have the power to take adventure, to do anything you want, take flight. I love that feeling. I love the feeling of knowing that if I wanted to I could pick up my life and change it all in a second. I know most people don't think that way, but that is the fun part of what life is about. Life is all about adventure and I think that through that adventure is when we find the most joy in our lives. We find it while we are searching for our life long career, where we will settle down, what we will do, if we will get married.

Everyone has somebody. That somebody is their joy in their life. When you feel alone you look around and you learn what your real joy comes from. You realize you have someone in that moment. You realize you can find joy.

Introduction

My name is Jordan Campbell-Read. I am just a 20 year old college student trying to navigate my way through this crazy thing called life. I think I have a blessed life. I was pretty privileged growing up. I have been able to go on a lot of trips, do some pretty amazing things, and live life in a not so normal way. I am currently in college at Cal State Fullerton where I am hoping to be able to graduate with a degree in communications-journalism. I want to be able to use this to become a sports reporter.

I really want to use this blog to be able to share advice with people. To be able to share the love I have for life and just living. I am very intrigued by relationships and love. I think that watching and analyzing a love blossom between two people is intriguing. I am a hopeless romantic you could say. I think that a relationship teaches you a lot about yourself as well as how to work with another person. I think the idea of love is so fascinating to me. Heartbreak happens, but I think that it is all part of the step to find that true soul mate you are destined to meet in your life.

I fully hope that I am able to share all my experiences as a twenty year old living in Orange County with people and that they will be able to take advice from me and it will help them in their own life. I think that just simply sharing everything is a way to help someone so that they know they are not alone in life.

XOXO for now,

Jordan