“Mistakes aren’t always regrets.” “I’d rather die terrified than live forever.” “Let’s do it and never look back.”

I talk about adventures a lot–like road trips with no map and no itinerary, just you and a car and three thousand miles of freeway to explore. Or just driving around randomly on country roads, and stopping to explore creepy abandoned houses. I want to go exploring. I want to make mistakes. I want to be terrified. And I want to come home after and tell stories about it. I wish I’d been arrested when the police stopped us in Minnesota. I wish I’d spent a cold night in a cell, furious that our trip had been ruined, upset that I was locked up so far from home. All it would have taken was a bit of cheek.

But I’m a pragmatist. When my friends start talking about things which will end badly I’m the first to say this is a bad idea. I think I’m afraid that mistakes will become a virtue, that we’ll start making decisions simply because it will end badly and there will be a story later. The mistakes I love are the stories of failures, the stories of taking risks and then suffering for it. They don’t have to end in disaster. But they might. I can’t wait to find out.