I’m not writing this from a tricked out Sprinter van, or sitting in a hammock. I’m writing this from my kitchen table in Colorado. It’s 4pm, and I haven’t left the house yet today.

If you offered me a plane ticket to Mexico for later tonight, I’d probably take it. But it would be a hard choice. Because as much as I love to travel, to explore, to be waist-deep in water in some cave in New Zealand, to be somewhere that isn’t “home,” I also love sitting in my kitchen drinking coffee all day, writing, working.

I love my home life, my life with a routine, with brunch, just as much as I love my more adventurous pursuits. And it’s a completely different love, but an important one.

To love the adventure in your every day, you have to eat well. Stop eating fast food if you feel like crap the next day. Drink a lot of water. Limit the amount of alcohol you consume and how late you stay out partying. If that doesn’t speak to you, do whatever you want, but the message is that you have to stop treating your body like shit, it’s the only one you get. What you put in it affects how well you’re able to go out into the world and get stuff done.

Do something that raises your heart rate every day. Move your body. You don’t need to bend yourself into a pretzel, or be the most fit person in the gym. You don’t even have to go to a gym. Just move. Be gentle with yourself if you learn that you aren’t as strong or as flexible as you’d like to be– it just means you have a goal.

Read books, watch films, listen to interviews and learn about influential people (influential, that is, to you). Make it part of your routine, something you just do. Pick things you actually want to learn about. If you are having trouble getting through a book, read a different one. Stop judging yourself for not wanting to watch that documentary or for staring at that book you’ve been meaning to read, and fill your head with stuff you truly want to learn about instead.

Being in one place with a routine is an incredible opportunity to treat yourself really well. Recognize that opportunity and use it.

Stop being satisfied with circumstantial friends.

Pursue ambitious, insightful people who are seeking their own path to self-fulfillment and a purposeful life. Nobody with a mindset like that will think you are weird for wanting to grab a coffee with them. Surround yourself with people you are proud to know. Cherish the relationships you have with people who leave you feeling great about yourself after a phone conversation. Make them feel appreciated in return.

Find a community that likes what you like, whether it’s chess or mountain biking. There’s something for everyone, even if the community is based online.

Anyone who judges you, who makes you feel small and like you’re not enough, is someone who is not improving you. Re-allocate that person’s role in your life. Create space for what empowers you instead.

Make a list of things that scare you and a list of things you’ve been meaning to do for a while. Pick one thing from each list and do them. Maybe they are even the same. If something seems huge and far off, create steps and hold yourself accountable to do them.

Pick a project that doesn’t have to do with work. Your project can be writing. It can be building a shelf for your living room. It can be running a mile, or fifteen. It can be learning how to cook one recipe really, really well.

Make it fun, but make it challenging.

And yes, make plans for when you’re not at home. Make plans for when you want to travel, to get outside of your routine in a big way. Get excited for the things you’ll see, the people you’ll meet, the food you’ll taste and the moments that will seem to ring in your ears for years afterward. But don’t live in those moments right now. Plan them so that you can live in them fully, once you have arrived there.

Don’t give yourself the reason, “it was convenient.” Just because it fell into your lap does not mean it was ever right.

And if you are ever bored in this life, you have a huge opportunity to do something differently. Do not be satisfied with boredom, or with circumstance. Determine purpose. Determine happiness.

Nobody is happy all the time, but you are the only person who can decide what happiness means to you. Your path may not always take you there. There are times when you will feel so damn fulfilled, and times when you wish you could sleep through the pain of life. But this thing we get to experience– is incredibly short. It could be over tomorrow.

Show up for yourself, and make it worth living.