Out Of The Norm

Part of the spice of life — and perhaps part of the path to growth itself — is doing something unusual, novel, or uncharacteristic.

In other words:
doing something out of the norm.

Life and all its demands can start to feel very heavy when we restrict ourselves to doing the same things, in the same ways, day after day after day.

Ironically though, routine itself is not really the problem.

A repetitive life can actually feel rich, meaningful, and deeply rewarding… especially if we occasionally throw caution to the wind, shake things up a little, and take a leap into something unexpected.

Sometimes all it takes is one day, one decision, one strange little detour that breaks the pattern.

Yesterday, two memories came back to me that made me think about this.

The first happened when I was around 12 years old and had a paper route.

One night, my brother and I had a couple of friends spend the night. We slept outside in cots and a tent in the backyard, which already felt adventurous and out of the ordinary. One of the friends also had a morning paper route, and somehow we all decided we would go deliver both routes together the next morning.

Normally, I delivered papers alone or with my brother. I rode my bike and tossed newspapers onto front porches from the sidewalk or street.

But this morning was different.

All four of us got up around 4am, rode our bikes through the dark neighborhood delivering papers together, and after finishing the routes, we spontaneously decided to ride to a donut shop about a mile and a half away.

That alone felt exciting.

We got there around 6:30am, ate a couple donuts, and then someone said:
“Let’s keep going.”

So we did.

Next we rode to a themed outdoor shopping center called The Farm, designed to look like an old farming village. We took neighborhood streets instead of the main roads, and I still remember how cool it felt riding bikes through this completely empty outdoor mall early in the morning.

Then, because we were still energized by the adventure, we kept going again — another couple of miles to a different shopping center entirely.

I honestly don’t remember much about the ride home except that we eventually got back sometime around 9am, collapsed onto the cots outside, and all fell asleep again for a couple hours before the sleepover ended.

I had that paper route for well over a year.

Yet this is one of my strongest memories from that entire period of my life.

Why?

Because it was completely out of the norm.

We did not have sleepovers often.
We almost never had multiple friends stay over at once.
We were rarely allowed to sleep outside all night.
I usually delivered papers alone.
And the decision to “go get donuts” was entirely spontaneous.

It felt like freedom.
It felt like adventure.
But mostly, it felt alive because it was different.

And I think there is something important about that.

The second memory that came back to me yesterday was from my mid-20s — the year I made the committed decision to “go be a professor.”

The idea had floated around in my mind for years before that. Other people had even suggested it to me. Earlier in life, I had already considered becoming a grade school teacher because the role of teacher itself seemed meaningful and attractive to me.

But this particular year was different.

This was the year I fully committed.

And looking back now, I can see that decision opened a portal into the life I have lived ever since.

What was out of the norm was not merely the goal itself.

It was the intensity of my focus.

Up until that point in my life, I had certainly done good and worthwhile things, but many of them were prescribed paths suggested by others. Sometimes I was deeply engaged, but sometimes I was honestly just “dialing it in.”

This was different.

It felt like I was actively forging a new identity for myself.

That was both terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.

I researched schools and graduate programs obsessively.
I enrolled in a weekend GRE preparation course that required a two-hour round trip drive every Saturday.
I studied constantly.
I requested recommendation letters from professors and employers.
I applied to five different graduate schools.
I sat for the high-pressure entrance exam and scored well enough to place in roughly the top quartile overall.

And meanwhile, I was already married, had a child, and was working a full-time job that regularly demanded 50+ hours per week.

So all of this happened during nights and weekends.

But I was intensely focused.

For the first time in my life, I felt like I was consciously building a path toward a different future and a different self.

I saw it as my path out of “working for the man.”

Fast forward to today, and I realize I am still pursuing both of these energies simultaneously:
the adventure of that childhood bike ride,
and the focused commitment of the year I decided to go be a professor.

That is partly why I am so committed to building this blog.
And doing it in a way that is intentionally out of the norm.

Writing and posting a blog article every single day for a year is not the conventional approach.

But that is partly the point.

I think of this platform as a place where I can become a kind of professor of the Highway to Yeah — exploring ideas, experiments, failures, adventures, and lessons in real time while helping others design lives that feel more authentic, energized, and aligned as well.

And the touring project I’m beginning this summer — exploring the “7C’s” (7 Cool towns/cities), playing open mics, returning regularly, building familiarity and adventure simultaneously — is another expression of this same instinct.

It is structure and spontaneity together.

Commitment and adventure together.

Routine and novelty together.

So maybe this is your reminder today:

Go do something out of the norm.

Take the longer route.
Say yes to something spontaneous.
Start the project.
Visit the town.
Go to the open mic.
Take the class.
Begin the thing you keep imagining.

You never really know which moments are going to become the defining memories of your life.

But very often, they begin the same way:

“This is not what I normally do.”