Ever since I can remember, I have always lived in the same town. Good ol’ Forney, Texas. I did go to college for four years in Austin, Texas, which was awesome, but it was a short lived break from the small town I was oh too familiar with. I remember growing up and the only places we had to go to for food in town were Dairy Queen and McDonald’s.

While it was small and safe, it virtually offered nothing intellectually stimulating to me. When my family and I did go on vacation, it was always to the same place as well, Destin, Florida.

Don’t get me wrong; Destin is a beautiful place and I always thoroughly enjoyed the yearly road trip, but once again it was the same place every year. It was familiar, and familiarity had now become a safe place for me.

I can’t tell you how many times I have told people that getting lost is one of my biggest fears. Not the proverbial lost, as in lost in life, but legitimately l-o-s-t. You will not find me going anywhere that I have never been before without my GPS. Also, if you invite me somewhere I have never been in a part of town that I do not know, there’s a 90 percent chance that I will not go. I take the same route every day to work and I sit in the same spot at school. I know, I’m boring; but to me familiarity is home.

Recently, I went on a road trip with some of my friends for my birthday to Enchanted Rock in Austin.

It was a four-and-a-half-hour drive from Dallas proper. The drive was also almost exactly identical to the one I used to make to and from Austin when I went to school there. I was mentally prepared to make the trip; however, I was not mentally prepared for hiking an unfamiliar place with unpredictable weather. As soon as you enter Enchanted Rock National Park, there are signs warning of slippery rocks when wet. Being my lucky self, it was cloudy and starting to thunder outside as soon as we got there. Long story short, I spent the whole day questioning our location along the hike, and whether or not it was going to rain because I didn’t want to get stuck at the top of the rock.

Instead of enjoying myself and experiencing everything the hike had to give me, I spent my time worrying about getting lost and if we were going to get stuck at the top.

It seems that keeping myself in the habit of the familiar has now begun to hinder my life experiences. Currently, as I’m writing this, I am in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. Yes, it is a place I have been to before, but with the encouragement of my friends I stepped a little out of my comfort zone.

I had told myself that I would never swim in the ocean at night because of sharks. Well, I went swimming with Manta rays last night, and the day before I hiked down into a steep lava tube and down the side of a volcano that I normally wouldn’t have hiked down.

It was scary, but it was great.

Learning to escape the familiar parts of my life will be a challenge, but it is one that is worth working on.