“One travels to run away from routine, that dreadful routine that kills all imagination and all our capacity for enthusiasm.”— Ella Maillart

Two years ago I chose to step away from business travel. I occasionally feel a pang of loss when a trade show in a city I love to visit comes up and I’m not there, but on the whole, I’ve enjoyed the tradeoff of dining with my bride every night and walking the dog with the stars and not-so-distant howl of coyotes for company.

This week I met with several people who still live the life I walked away from two years ago. It’s reminded me of the old routine, and I find I don’t miss it much at all. Those early morning trips to the airport to make a flight to make a meeting in some faraway place gets old after a couple of decades of doing it.

The fullness of our lives is in direct proportion to the creativity of our routines. The more we habituate adventure into our days, the more adventurous our lives. Likewise, the more we travel or venture out to meet other people, the more integral a part of the world we will be. We are what we repeatedly do, after all.

Still, the travel bug never went away, it was simply channeled into travel with people I care about in places I wanted to go. The routine changed to meet new priorities. The routine will change again, no doubt, as I look to the future. We all ought to scrutinize our routines now and then to determine if it’s become a little, well, routine. And then decide what to be and go be it.