When I was fifteen years old, my New Year’s Resolution was to get involved in the theatre. Within a week or two I was sitting in on rehearsals at a local community theatre, where I became an assistant stage manager, and then a stage manager, and then I auditioned for a couple plays, got a couple roles, and I was off. I was pretty much always involved in one show or another for the next five years. Then lots of things happened to dissuade me from pursuing an acting career, but, you know, I did it.
I haven’t followed through with something like that in a long time. Not completely. But I also haven’t always set realistic goals. So I’ve decided to make a list of things I’d like to do before my 31st birthday. Because if I don’t set goals, I have the tendency to accomplish nothing. So I’m going to be inspired by my fifteen-year-old self and decide to do some things with the next year of my life.
(The following are numbered to help me keep track of them, but in no particular order):
- Take voice lessons
- Learn 5 more chords on my guitar
- Use my gym membership at least three times a week
- Get a real manicure
- Plant a tree
- Raise some chickens
- Get my Etsy page back on track
- Have more date nights with my husband
- Ride on a train (I’ve done this many times before, but it’s fun, and I’d like to do it again.)
- Paddle a canoe
- Sew something (bigger than a button)
- Cook my way through the first Good Eats cookbook
- Go hiking
- Go dancing
- Have a spa day
- Take a parenting class
- Do a real pushup without shaking
- Go camping by myself
- Find a writer’s group
- Write a poem
- Read a book of poetry
- Volunteer for charity
- Visit Canada
- Visit Leavenworth, WA
- Use my pressure canner
- Read my fiction (aloud, in an organized setting) in public
- Attend a literary reading
- Read a book I’d never think to read
- Call my brother at least once a month
- Feed a giraffe
This looks like a lot of stuff, but when I think about it, it’s all achievable. Cooking through Good Eats: Volume One will take some commitment but I love cooking and I need to brush up my skills. I’m already signed up for voice lessons, so that’s no problem. The Woodland Park Zoo offers giraffe feeding opportunities, there are always tons of literary readings in and around Seattle, and unless my mother broke my sewing machine, I can probably manage to sew some new dining room curtains. The hardest of these to accomplish might actually be camping alone, because it will involve convincing my husband why I need to do it and managing to peel myself away from him for a weekend. But I’m resolving right now to do it. Do or do not do, as Yoda said, there is no try.
