Monday, July 6, 2015

Adventuring Into Adulthood--40 for 40

I don't often feel like a full-fledged adult.  Mostly I look around and wonder when someone is going to call my bluff and discover that I've been simply masquerading as an adult for years. Off will come the mask and I'll be able to go back to being the fourteen year old who's been living way out of her comfort zone in this world of mortgages and careers and other ginormous responsibilities.

But it's hard to deny the fact that adulthood is your world when you find yourself staring down the barrel of the big 4-0. Forty.  Seriously.  How on earth did that happen? As is the case for most of the big questions in my life, I have no answer.  But in surveying things so far I feel pretty lucky in all that I've done and seen and become up to this point. This past year or so has been an interesting detour that, like most detours, wasn't planned and I wasn't prepared for.  I'm still coping with some of the fall out (both positive and negative) and working to find a path and direction in many areas of my life. And, as is my M.O., I've spent some time reading good books and developing an attack plan (ie a stack of lists and goals) to get things moving.

One of the things I've done often throughout the years is make a bucket list (I've done it since long before they were cool!) and my 40th birthday seemed an appropriate time to break out a new one. Rather than starting on my 39th birthday and working up to it or launching it on the 40th I decided to sandwich the birthday in the middle of it all.  So, I've got 6 months of goals leading up to the big day and another 6 months to follow it up.

Forty things in all; some brand new adventures and some things I've done before and want to do again and a few things I just want to make sure I focus on and make time for.  This blog is actually one of the things on that list. A few others include:

  • making a presentable loaf of bread
  • participating in a photography challenge
  • finding a cause I love enough to regularly volunteer for
  • attending ComiCon
  • running a 5K
  • paying off my credit cards 
  • hosting a dinner party
  • sending a hand-written letter every week
  • finally finishing the book I've been writing
  • getting married! (this one will take up the bulk of my energy for the next couple of months so hopefully the rest of them don't suffer in the meantime!)
How about you? Are you a list-maker?  A goal-setter? What do you to commemorate or cope with the big milestones? I'd love to hear about it!

photo by me: New Zealand graffiti

1 comment:

  1. Finally catching up with your new blog adventure. This sounds like an ambitious list. I really like the idea of finding an organization to volunteer for. You've always got something exciting happening in your life and even though it's not your natural state I think you've figured out how to be extroverted in your own right. And that's something to be proud of.

    Ps. Just as a side note, I wonder if you might consider changing the font of your posts? Maybe it's just me, but it is a little hard to read.

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