I have had quite a few discussions about my 17 Before 2017 list over the last couple of months. I guess that’s related to the whole New Years resolution thing. Sadly, most of the time I can’t remember all 17 things on my list. I need to do something about that because even though very few need daily follow-up I think I need more frequent reminders. I’ve also decided that there are a few things on the list that I don’t want to do anymore. I told this to my friend V and she said that I should feel free to make changes because it should be a living document. She’s totally right. So here are the changes I’m making:
REMOVE:
- Take swimming lessons because everyone tells me I don’t really need to know how to swim to learn to scuba AND I technically can swim, I’m just not very good at it.
- Be on a digital scrapbooking creative team because I decided that’s not my goal with scrapbooking.
- See Cirque du Soleil because it was a lame goal. Plus I went to see them last year and I had already booked my tickets when I added it to the list.
ADD:
- Run a 10k. Last year I specifically mentioned not including running on my list because I hate running. Shortly afterwards I started a Couch to 5K training program. It may have taken me the whole year (with a big gap in the winter when I did no running), but I finally finished it. And then I went on a live running Hash that was 8-9 kms and I didn’t die and I wasn’t even sore the next day. Now I’m signed up for the Two Oceans 10k Trail Run on April 5th. My goal is to finish it – even if I’m 397th out of 400 runners I will not care. (And I very well might be because I “run” only slightly faster than I can walk.) Depending on how this goes this may morph into “Run a 10k every year”. I can guarantee you that it will never morph into running a half marathon or longer.
- Have an impromptu conversation fluently in Spanish. I have gone back and forth in my head about learning another language at all. I took Spanish in high school and a little of college but have really terrible speaking skills (and have forgotten most of my vocabulary). I also took a semester of French in grad school because I thought it would be a good language for furthering my opportunities in Africa, but really did not take off with it. After accepting that I will never become fluent enough to get a job because of my language skills in either French or Spanish I still felt compelled to work on a foreign language. Therefore I invested in the Rosetta Stone for Spanish since that is the language I have the most background in.
- Donate at least as much as I’m spending on animal food per month to charities supporting maternal and newborn health. In Half the Sky I read that there are estimates that it would cost as much as $9 billion a year to provide all effective interventions for maternal and newborn health to 95% of the world’s population while $40 billion is spent annually on pet food globally. This had a real impact at the time and I even started looking for charities to support but then it kind of faded away. I definitely struggle with finding organizations after being in the field and seeing what actually happens. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of good being done but sometimes I find the advertising a little misleading. Please comment here if you have any suggestions!
Other ideas I’ve considered (and may end up on future revised lists):
- Take more pictures of the people in my life. I love documenting my everyday life, but I find that I take too many pictures of things and not enough of people. I really like this idea, but I don’t know how to quantify it.
- Go skinny dipping
- Attend the Summer Olympics since I’ve been to the Winter Olympics and I think it’d be nice to go to both. Plus the next Summer Olympics are in Rio.
- Paint a wall in my house a bold color like red.
Donate to Center for Health and Gender Equity or advocacy group Breast Cancer Awareness
[…] As I mentioned before, my running adventures started in January last year with Anita and the Run 5k application on my iPhone. We started out jogging 45 seconds and walking 90 seconds for 20 minutes. It took me all of last year (with a huge gap in winter) to build up to running for 30 minutes straight. After going on an accidental 10k run in early December, I signed up for the trail run as motivation to keep pushing myself. Unfortunately I had about 3 weeks of injuries in February/March so I didn’t get to the level of training that I hoped I would, but really my goal all along was just to complete the race. Me at the starting line in my Merrell Barefoot Pace Glove shoes with my race chip attached. […]
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[…] things I want to do before I turn 40 in 2017 (you can see the whole list here with links.) Although I’ve edited the list, “Learn to scuba” has always been at the top. It’s the last […]