Heather's Adventures in Lesotho

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:

1. 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.
2. Be on a digital scrapbooking creative team because I decided that’s not my goal with scrapbooking.
3. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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):

1. 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.
2. Go skinny dipping
3. 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.
4. Paint a wall in my house a bold color like red.