Happy Birthday to me.

Last year, when my blog was still just a babyblog, I wrote “24 things I’ve learned in 24 years” to celebrate my birthday.

This year, I decided to pick 25 goals for this year. I’m not one for bucket lists. I mean, one of my main goals in life is really about contentment in the moment with how things are… right now. I know they are usually made without a lot of seriousness, but bucket lists kind of imply, for me at least, that there are obstacles in the way of contentment or satisfaction. “I must get married and have five kids while scaling Mount Everest and crocheting reusable napkins for my extended family before x/y/z.”

Plus, there are places I’d love to go and thing I’d love to do (Papua New Guinea, crocheting reusable napkins… oh, no wait..), but maybe by the time I’m 40 I won’t care anymore about those things. Long-term bucket lists seem short sighted in my life because I expect change. I hope that I have different goals and priorities in 20 years than I do now. I mean, seriously, if you had to accomplish all the things you put on your bucket list 15 years ago what would you be doing? I would be hanging out with curly-haired Mariah Carey and swimming with manatees.

So, instead of 25 things I want to accomplish in my life, here are 25 things I’d like to do this year, in no particular order:

1. Run another 5k race.
2. Run 5 miles, not necessarily connected with a race.
3. Attend 3 new group fitness classes, at least 3 times each. It takes a little while to get used to classes and instructors.
4. Acquire a bicycle.
5. Grow winter squash. This is probably my favorite vegetable ever, and I didn’t even realize it until last year.
6. Visit a new beach. Very ambitious.
7. Visit Jubilee.
8. Learn how to use my camera. No point in having all these options if I don’t know how to use them.
9. Tackle mindful eating, meditation and yoga. Getting my mind right.
10. Be a better friend, daughter, granddaughter, girlfriend, stranger. By this I mean, being better about returning calls and emails in a timely manner, being less of a hermit, letting things go, being more considerate and giving people the benefit of the doubt.
11. Lose 50lbs. I know this sounds very New-Years-Resolution-y, but I’ve already decided to be good at weight loss, so I may as well set goals. Plus, that is less than 1lb/week.
12. Volunteer my time to help someone else.
13. Spend a lot of time and energy on my school work. As an undergrad, I often did the minimum amount of work necessary to accomplish my goals. Grad school is too important and too expensive to do that this time.
14. Read more real books. Not blogs, not trashy novels. If I could read 12 “real” books in between all my fluffy stuff and school, I would be happy.
15. Learn how to cook 12 new things. I’d love to expand my repertoire to include more foods from other cuisines.
16. Finish my afghan I started last year. See, I do have to crochet something. I always enjoy yarn stuff when it is cold and then promptly abandon my projects when it starts to warm up.
17. Commit to blogging. I have some ideas about how this will happen, but I’m still turning them over in my mind.
18. Walk more places.
19. Not get a ticket for driving. I don’t speed anymore, so you would think this isn’t a problem. But no. Seriously, can I please just go one year without screwing up in front of the police?
20. Do something I’ve never done before. Fearlessly!!
21. Make digital copies of all the family pictures I’ve been meaning to for years. We bought a scanner specifically for this, so why haven’t I made a dent?
22. Love wastefully. (Stolen from Watershed podcast, but I think they got it from the Bible, so I think I am safe. ) I don’t write a lot about faith, for a few reasons, not the least of which being I’m not very good at it. But I know I can be better at living out my faith by loving more recklessly. It was easy to love big at Jubilee, but it has been harder to translate that into day-to-day life. I want to though.
23. Put energy into learning Spanish. I’ve been looking at international jobs for post-graduation, and I know I need to learn another language. Plus, knowing Spanish will be helpful even if I work in the U.S. So, who wants to hook me up with Rosetta Stone now?
24. Visit somewhere in S.C. that I’ve never been before.
25. Try to look professional at least sometimes. Accessorize. Stop wearing see-through clothes in public.

More exciting news… I decided to work on #17 a little early and I am now officially ZenLizzie.com.!