Summer is coming to an end and playoffs are about to start at the Nat. This can only mean one thing. It's time for my list!
Since I began this in 2016, I haven't checked a lot of items off, but creating them still brings me so much joy. They're fun to inspire...to push one out of their comfort zones, even if just once. We should all try to find that little spark that will push us just a little bit more, or get us to conquer something we've never thought we could do, or make us and all our friends laugh with absolute delight, as tears roll down our cheeks.
Make a list. It doesn't have to be serious. Make it fun. Don't be hard on yourself when you manage to knock only one thing off in the year. It's never about being so focused you absolutely HAVE to put a check mark beside every item. That sounds stress inducing to me, but if that brings you joy, DO IT! It is 100% about making you happy.
53 Before 53
And...as per always...
Over the years, there have been some things that I want so badly to complete. These will stay on the list, bringing me absolute delight, until I do them. Some are a pipe dream. But dreams, no matter how unrealistic, are amazing to have. How many times have we thought what we'd do if we won the lottery?
Since I began this in 2016, I haven't checked a lot of items off, but creating them still brings me so much joy. They're fun to inspire...to push one out of their comfort zones, even if just once. We should all try to find that little spark that will push us just a little bit more, or get us to conquer something we've never thought we could do, or make us and all our friends laugh with absolute delight, as tears roll down our cheeks.
Make a list. It doesn't have to be serious. Make it fun. Don't be hard on yourself when you manage to knock only one thing off in the year. It's never about being so focused you absolutely HAVE to put a check mark beside every item. That sounds stress inducing to me, but if that brings you joy, DO IT! It is 100% about making you happy.
53 Before 53
- Since the pig is off the table, find another carousel animal to take up residence in your apartment
- Play Jenga with a champagne tower
- Go to a Savannah Bananas baseball game
- Ice skate the Amsterdam Canals
- Find a mango tree and call it a day
- Dance the Do-Si-Do at a Hoe Down
- Find #3 in your top three favourite towns in the world
- Let your inner Japanese/Korean fashionista out into the world
- Shenanigans. More shenanigans.
- Fill your belly from A to Z
- Make the Macarena cool
- Attend a seance, preferably in a haunted location or a graveyard. That sounds awful. Maybe you shouldn't do that.
- Get one of those horses outside grocery stores so you can re-enact duels on steeds and carousel pigs
- And on that note, go to Ponyhenge. GO. TO. PONYHENGE.
- Ride to Iona 52 times
- Take a vacation where you stay in both luxury and unique
- Find a festival for every month of the year
- Eat a Nanaimo Bar in Nanaimo
- Wander through a giant flower market, burying your nose in all the scents
- Learn to say sorry in as many languages as possible
- Find your Star's Hollow
- Learn Tai Chi so you can become a meditative ninja
- Visit The Macallan
- Have an otter experience at an Aquarium so you can touch their little paws
- Manage to hold Crow Pose without doing a face plant
- Give someone a bouquet of lettuce
- Kick your feet up on a balcony and watch the world pass by
- Join a beach clean-up
- Re-read Tank Girl to learn what to do in the upcoming apocalypse
- Get Season's Tickets or a Season's Pass to something
- Throw a Surprise Party for someone for absolutely no reason
- Take a bartending course
- Get a gravel bike
- Try your best to get through a year with zero food waste
- Start visiting bakery back doors at 4 am. IYKYK
- Discover more secret things like the 4am bakery back door visits
- Do the limbo, under a ladder, in front of a black cat
- Start a 5 minute journal
- Do something completely over the top kitschy touristy
- When not on vacation or planning a vacation, keep your credit card under $700/month
- Get a plan to find your little house to fix up, with a little garden to grow flowers and veggies and a big ass dog to run around
- Become a regular at puppy yoga
- Since I'd have to get PADI certified, and then Mermaid certified, and the water here is freezing and has orcas, which are total psychopaths, not to mention I don't like being trapped in small spaces, just knit yourself a mermaid blanket and flop around on the floor and pretend you're a mermaid
- Make more onigiri
- Get enough shark ornaments to have your Shark Xmas Tree
- Have another past life regression done
- Do Sallies during every run
- Get one of those candy machines that takes quarters to make you work for it
- Fuel a long day on the trails with McDonald's cheeseburgers
- Remind yourself and everyone else that a DNF at a race is not a failure. Had I had a perfect finish at every Knee Knacker, I would never have realized how utterly amazing the community is. Every disappointment can lead to a positive
- Send envelopes of glitter in the mail to unsuspecting people
- Make mini beef wellingtons, but with meatballs
- Boop a Highland Cow
And...as per always...
- Slide down a firehouse pole
Over the years, there have been some things that I want so badly to complete. These will stay on the list, bringing me absolute delight, until I do them. Some are a pipe dream. But dreams, no matter how unrealistic, are amazing to have. How many times have we thought what we'd do if we won the lottery?
- Hit someone in the face with a pie
- Eat a Yard Dog #AtTheNat
- Make a sandcastle and then Godzilla through it
- Finish Knee Knacker with a number that starts with 8
- Ride a merry-go-round in a ball gown
- Have a bust of my bust made, then cover it with flowers
- Run after an ice cream truck yelling, ICE CREAM! ICE CREAM!
- Run a McDonald's Cheeseburger Mile
- Find a way to make the French Carousel Pig mine
- Skate at an airport hangar
- Get a tattoo of a Booby
- Get a surfboard, with no intention to ever surf, but cover it in flowers to match the bust of your bust you still need to make
- Grind or BCMC under an hour
- Sneak into an abandoned amusement park