Progress

I'm pretty sure I called it that my mom was going to be most devoted/only? reader.  She just asked me how my list was coming along.  So here's an update, Mom. 

While I have only been able to add two goals to my Finished! list, I have been making lots of progress on the long term goals on my list.  So far I have really enjoyed it and would highly recommend the process.  A few of the things I've been working on:

-This morning I read about 20 Robert Frost poems- I meant to read one but I sort of couldn't stop.  He's a genius.  I'm not a person who loves poetry, but him, I love.  (#8 Read every Robert Frost poem)

- You may not believe that I don't love poetry since I have another goal about it, but I looked up the poem I want to memorize the other night and now I almost have it, just because I wanted to read it over and over.  And it makes it easier that it rhymes-all my favorite poems do, I'm like a 5 year old (#57 Memorize a poem).  I've been using a printout of it as a bookmark in the book I'm reading right now.  And because it's always handy (and so good!) I keep making everyone at work read it over and over.  At first they were polite, but now they have started telling me no. 

-I've been taking lots of pictures of progress on longterm goals (#24 Take a picture of every goal achieved)

-I have applied for a few teaching jobs! (#39 Get a teaching job)  Even submitting an application has seemed incredibly exciting to me, so it feels like progress, but it's a little bit out of my hands. 

-I got a list of some of my family members favorite books (#9-14 Read the favorite book of each person in my immediate family), still missing a few, but I've put them on reserve at the library so they'll be ready when I'm done reading this book...

It is about a homeless man and a wealthy art dealer who forge a friendship.  It's right up my alley (one time my mom had to act out "right up my alley" in charades- it was a massive failure that involved a lot of emphatic pointing to herself followed by a lot of frustration when we kept guessing "me".  I actually laugh out loud now anytime that phrase comes to mind).  I got the book from my friend Julie from work.  She said I'll love it, and she spends 40 hours a week with me, so I trust her.  Please also note the poem sticking out the top! 

-I've seen 2 sunrises (#20 See 10 sunrises)

-I now have a prescription for glasses! (#3 Get glasses)  I even tried to pick out some frames but I don't know anything about vision insurance and they laughed me out of the store when I asked if they could just look up my insurance? But still, I have the prescription.

-I have a flickr account now and I'm working on uploading all my pictures to it (#96 Get a flickr account and keep it up to date) that'll be a while.

-And I just bought photo corners and 2 albums (#35 Make an album of old family pictures I have)

So this is a lot of progress for a procrastinator!  Agreed?  Agreed.

#53 Ski in Colorado

I was able to cross off my second goal last week! I know it seems strange to have to say "in Colorado" when that is my current home, but as it turns out, though I've skied since I was a child, and have lived in Colorado for 6 of my years now- I had never done it.

My rationale is that I'm a bit of a sissy when it comes to being scared. It's not a feeling I like, and certainly not one that I seek. (No thank you, rollercoasters.) I'm not easily scared by noises in my house or being outside at night, stuff like that, so I tend to be able to avoid feeling scared for the majority of my life. I promise this relates to my goal. You see, because I have been taking skiing lessons since I was a crying Ski-Wee on the hills of Massachusetts, I know how to ski. I'm no Jeremy Bloom, but I can make my way down the hill. But I don't like feeling out of control and I don't like feeling like I'm getting in people's way, and skiing down double blacks scares me. So I stick to the blues and greens, and I guess I got a little bored with skiing. So in college I decided to learn to snowboard with some friends. Long story short the first attempt was a disaster and the next day was even worse. So a friend of mine who was an instructor and some well qualified roommates did their best to teach me, but I am not a girl who feels comfortable flying down a bunny hill sideways.

Additionally my college roommate Amy's parents are unceasingly generous to me, and in the past few years I've been fortunate enough to spend a few weekends at their house in Utah. The house is at Alta, one of the few remaining skiers only mountains in the world, so unless you want to drive yourself over to the next closest mountain to snowboard, make your own lunch, and in all likelihood return home to find your stuff at the top of the tree and Amy's dad inside grinning-you ski. So I've snowboarded in Colorado, and I've skied in Utah, but I haven't skied in Colorado- until last week.

Some friends from my church in New York were here, in Breckenridge to ski/board on a mountain (the East Coast has what can only be described as hills). So I met them for the day and loved every minute. Well I loved most minutes. I did, at one point spend an hour looking for a place to park. I also love taking pictures from the lift, so I enjoyed the "taking a picture of every goal" portion of this goal. This may stem from a time in college when I was in the darkroom and a very cool stoner from my class kept telling me how much he liked the picture I was working on-a picture of a ski lift. We kept having prints in the developer at the same time and when the chemicals washed across it to reveal the image, every time he was more excited than the last. It was funny because he was yelling and darkrooms tend to have an unspoken no speaking rule. Usually the subjects in my pictures were too fully dressed or not edgy enough for this kind of praise from classmates in the fine art department at CU, so it was especially meaningful. So thanks to that stoner, and an awesome app on my phone called Hipstamatic, I present to you, some pictures of chair lifts...

Two down!

In the beginning.

#71 blog about my goals to keep me on track.
I’ve been reading and talking to a lot of people about strengths lately.  It all started with a book called “Now, Discover Your Strengths” that I was tasked to read for work.  It comes with an assessment that you can take that will tell you what your 5 top strengths are and one of mine was flexibility.  The book talks about all the ways that someone who is strong in flexibility can contribute to a team and can not lose heart even when the components of the project change.  I must say I’m glad that I’m flexible, but I think flexibility comes with a few of its own weaknesses; primarily focus.  In any given hour at work I will have started and moved on from at least 5 projects.  The good news: at least they’re under way.  The bad news: they are rarely finished that same day, if ever.  What I’m realizing is that this translates to most areas of my life.  I talk about a lot of great ideas, I’m excited about them for a time, eventually I lose focus, and then I forget about them altogether.  

This weekend my friend Nicole was visiting and it seems we have the same strength/weakness combo.  Which would explain why we were both so excited about the idea of creating a list of things we’d like to accomplish in the next 1,001 days.  Lots of people have gone before us, and we’re stealing the idea, but my guess is that most of the people who’ve chosen to undertake this activity are fellow follow-through-challenged souls.  So here is my attempt to keep the excited, motivated me around to see a few things through.  I have created a list of 101 things I’d like to achieve, some time consuming, some money consuming, but all requiring a certain amount of follow through.  This blog is to make sure that at least my mom (sure to be my most devoted reader) knows if I give up.   

I’m also hoping to get by with a little help from my friends.  We are now a group of 5, all working on our lists with the same timeline.  We started on February 18th, 2011 and will finish on November 15th, 2013.  So feel free to ask me how it’s coming!  As of right now: One down.