Thirty nine today, thirty nine today.
When I turned thirty, nearly a decade ago, I reflected on how I felt about it. I felt good. I had achieved a lot in my turbulent twenties and learnt about myself. I had lived overseas and travelled extensively, got married,had my first child, bought two houses and kept myself gainfully employed when I wanted to be.
I find myself now regarding this past decade and what I have accomplished. I find it harder to quantify as my goals have been less definite than when I was younger. So, instead of “I will live overseas for one year and have at least one child before thirty”, it is has been more ephemeral and of the consolidate the family and commence the rebuilding of my career bent.
So, I have one year to make some concrete goals. A manifesto if you will. By having it written down I can hold myself accountable and damn that procrastination impulse.
I will commit to having achieved the following within the next 365 days.
1 – Have written at least 50,000 words of my novel. I am 1,522 words in so only 48,478 to go.
2 – Consolidate all my supers. Yes, part of my job is to advise people to do this, and I have not actually gotten around to doing it myself.
3 – This one is dependent on the willingness of my daughters to be involved, but I would like to get out the Janome and complete a wearable garment from pattern to finish. (Maybe I should amend that to get out the sewing machine, help the kids stitch a straight line until they get bored and then hem a pair of pants and put it away for another five years.)
3 – Declutter my house once and for all. This is unacceptably ambiguous. I’ll rephrase that. My office, bedroom, panty and garage will be cleared and organised to my complete satisfaction with everything having a place or discarded.
4 – Finally having a house that is presentable, I will have a fabulous fortieth birthday party. By fabulous I mean Fabulous. I’m thinking maybe a Great Gatsby theme.
5 – Getting a better list together for things to achieve in my forties.
I think that’s enough to be getting on with. I have some usual plans like getting in the sun more, and Piper wants to go the Art Gallery again, but we’ll take those things as they come. We’ve also been going to the TTG library every fortnight so we’ll keep that up to.
If anyone has any suggestions for me, please let me know and I’ll take them under advisement.
Cheers.
A Lighter Heart 