25 before 26

It's a ridiculously beautiful day today.  Perfect, almost-cliched spring weather.  It makes me want to take a walk, one that lasts all day and brings me to new places.  It makes me want to load up a wagon and find a frontier to brave.

The weather's also got me thinking about the future.  Springtime always puts me in mind of swelling blossoms and ripening fruit and summer storms.  Spring's an anticipatory season.  It looks to what comes next.

What am I going to do with my one wild and precious life?

It's still something I'm trying to figure out.  Do I want to open a weird, enthusiastic coffeeshop?  Do I want to work in a bakery and come home smelling like cookies?  Quit everything and be a writer?  Get into the publishing business?  Go back to school and become a professor?  A museum curator?  A librarian?  An astronomer?  A speech pathologist?





For now, I think I'll try to set some short-term goals.

Before my next birthday, I'm going to:

1. Get a story published.
2. Put together a manuscript.
3. Find a grown up job that offers stability and benefits.
4. Go to the Celestial Seasonings tea factory in Boulder.
5. Write and shoot a short film, just for the hell of it.
6. Take silly pictures in a photobooth with Nick.
7. Stay up late to watch at least two meteor showers.
8. Try to make dolmathes.
9. Make a pitcher of lemonade from scratch.
10. Sit outside to watch a thunderstorm.
11. Read, at the very least, eight new books.
12. Make popsicles.
13. Learn to cut Nick's hair.
14. Make JiffyPop on the stove.
15. Go to at least two street festivals.
16. Watch a sunrise.
17. Have a picnic.
18. Go for an evening bike ride.
19. Take a road trip (even if it's only an hour long).
20. Busk at least one afternoon.
21. Make something beautiful and sell it.
22. Make something beautiful and give it away.
23. Finish Emma's alphabet book.
24. Invent a board- or card- game.
25. Stay up all night having an adventure.

Well, that's one year planned.  Now I just need to figure out a lifetime.

Ready.

Set.

GO.