me, very cool, through almost all of my birthday, crying at anything nice said to me. (literally 90% of the pictures are a version of this.)

The soundtrack for this blog can be found here. And I recommend the heck out of it. My spiritual gift is playlists.

Last week, I went to the gym the day after my birthday, determined to get right onto that health kick I’d been planning on and working myself up to for about six months, but hadn’t started yet because “my birthday’s coming! Cupcakes! Happy hours! Treating myself! Endlessly treating myself!”

I hopped (one-footed, watching the bad knee, because we definitely have those now) onto the treadmill, resolved to run a few miles, but I nearly tripped right off of the belt, because for the first time, I had to input my new age – 40.

Holy. Fuh-hor-teeeey.

Forty big ones.

It was a bit anticlimactic – the first time saying my new “important” “milestone” age, and it was just scrolling up, and up, and up on the outdated cardio equipment at my cheap-as-chips gym. And yet it was a whoa. A wow. A hey – the royal We that is Me and all my personalities is getting older. Is older. Got older. Hm.

she wanted to go to Morocco and she DID.

Every five years I make a challenge list of sorts of things I’d like to see myself accomplish but like, if I don’t, who cares? But I generally do pretty well with it. It’s nice to cross things off, to look one up on a rainy day and decide to make lasagna from scratch or book a trip to the Great Wall of China (like I did two weeks ago) for my proverbial adult gold star chart. 

The last five years saw this really interesting, life-altering phenomenon called Covid forcing me to throw a few of the goals I had set to the wind, but they blew away and came back and have just landed on the next list.

aus marks my last continent! did it!

So now I’m starting a new list, but there are blank spaces. The next big one is 45. 45 years old. Wowzas. Is that a real number I will have to/get to turn? It sounds so fully middle-aged. So fully OLD.

Like, even if I personally identify as an adult child and feel victimised by the passage of time, that’s the next big marker, huh?

Okay. Well then. We’ll do it. We can do hard things.

we go places and we do hard things.

If you can think of a good challenge (but realistic! Or something you’re willing to fund!) please let me know your ideas so I can add them to the list. The next few years are wide open with possibility. 

The first eleven of these goals are from my last list, which I did pretty well on. Now I need 34 new goals! Hmmm . . . 

  1. Visit 40 total states – 8 to go!
  2. Lose 40 lbs
  3. Get 400 followers on my instagram for this blog (19 to go!)
  4. 45 dinner dates with 45 non-family people (Erin, Erik, Molly, Michael, Rachael, Abigail, Tilly, Carmen, Andrew, Tracey, Neil, Jess)
  5. Visit China (June 2024)
  6. Visit Mongolia
  7. Write 800 blogs
  8. Meet someone famous
  9. See the Northern Lights (furious so many saw these last few weeks without even trying and in Hong Kong we got nothing!!)
  10. Walk the Camino Santiago
  11. Visit South Africa
  12. Go one month without buying anything (this would take planning)
  13. Blog once a day for a month (I’ve done this before, it’s a good creative challenge)
  14. Visit Portugal
  15. Sew something
  16. Visit New Zealand
  17. Invest money in something
  18. Make homemade pasta – ravioli or other, as lasagna has already been done!
  19. Read 100 new books a year 2024 
  20. Read 100 new books a year 2025 
  21. Read 100 new books a year 2026 
  22. Read 100 new books a year 2027 
  23. Read 100 new books a year 2028
  24. Visit one new country of choice
  25. Visit one new country of choice
  26. Visit one new country of choice
  27. Make croissants by hand
  28. Get paid to publish something again
  29. Hike a volcano
  30. Learn three reliable singalong songs on the guitar
  31. See a professional sport live
  32. Take professional photos somewhere cool
  33. Send 45 postcards
  34. See Yosemite again
  35. Visit the Grand Canyon
  36. Go to Alcatraz
  37. Run a continuous 10k
  38. Run a continuous 10 miler
  39. Run a half-marathon
  40. Take an educational course towards a masters or new certification
  41. Get 450,000 total hits on the blog
  42. Get 500,000 total hits on the blog
  43. Host a Pub Quiz or Trivia Night or Karaoke Night somewhere
  44. Settle all my finances and make a will with beneficiaries
  45. Go to Disneyland
her days are numbered

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