Today I turn 59. One more year until I’m again over the hill, as I was when I turned 30, 40, and 50.
Each descent into a larger round number has brought its changes. In my thirties I had small children and we were changing cities every two years as my husband’s career blossomed. In my forties we became more sedentary as Bob’s career and our teenage kids’ activities hit their peak. In my fifties I was able to enjoy more of my own hobbies along with the peak of my own editing career. The sixties will bring the activities of retirement and grandparenting. All this is generalization, of course. My years and decades have been full of daily adventures and we have done a great, exciting variety of things.
This 60th Birthday Bucket List is the result of a challenge from my daughter to do 60 new things in the year before I turn 60. I did an internet search for birthday bucket lists and found lots of suggestions for items to accomplish—and I also found that I had already done many of the things on some of the lists, especially on lifelong bucket lists. Travel to a foreign country, write a book, learn to play an instrument, take a cruise. Done that! Run a marathon, go whale watching, own a luxury car. Check! The first challenge was thus to come up with 60 things that I haven’t done before.
The first item I put on my list was “create my own website.” My freelance editing career was nearly always busy from word-of-mouth referrals, so I didn’t need to advertise on the internet. Any personal activities that I might want to report to friends and family were easily enough done via email, so there was no pressing need for a blog. Now, however, I have an excuse to take on the excitement of being out there on the web. The site design is a work in progress. Advice: don’t believe any web design software that declares it is easy! Fun, maybe, but more challenging than “drag-and-drop” would suggest. The second item is “tweet,” which I include with trepidation, since I get annoyed enough with email advertisements and political Facebook posts that I really don’t want to be told three or four times a day what is going on with #HoosierFootball. It’s something new, for sure. We’ll see how it goes. My first tweet went out this morning from #KC_editor.
So, two items are up and running. Fifty-eight to go! You can read the list by clicking “The LIST” at the top of the site menu. If you have any suggestions for the TBD items, let me know! I tried not to put too many things on the list that are self-motivational along the lines of losing weight and getting in shape, because those are ongoing issues since about year 40 of my timeline. Nonetheless, things like that factor in to list items such as “run a 5K under 30 minutes.” Some items like “refinish a piece of furniture,” while they do represent things I have never done before, are also partly self-motivational because they are things I’ve had on to-do lists since maybe before year 40!
I’ll blog here about my reasons for each item and about my progress as well as about other things going on in my life. I hope you enjoy reading along.