Life and stuff: Welcome to the new decade
We are only four days into 2011 and I have already; a) visited someone who is gravely ill in hospital, b) spoken to a very dear friend whose mother passed away and, c) had my grandmother tell me in all seriousness that she’s ‘on the way out’.
The reason I am sharing this information is not to depress you. It’s to give you a good, hard kick up the butt; the same kick that I am giving myself.
What do you want to do this year?
Most people will say something involving career, relationships, money and health.
Now answer this: What would you do this year if you knew you were going to drop dead on December 31st?
Are your answers the same? Probably not. I am guessing that the second set of answers involve more risk, more hedonism, more heart.
My question is: Why not do the things on the second list?
Here’s my sensible list:
1. Save money for a house deposit
2. No fights with anyone, for any reason
3. Stop drinking as much
4. Go hang-gliding
5. Eat at Tetsuya’s
6. Learn burlesque dance
Here’s my ‘I’m going to die on December 31st’ list:
1. Have a baby
2. Walk around Paris
3. Get a short story published in The Paris Review
4. Wear a couture gown to a ball
5. Go to Japan and hang out in the hot springs with snow monkeys
6. Plant the garden of my dreams
7. Meet Sir David Attenborough
8. Get a tattoo sleeve
9. Invent something that will help save the world!
Tell me, wild adventurers, what are you going to do this year?
LOVED this post! And I’ll hang out with you with you and the snow monkeys and the couture gown (well not in the same couture gown but at the ball!). Happy New Year my lovely snow monkey friend!
There is a lot of traveling on this year and unfinished projects 1 through 7 that need to be seen to. I think that kind of ruins any chance of saving any money this year 🙂
I do like your dinner at Tetsuya’s, that would be something that I would love to do.
What a wonderful blog post, Emma! Hmm let me see. You’re right, it would change everything. My last-year-on-earth resolutions are not quite as exciting as yours – although I too would hang out in Japanese hot springs! I would also probably choose to have a baby (I will not think yet about how this might be logistically possible). I would make more effort to get out and see my friends and family, and eat a lot of chocolate. I would travel THE ENTIRE WORLD and I would probably quit my job and read lots of books. I would also write a book. I would wear fabulous dresses that cost lots of money. And I would never go on facebook. There.
PS I eagerly await your publication in The Paris Review!
1. eat a Burmese salad in Burma
2. lie on a big green patch of lawn with 12 or so puppies for a whole day
3. go diving off the unbleached spot on Great Barrier Reef
4. write an ace novel
5. play with the orangutans in Borneo
6. take my dog on a road trip
7. grow boobs
8. do a “This Town’s In a Song I Like” tour of america
9. Go for a swim in a tea tree lake
10. Make everyone i love a mixed tape
Note: This comment was submitted by Joey Rochford but due my technical ineptitude, I accidentally deleted it. Sorry Joey!