It’s been a couple of years since I’ve written an entry. Something of a disappointment, really, given that one of the items on the list I intended to blog about is to write 52 entries. Supposed to be one a week – how difficult could that have been?
I don’t have an excuse, as such. It’s been a busy couple of years – I think I changed one entry on the list in that time – and I’ve done better at completing some of the things to do than I thought I would. On the other hand, there are things on that list that should have been really easy to sort out and I still haven’t done them, so.
I do not really want to do a ‘catch-up’ entry, briefly outlining the past two years. For a start, they’ve been busier and more active and just ‘more’ everything from a personal development point of view than pretty much any other time of my life that I can think of. Trying to distill that time in to one entry seems as though it would be a disservice. Suffice to say, I turn 30 in a couple of months, which is the unofficial deadline for the list (though it’s not according to the Day Zero Project timetable) and I’m approaching that age with less trepidation than I thought I would. I’m looking forward to it, in fact.
So, I’ll do more entries (you’ve heard me say THAT before) summarizing some of the bigger items in future, but in the meantime, items on the list that have been crossed off (the numbering system on the site has changed…
#2 Pay off all my credit card debt (all gone – I now use and pay it off straightaway once a month)
#3 Pay off my overdraft (all gone – I still drop into it very occasionally when I budget badly, but I don’t rely on it anymore)
# 4 Go to see a play (… this is ticked, so I know it’s done – but I can’t remember what the play was)
# 17 Go through my old papers and shred anything not needed (bought a paper shredder – there was a lot of junk)
# 20 Visit my sister and nephew (originally ‘visit my sister in Milan’) (she moved back to my parents’ place – I’ve been a couple of times now)
# 34 Do a triathlon (originally ‘move to a bank with better morals) (changing banks would have truly screwed up my credit rating; I need to be a bit wilier about doing it. So I changed the option after a friend talked me into signing up for a triathlon that I didn’t think I’d complete. More on that later.)
# 26 Finish fixing up the kitchen chairs (done badly, because it’s me, but I love them)
# 29 Attend a taster boxing class (there were free classes at my local gym for 8 weeks, so I attended those. Loved it and want to do more)
# 30 Get a decent hair cut (Got it, grew it out, back to looking like me again)
# 38 Go to see the ballet (preferably Swan Lake) (ended up seeing Spartacus instead. It was brilliant, though the Roman soldiers were decidedly un-soldiery in their dancing)
#42 Write and film an animated short (bit of a cheat, this, but I had fun making it: http://vimeo.com/28318920)
# 46 Get rid of the duplicates and awful books on my shelves (yep, but always need to keep going through them)
# 47 Begin learning a new foreign language (first choice: Russian) (started learning Italian at work)
#49 Do a painting on canvas (technically a painting, though there’s a bit of gluing involved as well!:
It’s a bad joke: the latin means ‘my dog ate it’, and the background is made from the pages of a latin dictionary that my dogs ate, which I’ve glued to the canvas.
# 61 Get a vegetable frame and grow some fruit and veg (not so much a veg frame as a lot of tubs in the yard, but we grew some tomatoes, onions, potatoes and beetroot successfully. Courgettes were a fail, though.
Home-grown tomatoes
#64 Learn to play Metamorphosis V (by Philip Glass – got the sheet music and a working electric piano – this is a very soothing piece to play)
#69 Watch all the Star Wars movies without falling asleep (I tweeted as I did this in order to stay awake. CM was unimpressed with my witticisms)
#73 Get the WC fixed (er… it seems to have fixed itself, which is great)
#90 Go to Fright Fest (I went to a few films last year, though didn’t have a weekend pass. CM works there now as a camera man each year)
# 96 Buy enough bras, underwear and socks that I’m not on the verge of running out every two days (done! Though the bras in particular will probably not last as long as hoped because, despite my age, my chest continues to grow)
#101 Learn a poem off by heart (Philip Larkin’s This Be the Verse. I learnt it quite by accident, but now I can reel it off)
Bookworms and Coffee Monsters 