The best mornings are those where I awake fully refreshed, get a cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal, and open up my Google reader. (Ideal mornings would include beautiful weather with all of my doors and windows open, but as it is hot&humid here, and ALL of my screens have bends/small holes/tears in them - which lets in bugs, I've found out - the house remained closed up this morning.)
Ideal mornings would include all of you leaving a little gem for me to read, too *cough cough*.
One of the gems I had this morning was a blog with a 'life list'. This blogger, you see, had been inspired by a friend's life list, which included a (checked off!) "swim with bioluminescent plankton". How can you not be inspired by that, right? So this gal was moved to make her own life list, which was pretty extensive, in my opinion. Best of luck to her!
I don't think I'll ever make such a comprehensive life list. Overachievers like me are constantly set up to fail, and I think more of a ...' borderless cloud of life events that would make me happy' is a better idea for the gal that MUST check off lists in their entirety or spiral into self-loathing of my worthlessness ;).
The really great feeling, though, is looking at someone else's life list and saying, "Yep, I've done that." (Not to diminish her life in any way - she's done some cool shit that I'm pretty envious of, too.) I was simply proud of myself to say that I had done some desirable things.
I realized then - though this is something I've realized several times, actually- that one of the reasons I started this blog (after my defunct livejournal.... damn, I wish they'd make an easy way to export those things so I could combine the two...) was to celebrate the great things I'm doing AND have done since the livejournal went to that magic place in the sky.
So, for your morning coffee/shredded wheat/Google reader enjoyment, some of my life-list worthy experiences:
1) I took this amazing trip to Europe, not to study (a very important distinction, for me). I got so sick of all of my friends doing awesome study abroad tours, that one day I just said to myself,
STOP being jealous of others. If you want to do it, DO IT.And I bought myself a non-refundable plane ticket that very day.
I could regale you with everything I did - because 10 weeks and 10 countries carries a load of amazing - but a few snapshots and snippets lend themselves to this sort of thing.
I straddled the Prime Meridian.
(Next up, the Equator. Anyone wanna come?)
I saw the running of the bulls in Pamplona.
(No, I didn't run WITH the bulls. People die doing that shit, and I still had 3 weeks left of the trip of a lifetime. 3 weeks that I didn't want to spend in a hospital recovering from a goring.)
You can't tell it from the photo above,
(it's really hard to take pics during all of this),
but I saw 4 bulls, and I was really
excited about it.
(When you're little like me, you never see
ANYTHING in crowds. I didn't expect to see
any bulls, I was just happy to *be there*. But 4!!!)
Notice how haggard I look here. A night in Pamplona with no sleep is one of the most intense things you'll ever enjoy experiencing, I promise.
2) For those of you who have ever lived in the Eastern time zone, you may not appreciate this as much. For those of you Zonie babies like me, you understand!
Every year, on New Year's Eve, what does everyone do? Watch the ball drop, duh. Lemme tell ya, when there's a little 'previously recorded' in the corner of your screen as you're counting down, it diminishes it, just a little. Last year (entering 2009), some friends and I happened to be in Boston in late December. So,
We made a little stop where everybody knew our name, then...
we hopped a train to see that ball! LIVE!
...and waited 9 hours in -1 degree weather to see it DROP.
Enough of the "been there to do that" experiences.
There are some other things that I've done that I'm very proud of, that I feel like my life would not be complete without.
I've moved across the country, to a new place, a new climate, a new culture. I've put myself in a completely foreign and uncomfortable situation - and although, at times, I was close to miserable - I've made the best of it, and for the most part, overcome the ickier bits. It may not sound like a big deal, but for the rest of my life, I will forever know I can. And that is a big deal for me. Plus, now I can say that I've driven across almost the whole country. Brian did more -he drove all but about 100 miles of I-40. (Map it, you know you wanna.)
I've fallen completely in love with a man. I've let myself do that. I haven't driven him off (yet ;) ). I love him for who he is, who we are, how he makes me feel about myself, for the promise that I feel between us. For the first time, I'm not with someone for convenience or comfort - I wake up every day and actively choose to be here. (Well, it's less of a choice, and more of a natural thing, like breathing. But if we really want to get technical and morbid, you do *choose* to breathe everyday in the sense that you could always choose *not* to... anyhow.) For this, for him, for us,
I'm incredibly lucky.
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