13 New Things
One of my longtime blog inspirations has done a very clever and very simple exercise every year on her birthday where she makes a list of all the new things she wants to try every year - like, an actual list - and then crosses the things off one by one and frequently writes about the individual experiences (see the sidebar on her homepage for this year's list and links to the ones she's already completed). She doesn't fret about crossing them ALL off every year and sometimes she rolls over the old ones from the year before and sometimes she doesn't. There's no edge of self competitiveness or of showing off, she's just making an effort to try more new things in life.
Since one of the intentions I set myself was to try new things in 2019, and today is my 31st birthday, I figured: what better time to try it out myself?
Here's my list of new things I want to try this year!
1. Bake bread and/or make a pie from scratch
2. Participate in an organized sporting event (pick-up basketball? indoor soccer? singles dodgeball? Let's get physical!)
3. Watch an iconic foreign film
4. Read something out of my comfort zone (how about a political biography or a great mystery?)
5. Eat at least one super weird food
6. Celebrate a cultural holiday that's not my own (Full Moon Party? Oktoberfest? Yom Kippur? Kwanzaa?)
7. Choose the path less traveled - literally (unconventional road trip, weird tourist attraction, or even just an aimless wander through the wilderness)
8. Go completely screen free for one day
9. Attend an interesting lecture for fun
10. Make some art (pottery? painting? write a song?)
11. Interview someone
12. Visit a museum
13. Go on a silent retreat
Some are more adventurous than others, but if you don't give yourself achievable goals you'll rarely succeed, and if you never reach far outside your comfort zone you'll never grow. I'm looking forward to what this year has in store for me and I can't wait to start trying all these new things!
Let me know if you want to help with any of these or if you have the best recommendation up your sleeve for something I mentioned! What new things have you tried recently?