Of castles, backgammon, and lessons learned

Happy 2011! I hope you all had an enjoyable New Year's. I know I did. I spent it in a castle. I met up with some dear friends I've known for years in a nearby metropolis to ring in the new year. And let me just say, when we pulled around a corner and saw the hotel/castle for the first time, our reaction was priceless.

"Oh. My. Word!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Are you kidding? No way! Nuh uh! What? This is INSANE!Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh! EEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKK!"



Needless to say, we had a blast.

So, I've been working on finalizing my 2011 list. Thanks to some great suggestions from friends and various "Bucket List" websites, I have begun to assemble a working list. *Side note: I do not like to refer to my to-do lists as "bucket lists". They seem so negatively connotated, focusing on impending doom. But, I'm just sayin'...* And before I forget, I also completed one more task on my 2010 list on December 30. Thanks to a tutorial on my computer, I now know how to (poorly) play backgammon (Task 47). But alas, 2010 has come and gone. So, now it's time for the list for 2011, which will be revealed in my next post.

My goal with the 2011 list is similar to last year's goal in that I want to try new things and put myself in new and possibly uncomfortable situations. But what I really learned from attmepting to complete last year's list was that it takes effort to put ideas into action. Sure, it's easy to say, "I want to do such-and-such," but I found out it is a whole different ballgame to actually pursue it. For example, wanting to try a rutabaga is one thing. Buying it is another. After that, you can choose to let it sit on the counter and mold (which happened the first time) or you can grab a meat cleaver and hack it to pieces, fry it up, and actually eat it. This concept obviously also applies to things much larger than silly little to-do list tasks. Maybe that is what scares me the most about growing up. I'm on my own and it is now my own responsibility to make things happen. That excites and terrifies me at the same time. Sometimes, I wish I were back in preschool, waiting for my next juice box and naptime.