While I am a good couple of years away from being forty, the topic of turning the big four “o” has come up several times this year. For starters Rent-a-Dad rounded that hill this year, sorry babe, and so have several good friends. Not so many of the men but quite a few of the women turning 40 on my Facebook list have made “40 b4 forty” lists.
Like a bucket list, this list is about setting goals of things you would like to achieve by X time. Like any big wish list it should be one that is filled with goals you can actually achieve.
I can admire having such a list and have considered making a 40 b4 forty 40 list. What stops me are many things that I know I would like to put on such a list but in reality probably would not accomplish. It is not that I would purposefully put something on a list and not do it. No, rather life (Murphy’s law) has taught me that if I make a list with more than five things on it that something will do its best to stop me from accomplishing those goals.
Considering that I have done some really cool things in my life so far, I don’t want to make a list of things I might not achieve in the next couple of years.
So why not make a list that seems more realistic, more attainable?
My life really has been about balancing lemons that come my way. Things never turn out the way I plan them to; sometimes badly and sometimes much better than expected.
Instead of focusing on 40 things I can do before I turn forty (40 things that will not go as planned) I chose to put a twist on the 40 b4 forty list. So here is my twist… 40 things I am proud to have accomplished by forty (heck… maybe I will add more to this over the next couple of years):
- Be there for my family (don’t loose sight of family goals)
- Share our family values
- Don’t loose sight of who I am and where I want to be (we all falter… am very lucky to say I have been able to find perspective and not loose sight)
- Worked in old towne Alexandria (specifically on King Street)
- Receive a college degree
- Operated my own business
- Member of Art League in Alexandria
- Artwork displayed in a museum
- Multiple art shows
- Worked in professional theatre
- Cut & style hair (in a theatre)
- Be a costume designer
- Run a nonprofit
- International travel (Ireland for work)
- Helped children other than my own reach for their dreams
- Inspired others
- Have a blog
- Define my own success
- Be able to continue passions had as a child into adulthood
- Keep in touch with friends
- Continue to celebrate and enjoy the fall season (festivals, farm visits and more..)
- Travel a road less taken
- Have a family vacation
- See the United States (been to 28 as of 7/17)
- Travel/Roadtrips with family
- Attend a variety of Renaissance festivals across the US
- See Williamsburg
- Go to Disney world (been now 3 of the big seasons)
- Show my husband some of my old haunts
- Visit the Wizarding World of HarryPotter in Orlando
- Go to a comic type of convention
- Meet David Tennant (bonus such a good picture someone thought he was my baby daddy)
- Meet and interact with people I loved since child hood (Captain Kirk, Bo duke, Hercules, Spike… yay!!)
- Be a foster parent
- Make costumes for munchkins in my life
- Enjoy bedtime stories with munchkins in my life
- Inspire the children in our lives to have passions (by sharing our own from cake making and photography to theatre and more)
- Share my creativity and love of “dreaming” with those I love
- Share our love of road trips
- Hike and have outdoor adventures with each other and the kids in our lives
