My Obsession With Lists - And Charts - Continues

A few days ago my 101 in 1001 list expired. It was, all told, a failure. But it was a glorious failure. I did some things I never thought I would do. Then again, some things I figured would be really easy and done in a couple of days, still haven't been done. I'm amazing that way.

Despite the project's failure, I'm going to make another one. It's going to be a little more realistic; there will still be a few lofty goals, but I'm going to try and be more realistic while still pushing my own boundaries. And there's going to be a little bit of overlap between the lists. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but I'll try and keep better track of things. And who knows? It might be even more successful. It can't get much worse, that's for sure.

My Goals To This Point

A little while ago I mentioned that I had pretty much abandoned my 101 in 1001 list but would try to rip through as many goals as I was able to before the expiry date. Well, November 19 is only 47 days away, and I've accomplished a small handful of my goals. Here's a brief review.

12. Get a picture with The Peach. Well I had originally envisioned just a random "Hey let's go get our portrait done and put it in Christmas cards!" or something like that. But, considering that there were engagement photos and wedding photos, I'm considering this one accomplished.

22. Take Peach camping again to show that I can, indeed, be a happy camper. Incredibly lame pun aside, the last time we went camping it was pretty bad. I drove 8 hours a day and therefore was tired and a little cranky. This year, though, we went camping on our honeymoon, and it was really good. Shorter driving time, lots of fun, and with the improved planning and a list of things to work on we will hopefully have better luck with our future camping trips. No stress = good times.

33. Get married. Complete, and happily so!

39. Finish Angel Season 5 with Ninja and Jago. Monday night, finished up the last two episodes, and they were actually pretty good. The last episode was simultaneously a thumbs-up to the viewers and a middle-fingers-up to The Network, which was a little harsh to watch but mostly good. I don't want to make this into a huge meta-series review, but I will do each series in six words.
Season 1: Getting its footing; uneven but promising.
Season 2: Fantastic television. The best season overall.
Season 3: Started great, limped across the finish.
Season 4: Sometimes painful to watch. Worst season.
Season 5: Regained its quality, cut too short.

41. Get a digital camera and learn how to use it well enough to make nice pictures. This one's half done; I have the camera, but there are so many bells and whistles that I need a little while longer to learn how to really use it all. Maybe my upcoming trip to Vancouver will help with that.

49. Do another one of the "Stay Up All Night Creativity Binges" before my metabolism completely implodes. I did this a few months ago, when The Peach was out of town so I wouldn't be annoying her with random stumbling around in the middle of the night. I re-read my abandoned NaNo project and added a few pages, I wrote a couple of essays, I read a lot. Not really sure if it really helped my creative output, but I did it and had fun with it. Maybe it's not too late for another.

64. (hedonism / debauchery). Completed. No more detail than that.

So, there we go. Now with 24 things accomplished, the list is nearly 1/4 complete! I'd like to gear up to get it to 1/3 done by the end, mostly because a lot of these are impossible to complete now. Nine more goals in 47 days. That's...doable.

Shooting For The Moon...And Missing

Two and a half years ago, when I was a bright-eyed lad of twenty-five, I made myself a 101 in 1001 list. A list of 101 things to do in 1001 days. A lot of my friends were doing it, and it seemed like the type of bandwagon I could really get on top of. I thought I was being ambitious but reasonable, and I made a separate blog for it and everything. Which I pretty much ignored.

Looking back at it, my 101 in 1001 list is laughable. I was a student, for Pete's sake: why do so many of the goals involve the expenditures of large-ish sums of cash? Buying things, going places, planning things: all involved way more money than I had, or even have. A lot of it, too, suffered from my procrastination, which was easy to do because it wasn't on my main blog or anywhere that would actually remind me of it. Since then I've found a few other things that helped me reach my goals. Discovering 43Things, for instance, which might have helped me reach some of these goals due to the simple fact that I visit at least twice a week. But it's been 888 days (oooh, fancy!) and I've only done sixteen of the things on my list. Well, I've done more than sixteen, I've just neglected writing about them. But even if I'd done twice that many, I'd still have 67 things to do in 113 days, which won't happen.

So I'm trying to do something about it. I'll transfer my 101 in 1001 activities over to here, and see if that makes things any better. Not that I write a lot here either, but it might help. And on November 19, when my first list expires, I'll make a new one. One that's more pragmatic and accomplishable. Because I think there's merit in this exercise, even if it's simply a mental kick in the ass every couple of weeks to get on and live your life. (Seriously: I live in Canada and I haven't even gone snowboarding yet? That's ridiculous.)