The Ruminator

Come on up and grab yourself a beer.

Monday, July 11, 2005

To do list (life):

- Take singing lessons
- Go to Egypt and see the pyramids
- Learn to ride a motorbike
- Go hang gliding
- Learn to cook different types of food
- Visit New Orleans
- Learn to brake, and go backwards, on rollerblades
- Do a photography course
- Learn to ski
- Write more
- Learn to tango
- Master another language...

The list goes on, but you get the general idea. What I’m thinking about is that a lot of them have been on my list for years now, and all of them are achievable. I mean, we’re not talking about plans for world domination here. (I keep those plans on a separate file, under a different name.) So maybe it’s time I went out and actually did something about it.

Sure, money will be a big thing when it comes to international travel. But this is to do in my life, not next week, so that’s OK – it will happen. And I’m going overseas for five weeks in August, so I can’t exactly complain. Time is another issue. Learning to ride a motorbike may have to wait until I have some sort of midlife crisis that manages to make my fear of death less powerful than my desire to fulfill that particular ambition. I hasten to add it’s not just other motorists or slippery roads I fear – my mother would kill me.

I should also add that my life has not exactly been a graveyard of buried dreams and fearful hesitation. I’ve actually done some deeply cool things in the last few years, including, but not limited to:
- Jumping out of a plane
- Learning kung fu
- Learning to salsa
- Living by myself
- Abseiling down underground waterfalls
- Being on television
- Traveling around Europe with a friend, and around New Zealand and the UK on my own
- Paying off all my debts, including HECS

But today my resolution is to steadily reduce the number of things about which I say – “I’ve always wanted to do that.” Honestly, is it really going to be that hard to learn how to break on rollerblades? OK, maybe it would help if I was using something other than the cheapest pair of blades I could find in Kmart when I was in high school. Which, now that I come to think of it, was quite some time ago. And maybe I’ll wait until the weather is warmer. But I’ll get there.