Saying “good-bye” to my 50’s

I’m completing the last year of my sixth decade. Since I’ll be reaching the age of 60 this year, I wanted to do something unique, spectacular, and epic. What I came up with was so outrageous I had to test it out to see if I had the remote chance of completing it. Now that I’m about halfway, I can see that it IS possible.

My idea scared me and excited me at the same time. Scared me because it was so seemly impossible that I doubted I could even pull it off. Excited me because of how much fun I would have just accomplishing even a small bit. I decided that it didn’t matter if I made it or not. Even completing a very small piece of my plan would be incredible! And no matter how much I accomplished, I will be further along my life’s continuum than I would be if I didn’t even try.

And to help ensure my success, I decided to keep quiet about my plan. I had to know what I could actually do and I couldn’t allow the remotest possibility of any expression of doubt. Friends and family could have inadvertently provided just enough of a seed of doubt to stop me quick in my tracks. But now there’s no chance of that because I’m already doing it! So nobody can say, “Wow! That’s a bit much don’t you think?” or “Have you really thought this through?” or even give well-meaning advice such as “Maybe you should tone it down so you have a chance at succeeding.” Because I’m already doing it!

So what IS my plan? What AM I doing? Just simply having an epic journey! I have created a list of different activities I want to do and habits I want to develop or strengthen. It’s an extensive list. There are at least 60 items on this list. Why 60? Because I will be 60 in August this year.

Wait, there’s more.

My goal is to do each item on my list…..60 times! In other words, I’m striving to do 60 different activities, 60 times each! All within one year. I started on my birthday (August of 2018) and I have until my birthday of 2019 to complete my plan. It’s quite the way to bring in 60, don’t you think?

What do I have on my list? As you can imagine, a wide variety of activities.

• Walking 60 kilometres (knocked that one off within one month)
• Going up 60 flights of stairs (ditto)
• Taking my vitamins for 60 days (it took a lot more than 60 days to do that!)
• Picking up 60 bags of litter as I walk my dog (still working on this one)
• Eating 60 vegetarian meals (done – I’m now working on eating 60 vegan meals)
• Completing 60 goals (I have a list of more than 60 to choose from)
• Wearing 60 dresses (not all at the same time)
• Hiking 60 different trails (I have hiked almost all of the trails in Edmonton’s river valley now)

And the list goes on! I’ve completed 20 different items 60 times each. I’ve even carried on doing most of the activities I’ve completed, but I don’t worry about tracking them anymore.

I invite you to follow along with me on my epic journey! Future blogs will delve into the experiences I’ve encountered while completing some of the activities. Even though I’m halfway through the year and almost halfway through my list, I still feel the same excitement as I did at the beginning with one notable difference. In the beginning, I was excited because of the possibility, the curiosity, the question, could I REALLY do that? Now, I’m excited because I’m doing it!

Hello 60! Here I come!