Many of my most profound thoughts come to me while I’m driving long distances at night. As the highway unfolds in front of me so does my mind….Darkness keeps my eyes from darting much further than the road. Visual distractions are at a minimum and I usually turn inward.
It’s a full on brainstorm.
My last road trip sent me into the future…the far far far future. Forty. Shit….I’m lying. It’s the near future. So close I can reach out and bitch slap it if I wanted to. {And I want to.} Forty. Shit. Did I say that already?
I think, by the time I recover from turning forty, I will be about 59…
So, to cheer myself up a bit a few weeks ago, I wrote a little blog entry called The F Word….feel free to pause now and read it right now if you missed it….
Ok…lets move on…
This is sort of a part two. I promise to keep this coughcoughcoughfortycoughcoughcough series to a minimum. I’m going to go back to twenty nine soon, so, let’s just get this damn thing over with….
Alright, so I wrote that first part about things I am pretty proud to have accomplished. Written over a month ago, I just reread it for the first time since I posted it. Hell yeah I’m proud. Wow. Honestly, I have to admit I am one lucky woman.
Yeah. I can even make myself cry. Number twelve got me.
Ok…moving on…
*******
Hi, my name is Janelle and I’m turning forty in a week.
What do I want, you ask?
Well, guess who’s made a list?
40 More Fantastically Wonderful and Amazing Things I Want to Squeeze Into What Will Always Seem Like 29 Years….
{Absolutely in no particular order…except for #29…it’s really my #1.}
1. Ride in a hot air balloon. Yes, I will be terrified.
2. Jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Yes, I will be terrified.
3. Scuba Dive. Yes, I will be terrified.
4. Own a standard poodle. Call it Steve.
5. Ride on the back of a motorcycle like Pinky Tuscadero. {Google her.}
6. Travel completely alone.
7. Feel. Really feel what myself wants to feel….Happy? Great. Sad. It’s OK. Boredom. Gets the mind working. Fear. Gets the blood flowing. Anger. It will pass. Love. It will come. Feel.
8. Finish Dad’s story. Stretch out those short chapters I have already formed and weave them together with even more quirky tales. Edit it. Publish it.
9. Take horseback riding lessons.
10. Learn to dirty dance. (Don’t tell my grandma.)
11. Memorize all the words to the Beastie Boys’ License to Ill album.
12. Forget all the words to Amy Grants “Baby Baby”. {Worst song ever.}
13. Get more yoga-y. Balance. Strength. Bendiness.
14. Go on a silent retreat….
I will pause here while you pull yourself together and stop laughing…….
15. Write a memoir. All names will be changed. Well….all but one.
16. Zip line. Scream the whole way like a crazy school girl.
17. Go camping. { I know I know….avoided it like the plague for yeeeearrrs…but now it sounds kinda fun….as long as someone else does the cooking. }
18. Speak freely. Say what I want to say. Do not hesitate. Do not worry. Do not fret over being right or wrong in someone else’s eyes.
{Yes…sometimes I do this already…but really…oh man, have I censored a lot…which is wonderful…but sometimes damaging. }
19. Travel to where the monkeys roam. Spend the whole time in absolute amazement.
20. Throw my bra on the stage of an 80’s hair band…unless too much more time passes and they turn…gulp…old…then an 80’s cover band will have to do.
21. Play that trust game where you fall back and someone catches you….know I will be caught.
22. Go back to India with a completely different perspective…curiosity rather than fear.
23. See my boys fly.
24. Late night skinny dip at the beach followed by a huge toasty bonfire. Wait what?
25. Once I’m finished restoring me, work on the love of my life…..that ’65 Mustang.
26. Hike Machu Picchu…pose for a picture with an alpaca.
27. Drive the Zamboni.
28. Go on an African Safari. This includes riding in a Jeep with binoculars and a camera around my neck, full safari outfit, a notebook, and staying in one of those big bad ass tents.
29. Stop hindering my experiences because of what others feel. Allow myself to think and feel what I want based on me. Taking a risk…taking chances, things, of course, might not work…. but then again, they just might. If I’m going to live with the fear of taking chances then I’m not going to live a very exciting life.
Be brave.
Yes, I will be terrified.
30. Have an avocado tree and a nectarine tree of my own.
31. Live by the beach. Oh wait….check.
32. Eat well; nourish my body with amazing food.
33. Learn to trust my “gut”. Recognize when it’s trying to tell me something. Pause. Think.
34. Strengthen my body. Go deeper in my yoga practice. Hike further. Kick some ass in kickboxing.
35. Follow my heart….sometimes…even if my head tells me different…maybe check in with my gut first though.
36. Spend the night in a tree house, go surfing, lay on a nude beach {Wait…who added this?? I’ve been hacked….}.
37. Stop over analyzing.
38. Expectations. Kick them to the curb. Keep an open mind and don’t set myself up for disappointment.
39. Appreciate what it is that I have, be grateful and value everything and every situation.
40. Travel somewhere…anywhere…where I can work hard to help someone.
And one to grow on….
41. Let life HAPPEN. Go with the flow of it all…high tide, low tide, low-low tide, tidal waves. I don’t want to get so far ahead of it all that I get lost again.
It’s almost here….Forty. I better start lookin’ for that birthday suit of mine….
*****
“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.” ~ Gilda Radner
JAB @ the World 