2010 was a good year. Although it feels like it’s passed in a blur, I think I can look back over the last 365 days and say that I achieved something. I turned 21, I graduated and I started working in the field that I trained for. Those are all note-worthy things to have done.
Somehow, though, I can’t shake the feeling of wasting my time. When I look back at how I spent my free time in 2010, mostly I was being lazy. Now, this has a certain appeal both as a student and as an employee, but being lazy rapidly loses its allure when you’re being it all the time.
That’s why, in a fit of madness that I’d been building up to for a while, I decided to create a list. There are all sorts of contributing factors that in isolation probably wouldn’t have amounted to much. I did a quiz on Facebook to see how many of the top 100 books I’d read and I discovered I had in fact read quite a few. I read Mike Gayle’s The To-Do List. I’m playing World of Warcraft (yes, geek, get it out your system now while you still can), a computer game where you can earn achievements for different things.
Now, combine these events with (a) my love of lists, (b) my love of earning ticks/gold stars/achievements/badges/anything and (c) my wish to be more productive, and you get something amazing. You get a project!
With a couple of weeks to spare before 2011 started, I got down to making a list. I’d originally planned for 100 items, but I considered 500 (for a challenge), 2011 (for the year) and 365 (for the days). It took my rational – and perhaps slightly cynical – boyfriend and partner-in-crime Will to point out that while having a project was an admirable thing and that he was sure it’d be fun, I did also have to hold down my job.
Oh, yeah. The job.
That took a little of the wind out my sails and I panicked. I’d already told people I was planning to do this project when asking them for list suggestions and I couldn’t back out. But how on earth was I going to fit it around work and normal everyday life?
I hummed and hawed and reconsidered and fretted and eventually settled on 250 items; a mixture of books to read, films to see and things to do, which you can check out in the full list here. I’m standing (well sitting, but that’s a technicality) on the cusp of 2011, ready to start this challenge. I bounce wildly from super-enthusiastic to terrified, but I am ready.
2011 is going to be a lot of things. It’ll be a big year for both me and Will, with quite a few potential life changes along the tracks, which I’m sure you’ll hear all about. It’s going to be a year for me to test myself, to rue the day I ever thought that doing a list was a good idea and finally, a year for me to “do stuff”.
Happy new year everyone, and may your new year be filled with plenty of things to do!
