How this All Began (40/40)

As I celebrated my 39th birthday I thought about what I could do to mark this last year. To make my 40th birthday something that was filled more with celebration than with the usual dread (although, I must say, I wasn't really dreading turning 40--I am a mixed bag of emotions about the whole thing, but dread is something that the infamous "they" and their marketing campaigns cooked up, and is not necessarily one of the emotions I feel).

I decided to make a List. A List with a capital "L," patterned after some really inspiring lists I read on the Hula Seventy blog. And so it began.

I celebrated turning 39 by doing something I always wanted to try: singing karaoke. I've sang a lot. In a lot of places. It was still a bit nerve-wracking, trying to find a song I knew well enough to sing in public. I found I knew lots of snippets of the popular songs, but not really enough to get up there and sing it by myself. I mean, I would have been quite successul if it was "sing-along-with-the radio-version-oke" but alas, it was not. I sang twice, squeezing myself inbetween a couple of girls between the ages of 7 and 9 with a healthy Taylor Swift obsession (I should add this was "Family Karoke" night at the local Pizza King) I ended up singing two songs: "Part of your World" from The Little Mermaid, and a song I promised myself for years I would sing if I ever got a chance to sing karoke--"Passionate Kisses" by Mary Chapin Carpenter. It was a lot of fun! I thought it would be something I would do more often, but alas, haven't been back since then.

Still, it was doing something I'd wanted to try for years that propelled me to make the rest of the list. I wanted a mix of goals that were big goals--things that would stretch me a little--and small goals--things I could easily achieve. It's been an interesting journey. I definitely learned along the way. I'm also scrambling to finish off as many as I can in the next two and a half weeks!

I'll keep you posted.