50th Birthdays Inspire Reflection, Unsurprisingly

The last week or two, I’ve been keeping two running lists in my head — things I really strongly want to do, and things I am playing around with doing. The latter list is much too long to actually do, I think. 🙂

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Things I Strongly Want to Do This Next Decade:

– go to bed by 9:30 most nights, so I can be awake at 5:30
– wake up, coffee and meds, 20 minutes minimum of exercise, start day with writing, follow with gardening
– deal with urgent e-mails immediately, rather than having them hanging over my head, stressing me out

– get all my various to-do lists scattered all over the place organized and onto Trello

– find an agent who can represent all my different genres (my current agent only does SF/F, and as much as I like him, I think that’s not working for me, which he agrees with…)

– go back to writing & publishing a book / year, the way I did before kids

– get the SLF’s Portolan Project launched and developed well

– raise enough funds that we can hire Darius full-time as managing director including covering his healthcare

– finish Jump Space and publish it
– finish drafting at least book one in the epic SF series I have in my head
– write & publish a host of food essays

– write & publish Vegan Serendib, the cocktail sampler, the teatime sampler

– be present with my family and enjoy my time with them
– ditto for friends

– find some couple friends so Kevin and I can socialize together with them 🙂

– travel more

– stress less

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Things I’d Like to Do (and Probably Won’t Have Time to Do All of):

Mental & Physical Health
– get back to inbox zero on e-mail
– daily yoga practice
– join a martial arts group and learn to fight with swords
– become a GOOD swimmer & swim regularly

– get to actually being healthy and fit as a default

Music:
– write a song I’m happy with
– learn to sing well enough to perform it on Facebook, at least 🙂

– find a way to bring regular music making into my life again — I play piano, flute, alto recorder, pennywhistle, and can thump along on a bodhran, but I so rarely play these days; I’d love to have a group to play with regularly

Textile Arts:
– find / form a regular knitting / crochet / embroidery group again
– design more on Spoonflower

– try sewing aprons, book bags, pencil cases…

Maram:
– start offering writing classes again through Maram (I probably wouldn’t be teaching, but would be organizing)

– think about whether I can convert my garage into a makerspace for now

Random:

– get a tattoo? maybe?

Writing:
– get enough regularly through Patreon that I can have the option of taking a sabbatical to write more without it being a major financial strain
– write & publish a picture book
– write & publish a middle-grade novel
– write & publish a YA novel
– write & publish some travel essays
– write & publish a mainstream lit. novel
– write & publish my cancer log

– write & publish Gluten-Free Serendib

I’ll probably come back and add to this list. 🙂 Photo is from my flight back from Nashville, as I returned to Chicago.

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