30 Before 30

A friend of mine introduced me to the idea of doing 30 news things in the thirtieth year of life.

Here's what it is not.
This is not defining life through what I do. The point of this is not to collect a list of skills, achievements, and adventures in order to feel good about myself. This is not about giving me an excuse to list it up like crazy.

Here's what it is.
Instead, this is pushing myself to grow, experience new things, keep things changing in order to live in and understand the moment. It has given me a chance to get closer to people as I do this. I believe that it is important to live in the discomfort zone in order to learn who I really am, to push the boundaries of my self-definition. This is also about adding new wholesome and exciting activities to enrich my life and help me connect more with the world.

One of the definitions of aging is that you're only old when you stop doing new things. Maybe that's one of the roots of this 30 before 30 ritual. Keeping the 30ieth year fresh and vibrant.

I started making the list and realized that it was hard for a few reasons:
1. I do a lot already. I usually act pretty immediately on the things that I want to do. I don't want to add things that I've already done.
2. The things that I want to do and have not already done usually require a substantial amount of money, planning, or time. For example - a trip to South America would require a lot of all three.

As I found these difficulties, I realized that I already had established some mental boundaries about who I am. I needed to open my mind and my heart as part of the brainstorming. There are a few categories of things that I can do with the given time constraints and resources:
1. Things that I don't really want to do or that I'm scared of doing. I learn a lot by doing these things.
2. Things that usually require opportunity - with just a little pro-action I can make them happen. And it gives me a chance to seek how buddies who know how to do them.

Here's the list, including where I am so far. I am intentionally not filling it in completely at this point in order to learn more about myself and leave room to be flexible as the year continues.

#	Done	Item to Do	Notes
1		Drink real absinthe	Acquired - Thanks, Paul!
2		Ride a tandem bike	Need partner, need to find a bike
3	X	Study with a grand master	5-day workshop with Taijiquan grandmaster Chen Xiao Wang
4		Surf	Abby will teach me - thanks, Abby!
5		Make Waldorf salad ice cream	Got the ice cream maker - need to do it
6	X	Become proficient in salsa	I was invited to Century Ballroom's salsa level 4.
7		Sell a piece of art that I've made myself
8		Get involved in my community	This one is pretty vague, and I need to define it more crisply.
9		Throw a making art party
10	X	Write 30 blog posts during this year
11		Do something everyday for 100 days	Almost there, I'm on day 90 of writing.
12	X	Volunteer in the election	I canvassed for Obama/Gregoire.
13	X	Visit an eastern Washington wine region	Went to Yakima Valley
14	X	Receive a psychic reading	Tarot from Raven, and then again from Vinny.
15	X	Give a psychic reading	Thanks for teaching me, Vinny.
16		Climb outdoors on real rock
17	X	Visit Chichen Itza	Magnificent! One of the new 7 world wonders. Visited it with Josh.
18	X	a	There are some things that need to be kept private...
19	X	ss	2/14
20	X	Buy something in an auction	1 week vacation on Whidbey Island - bought at NWIRP auction
21	X	Develop a regular yoga practice
22	X	Learn to drive stick	Earned my wings on the Yucatan peninsula driving through jungle and busy little towns. Thanks to Dad and Josh for the help.
23	X	Take an art class and learn to draw with new media	I took a finding flow in art class from William and I have been working with new media - sharpies on graph paper, charcoals, and chalk pastels.
24	X	Reiki III attunement
25		Ride in a hot air balloon
26	X	Take private dance lessons	Both tango and salsa
27	X	w	Another private one.
28	X	Rolfing Basic 10 Series
29		Wildcard #1
30		Wildcard #2

30, Here I Come.
I am pretty excited about turning 30 this year and I really look forward to what I will learn about myself from this adventure. Expect a future blog post on my learnings.

Comments Requested

Please let me know if you have any such practices yourself. Please share any ideas of things that you think for me to do. Do you believe in a particular book that every person must read? I'd like to include one of those. If you know me and can help with any of these or would like to share in these, please let me know that, too.

Comfortable with What Is

A streak of blissful days and nights was interrupted a couple days ago when I didn't Start Whole. I practically kicked a couple friends out of my house to go visit someone. I was expecting something. I wasn't quite sure what that was; I'm still not; I didn't define it ahead of time. Whatever it was, it didn't happen. I want to say that I learned a lesson instead, but that's just tying it up in a neat little bow to make it feel safely understood (as I discuss in Lean Into Discomfort). Since our Stories Define Reality, we could focus on the dark cloud or the silver lining, though lately I have been seeing that both sides add interpretations that don't necessarily exist. Authoring our own silver lining into the story is a slight aggression against what already is.

I did learn a few things, though, but that's not the outcome of the experience or the purpose of it. I see that, now. It's just separate. I let something out of me. At the time, I thought that I had needed to for a while, that letting that out was the purpose. Then I thought about some recent waves of nausea that I've been feeling (during my reiki III attunement, during rolfing, and the morning after that same rolfing treatment). I thought about a writing from Susan Shumsky of the 13 different inbound and outbound activities of the body and how we're supposed to honor them, let them happen. I had a feeling that this was a purpose for the nausea... Right there, I caught myself. I was trying to find a reason for it. Then I realized that there doesn't need to be a purpose, and realizing this was a moment of turiya and a feeling like I just left the greatest spa trip.

There's this need in me--likely it is true of human nature--to search for explanations for things. I'm often not comfortable until I can explain it. For instance, when I feel something, I may make up a reason like I'm supposed to puke to feel better or that I need to let out those tears, that I've been holding onto them and really there's a purpose to them. What I realized: there is no grand purpose. It is always possible to tell ourselves a story based on things in the past and make sense of them in the present. In the end, though, we don't know a fraction of the details of everything going on, and we certainly are not armed with the information to figure out our realities. Instead, we learn what we learn, we know what we know, we think what we think, just as we go. Things just happen. Our minds confabulate the reasons or want to draw a conclusion to things to make it tidy (at least mine does). But that's the exact trap. It's the desire to control things through understanding them. The real power comes from being comfortable with things exactly as they are, without ascribing meaning to them. That's slightly different than being comfortable with uncertainty. It is just being comfortable with what is. Yes, that is uncertain. What is is uncertain. We can never know ahead of time what is. It just is. There's nothing to fight or to control. There's nothing to understand or derive meaning from. We only react, or not. And what is keeps on being what it is, without regard for us.

In parting, I will leave you with this lovely poem by an anonymous (to me) Native American, from my yin yoga teacher, Saiko:

The river flows,

the grass grows, and

the wind blows....

This post is dedicated to Nick Dallett, good friend, former colleague, and musical co-conspirator (together we are the Cat's Cradle Robbers). He thinks--among many other things--that complex pleasures are underrated. Nick has a gift for rolling with things as they are, though he'd tell you that he has worked really hard at it.