Challenges ahead

The holiday weekend is rapidly approaching and I couldn't be happier about it. Labor Day sort of signifies the end of Summer, although it certainly feels more like Summer right now than it has much of the season so far. After last year's terrible drought and heat, we've lucked out this year with some really nice weather. I was able to spend much of it with the windows open and the air conditioner off. Good for me, good for Bea and good for the electricity bill. This week has changed all that with the typical Missouri summer weather arriving, at last. We're in the upper nineties every day with the heat index in the low 100s. Not as awesome.

Still, Labor Day is almost here and soon enough Fall will really arrive. I love Fall. The semester has already begun at Mizzou. We're into our second week of classes and things are slowly getting into a bit of a regular routine. The parking garages are becoming less of a traffic jam each day. Fewer students are getting lost and needing directions. The classes are coming in for their tours and orientations. At work, we've had an onslaught of professor requests for tours and orientations this semester. I don't remember it being this hectic before. We're scheduling multiple tours per day in some instances and re-opening the library after hours in other instances. It's nice, but I think we'll all be happy when those settle down, too.

I finished my summer reading challenge last week. "...And the Ladies of the Club" was a great book and I recommend it for people who like historical fiction and for those who have the time to commit to an epic story...(I mean epic in the real word, not slang terminology). After hanging out with the women of Waynesboro, Ohio for months now, I needed something completely different to read. So, I finally dug into the Advanced Reader Copies that the publishers were handing out at ALA in June. I picked up over a dozen ARCs and galleys and decided it was high time I I'm starting to read those and first decided to read a mystery set in the Amazon called "The Ways of Evil Men", which will be published in January. I'm only a few chapters in so far, but it's pretty interesting at this point. As I read my ARCs, I'll try to review them on here if I care to recommend them. I use Goodreads for my book tracking and always always always try to review the books that I read.

I'm finding that I always need a challenge of some sort. Always need something to be sort of reaching toward. A goal or program that I impose upon myself just to see if I can do it. I have no challenge right now. I could use selling my house as a challenge, but that's not what I mean. I mean challenge in the sense that I alone control my success or failure. In the past several years I've found that I work best under some sort of challenge. Like, the 365 photo challenge, the nothing over $30.00 wardrobe challenge, various reading challenges and other photo challenges, etc. I've found that these things really give me something to focus on, but also have a pretty big impact on my life. The 365 photo challenge made me view the world around me a lot more closely and become much more aware of my surroundings. It was great to get outside of myself and spend a lot of time finding beauty and creativity in my ordinary surroundings. It made me a better photographer, too. The wardrobe challenge had a huge impact on me, not only in the ways in which my spending habits changed, but also the ways in which I view quality of clothing. Before I did that project, I would buy mediocre clothing at ludicrous prices because I thought that was just what you had to do. Getting screwed by labels was just the way of the world. Afterward, I find that I refuse to buy things full price; I do a lot more with less, and I really think hard before buying clothes. I still adhere to a lot of the principles that I followed when I was in the $30.00 or less project. I really just don't buy clothes much anymore. I have become a lot more creative about my wardrobe and throw together combos of pieces to see if they work or how I feel about them. When I was a little girl, I had all the confidence in the world about putting together outfits and creating a wardrobe out of different pieces my parents would find for me. I look at pictures of me when I was young and think, 'Nice style, little one.' But, once I got to be about 12 and then all the way through probably my early 20s, I got really boring in my style. It's part of the awkward phase where I wanted to blend in more than stand out. I was awkwardly tall and clothing often just didn't fit right. I chose the path of least bullying and sort of hunkered down and bought the labels that everyone else had just to get through it, you know? But, in the last several years, I've sort of re-discovered the creative fashion girl that I used to be. I'm so glad to have found her again. People used to stare (and they still do) at some of the outfits I will wear. I have purple hair now, which also gets some comments, but mostly I get compliments about outfits and hairstyles and accessories that I throw together. I'm not sure I'm as confident as I was when I was the little girl in the pictures, and I don't know that I ever will be that sure of myself again, but I'm a long way from the insecure and awkward girl I see in pictures from my teenage years.This is all to say that I'm not sure what to do next? I've tackled photography, clothing, and reading... I can't really think of any sort of movie/tv challenge that I'd actually want to do. I know people do "Life Lists" and list out accomplishments or things they want to do before they die. That seems overwhelming. I kind of prefer to work in the semi-present. Challenges that I can see to the end in a year or less, you know? My life is not so stable that I actually know where I will be a year from now, either. I think it's best to keep my goals short-sighted.

Therefore, I'm sorta halfway thinking of doing one of those 30 by 30 lists. I turn 30 next Spring and, by all accounts, it seems like people kind of expect you to have your shit together by that time. I don't feel like I'm flailing about without any sort of direction, I just feel like my direction changes a lot. I cyber-stalked other peoples 30 by 30 lists and find many of them less than inspiring or I've already done the things on their list (i.e. buy a home, visit Machu Picchu (word!), get a real job) or things I have no inclination to do (i.e. have a baby, get married, skydive, hold a tarantula). I have about 8 months to finish this list, or decide that I don't want to do some of the tasks I put on here now (to be fair, some of these were already scheduled events between now and Spring, so it's not like I'm pulling all of these out of thin air). I could only think of 27, so these are the 27 things I'd like to do by the time I turn 30:

1) Be a vegetarian for a week
2) Keep a plant alive for at least two months
3) Take a tai chi class
4) Make my own jar of pasta sauce
5) Go on a road trip - solo. (I did a baby version of this last year, but I mean, a multi-state-American-Dream sort of road trip)
6) See The Blue Man Group in concert
7) Sell my house
8) Say 'Yes' to invitations (I realize this is sort of abstract, but you know...attempt to be more outgoing and  and less hermit-ish)
9) Go 'glamping'
10) Eat only at local establishments for a week...no chains.
11) Learn the "Single Ladies" dance from Beyonce's video
12) Apply for a job I think I'd enjoy, whether I feel that I'm qualified for it or not.
13) Register for a class at the adult education place in town
14) Attend class at the adult education place in town (I have a habit of registering and then punking out once the scheduled day of the class arrives.)
15) Get a virtual pen pal. (I miss receiving actual e-mails about friends and I long ago gave up on the project a friend and I were doing of actually sending letters through the mail.)
16) Chill out on the beach
17) Pick up someone else's tab at a restaurant
18) Archive my grandparents WWII letters
19) Teach Beatrix to walk on a leash (bwaahahahah.)
20) Have a kick-ass Halloween costume for this year's Halloween event at work
21) Write a fan letter to someone (My dad recently found a letter that my mom wrote to Jimmy Buffett and it has made me want to write a fan letter to somebody. But...to whom?)
22) Listen to every cd and every record I own all the way through
23) See a professional ballet/stay awake through a professional ballet
24) Go to more than one film screening during True/False 2014
25) Become more confident at giving tours and lectures at work
26) Read all of the books I picked up from ALA 2013 (alternatively: vow to not pick up as many the next time I attend ALA.)
27) Cook chicken fried rice all by myself (obviously, not the same week that I'm attempting #1)