The 20 New Things Mistake

This was supposed to be posted on my birthday, but the whole Dam Square thing was heavily on my mind that night. So, it's taken me until now to get this posted.

As of five days ago, I am officially twenty years-old. By now, I should have completed all twenty things on the list.

While this project is usually a year long, I started it in January, intending it to correspond with the semester I would be abroad. Therefore, I decided to make most of the new things deal with goals I had for my time abroad.

The mistake?

I'm actually in Amsterdam for another month and four days (from the date of my birthday). During that month and four days, most of my classes end and my homework stops. I have way more free time in May than I have at any other point during the semester.

Having made that realization a few weeks ago, I stopped attempting to complete my 20 New Things list before my birthday and decided that for this, the first time, given the nature of the situation, I will extend my 20 New Things until I leave Amsterdam on June 8th. Then, I'll start my 21 New Things after I move in to Santa Fe.

Oh, have I mentioned that here yet? I'm moving to Santa Fe. Or, rather, my mom is and I'm going to live there with her when I'm not at school (what school that will be, I still don't know).

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There are a handful of things that I have known for sometime just cannot happen, but there are also a handful of things I completed months ago and just haven't written about. So, in my remaining month, I'll be posting those things I never wrote about and completing the other (doable) things.

Yeah, it was a kind of a fail, but the whole experiment still did what it was meant to do. There were several times I wanted to be my usual lazy self and not take the opportunity to do something unique, but having the list (and the accountability of friends who knew about the list) pushed me to not spend another night cooped up in my apartment or to take the extra effort to travel even though I had essays and projects to do. I look forward to getting older when my lists will get longer and I'll have even more things to get out there and try.

As I finish the list (and my time in Amsterdam), I'm already working on my list for next year and, as always, welcome suggestions. Some ideas I have so far is to learn guitar basics and cook a three course meal for my friends all by myself.

Here's to an exciting month and even more exciting year!

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