Sunday, May 18, 2008

Life "to do" list

I've spent a bit of time this weekend going through papers--chucking what I no longer want to keep, and sorting that which I do. I found this list of things I want to do in my life that I think I wrote some time early in graduate school. Thankfully I've been able to check a few things off. Here it is:

- Take a first aid course (not yet)
- Ballroom dance/swing classed (done)
- Kilimanjaro (not yet; I think I mean "climb Kilimanjaro")
- Ph.D. (done)
- Visit New Zealand (not yet)
- Visit Australia (not yet)
- Hike the Otter Creek Trail (not yet)
- Retrain a thoroughbred off the track (not yet... I have helped retrain thoroughbreds off the track, but since I wrote this list after I'd done that, I'm guessing younger Samantha wouldn't let current Samantha count that. I meant to get a horse fresh off the track and "completely" retrain it)
- Publish a photograph (not yet, I don't think. Once, in graduate school, someone told me that a photograph I had taken of a horse and rider going over a jump was being used in print advertising (a poster) for the Hoofers Riding Club, but I think they were thinking of someone else's photo and I never saw the advert myself )
- See Laura v. Reumont (that's Laura Silverman, nee von Reumont, a good friend of mine when I was a teenager. She lives in the Cayman Islands now, and this "to do" was to see her *again,* since clearly I've seen her before)
- Make a piece of furniture/wood object (done--I make a (very nice and very practical, I think) CD-sized "bookshelf" for Jesse for Christmas one year... I've added a couple photos of it below)

- Have a vegetable garden--organic (done, and I hope to do this again some day, when I have a house again)
- Date someone for more than 1 year & enjoy it! (ha ha... done... I guess that dates this list to before July 2000 then, since that's when I started dating Jesse)
- Voluntary Simplicity (hmmn. Not sure if I can say I've done this. And funny, I just saw an article about this in the NY Times this week. I guess being a graduate student would be "involuntary simplicity"? I'll have to think more about this and see what the "rules" are for Voluntary Simplicity)
- Learn to SCUBA dive (not yet)
- Learn to sail (not yet)
- Run a 1/2+ marathon (not yet... got up to 10 km races)
- Touch Antarctica (not yet... may have to save this for retirement, but maybe there won't be any ice on Antarctica then, so that won't be the same)
- Develop film myself (no... and possibly never will. Guess I didn't see digital coming :-)

Well, that's the list as it was (with my current comments in parentheses). Wonder what my "to do" list would look like now? I'm on too much of a roll sorting/chucking papers now to stop and think about it. Maybe I'll put making that list on my to do list... hee hee.