21 Before 21
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Jetta managed to break one of her toes this week. Six weeks of healing. This has nothing to do with the rest of this post.
I'm sitting in Cymplify writing next week's blog post for The Alligator, and I got distracted and wrote a second post for today. In my defense, the Links I Like post was supposed to be out yesterday...
I came across a blog called The Happily Ever After Project today. It's a wonderful little blog by a lovely woman named Celine about living for yourself, and making your happily ever after yourself. However, the blog that inspired The Happily Ever After Project is the one that hit me.
The blog The 30 Before 30 Project ended in 2011 and Celine has since moved on to her new blog. However, reading through the archives of this original has been substantially inspirational.
When you enter The 30 Before 30 Project the right sidebar will direct you to a post called Come Along for the Ride. It explains that the project came from Celine approaching 30 years old, and realizing she'd set aside all amazing the things she had planned to do for another time. It hit her one day "like a piece of concrete jutting out of a sidewalk".
That line hit me like a piece of concrete.
I'm almost 20 years old. It's terrifying me substantially, and I'm not really sure why. I've gone through a lot of changes in the past year: I transfered schools, I'm working more jobs than I ever thought I could handle, I'm in a serious relationship, I rarely see my house...the list goes on. I'm prone to frequent panic attacks since a traumatic incident last March left me with PTSD. For the past week I've been having these strange attacks where suddenly I'm distraught and afraid, all because I realize that I'm nineteen, and it feels like I was ten just yesterday.
I'm overwhelmed with the feeling that I have the life skills of a child, and I'm thrown into the adult world. I'm making meal plans, I'm working, I talk to my parents more on the phone then I do in real life, I miss my childhood friends. I feel like the main character in 13 Going on 30. I just want to go back to eating dinosaur-egg oatmeal and watching PBS before going to school. I want summers to be for friends and summer camp, not for class and work. I cried after watching Avenue Q at the Hippodrome Theatre last night because I am so afraid of life after college.
It usually takes me falling asleep to end these panics, and then I'm back to normal. I'm me. I'm planning my trip to Vancouver in August, I'm excited to make steak stir-fry for dinner tonight. I'm planning my next blog post for The Alligator.
After reading Come Along for the Ride, I realized this is all probably because I'm approaching the milestone of turning 20. I'm scared because I feel like I've let so much time slip through my fingers.
So I'm taking control.
I originally wanted to make a big 25 Before 25 list to start when I turn 20 years old. However, I'm ambitious; I want to do more than that. I LOVE to-do lists, I usually make one for every season. So on top my my usual seasonal to-do lists, I'm writing a 21 Before 21 list.
Here what I have so far, want to suggest anything?
1.) Become ATS General Skills Certified in Vancouver, BC.
2.) Stay in the Hostel in the Forest in Brunswick, GA.
3.) Have an article published in the Gainesville Sun.
4.) Take the Ballet I leisure course.
5.) Become scuba certified.
6.) Go hunting.
7.) Spontaneously travel somewhere by plane.
8.) Take pole dancing lessons.
9.) Stay for a weekend at a fancy bed and breakfast.
10.) Learn how to keep bees.
11.) ?
12.) ?
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20.) ?
21.) ?
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