As if my full time job, with all its evening and weekend hours wasn’t enough to keep me busy, I’ve decided that I need healthy doses of extra-curricular activities, personal development, and intellectual pursuits to leverage and maximize the 56 or so hours of my life that I’m not sleeping or working. I blame yarn crafting for this. What yarn crafting started has become a curiosity of more serious endeavors, like establishing a side hustle and thinking in concrete terms about a long-term dream I’ve been simmering in the back of my brain for a number of years now. So I spitballed a list of things I could do in my third bucket that would make for engaging intellectual pursuits, and more importantly, lay a foundation for these mid- and long-term goals.
Numbers 3 and 4 are straightforward and simple enough–write a list and do stuff on the list, and we can safely say that both of these items have been accomplished in part or in full. I spitballed a list of 27 items, and have done or initiated at least 4, which isn’t a lot, though it satisfies the purpose of the exercise, and in retrospect, the drafting of the list was more important than completing every single item on it for now. In fact, the power of what I’d done in just simply creating the list didn’t really hit me until I sat down to write this post. As I sat to review my list and what I’d accomplished from it, it suddenly took on a life of its own, like it embodied the dream behind it, larger than the sum of all items combined therein, and embodying the secret formula to putting my diabolical plans into motion. A secret formula to be guarded, protected, and handled with care, like the recipe for Coke, the Colonel’s secret blend of herbs and spices, and all 57 ingredients in Heinz ketchup. It is my capital L List.
As I reviewed the List drafted as a result of #3 for 2019, I recalled a great segment on an episode of This American Life, Wonder Woman, that tells the story of Zora, who knew before the age of 12 that she wanted to be a superhero, or more practically speaking, a CIA agent. So she wrote a long and specific list of all the superhero skills she’d need, and set out to learn them all by the age of 23. And she did. Does a list have the power to transform a woman into a superhero? I believe it does. While my List will not necessarily make me a modern Indiana Jones, it is my List, personal to me, representing my own vision of myself as a superhero and will definitely, in some form or another, make it to the 20 for 2020. Tomorrow, I’ll share a glimpse of the items I’ve covered in my List of Mojo.
It Starts With Quiche 