#1: Start a Blog

Like everything else in life, turning 30 is what you make of it. I am making it into a blog. My impending milestone birthday has inspired this project; a list of thirty things to do before I turn 30 years old. Friends and family have helped me to compile a string of ideas, things which I have never done before but would like to do. Having a deadline just makes the project that much more likely to get done. Without it all these things will just end up on the hypothetical list of “Things I’d Like To Do Before I Die,” which could more aptly be called “Things I’ll Talk About But Never Get Around To Doing.”

I’m fine with the fact that I’m turning thirty (well, I’m mostly fine except for brief moments when I age other things around me and realize that Pearl Jam's Ten is now 19 years old, can that be right?). I’m hopeful that the next decade will be better than the previous for the same reason my late twenties have been better than my early twenties. I am more comfortable with myself and I know so much more about who I want to be, which got me thinking about what I had learned and what I still have left to figure out.

In my 20's I learned the following, in this order:

• How to take a shot without making a face
• The debt accrued from buying your boyfriend an expensive birthday present on your credit card will last much longer than the actual boyfriend
• Sexy shoes are waste of money, the first night you wear them you will inevitably end up with a group of people who keep saying the bar is only a few blocks away and no one will have any cash for a cab; and those same shoes will look a lot less sexy when you have blisters all over your feet

And yes, giving up credit cards was easier than giving up hot shoes. The one thing I haven't mastered in my 20's is follow through. So this blog will be my attempt at committing to a project and finishing it on time. The fact that it is public will, in theory, help pressure me into committing, or expose my abject failure to a much larger audience. So please check in to measure my progress as I attempt all 30 in 126 days.

1 down; 29 to go