Well, this is the second to the last post.  My list is almost complete.  It has been surprising, even to me, what has shown up on the list.  It’s also been exciting.  Even if I only accomplish half of what I hope to in the next year, I’ll still have made some sweeping changes in my life.

Now, on with the list.

List Item 31: Learn a Craft – I always say I’m not artistic, or that my art lies in words, but I don’t think that’s really the case.  While I can’t draw and am not attracted to crafts like scrapbooking and such, I think I might like knitting or needlepoint.  This year I want to try a few crafts like that and see if one of them strikes my fancy.

List Item 32: Hike the TART Trail System – I set this goal for myself a while ago and then never followed through.  The area in which I live has a great section of trails, perfect for hiking.  I want to take advantage of the trails this year.  It will be good exercise and will allow me to experience some of the beauty that is all around me.  I live in a lovely part of the country.  I should appreciate that more.

List Item 33: Join an online dating site – I’ve thought about doing this several times, but never had the nerve.  I always say I want my relationships to happen organically, but let’s face it, that doesn’t always work. Maybe meeting some men who are looking for someone too wouldn’t be such a bad thing.  At the very least it will get me out there a bit more and that should be a good thing.

List Item 34: Reconnect with my past – I recently signed up with Facebook.  A lot of the people who contacted me have been people from high school.  My reaction to seeing their names again was curious, I mostly wanted to avoid them.  Not because I had bad memories of those people, but because I had bad memories of the time.  This year I want to reconnect with the good memories and the good people who were part of my past.  I need to learn to separate the painful from the good and to appreciate the good.

List Item 35:  Be Kristine – I stole this list item from Gretchen at The Happiness Project.   Basically what “being Kristine” means is that I accept my likes and dislikes and don’t try to force myself to be someone I’m not.  I accept  the fact that I probably will never want to try skydiving, will always need solitary time and will never be able to draw or cut a straight line.  I allow myself to be who I am without apologies and while realizing that we all have different strengths and weaknesses and part of being myself is recognizing and appreciating my own.

One more post and the list is done.  Then the fun really starts,  and I start checking things off the list and writing about all my adventures.  By the way, I already started toward one thing on my list.  I bought the seeds for my container garden last night.

I am having so much fun with this project, and apparently I’m on a roll.  For those of you who want to keep track of what is on my list, I’ve created a page called, appropriately enough 40 Things List.   Once I get done with these posts, the entire list will be there.  I’ll also probably write a page about the whole project and how it came to be at some point.  That won’t be today, though.  Today we need to examine the next five things on the list.

List Item 26: Expect more good -  This kind of sounds like list item number 24 and it sort of is, but this is more about an attitude adjustment.  I want to wake up every morning expecting wonderful things from the day.  Most days, my current attitude is somewhere between cautious optimism and existential dread.  I want to feel a sense of excitement and wonder about the terrific things that await me.

List Item 27: Stop looking for reasons why – I’ve spent a lot of my life searching for reasons for all the bad things that happened to me in my life.   I guess I thought if I knew the reason I could get closure on certain events in my pass and I could understand how to avoid such problems in the future. The rational part of me knows that such thinking isn’t rational, and this year I want to just live my life and stop trying to understand why things happen.

List Item 28: Ask for and accept help – I’ve always looked at asking for help as a sign of weakness.  That’s probably what led to me sitting in a hospital room scared and alone last year.  I tend to feel that the safest way to be is alone, and the safest thing to do is everything myself.  This year I want to learn to rely on others and to trust that they’ll be there for me when I need them.  I figure if I start asking for help with small things eventually I can work up to the big stuff.

List Item 29: Discuss religion with experts – I consider myself a spiritual person, but I don’t consider myself religious.  While I have seen a lot of good done in the name of religion, and seen it provide comfort and hope, I also think that a lot of bigotry and hatred is fostered by religion.   This year I’d like to discuss different religions with people who are deeply immersed in them and try to find out why religion is a comfort and a support for many people.

List Item 30:  Catch the Christmas spirit – Christmas has never been my favorite time of year.  When I was a kid it was usually a time of stress, fights and drunkenness.  I guess over the years, and probably in self defense, I’ve come to dread Christmas.  This year I want to find the joy that other people seem to take in the season, or I at least want to learn to fake it.  I don’t like feeling like I’m spoiling other people’s enjoyment of the season by being a Scrooge.

Well, that’s almost it.  10 more to go, or two more posts, and the list will be complete.

This project has already taught me so much about myself.  I’m discovering things I didn’t even know I wanted to do, and I’m identifying so many areas that I want to improve or change.  So far this has been a wonderful journey, and I really feel that this will change my life.  I’m very excited.

Tonight we start on the second half of the list.

List Item 21: Be Better About Doctor and Dentist Appointments – My childhood was filled with doctor appointments.  I was poked and prodded more than any kid should have to be.  When I got older, my sole goal in life was to avoid the doctor.  After last year, I realize having regular appointments is the smart thing to do.  That doesn’t mean I’ll like them any more than I ever did, it just means I’ll keep them and be responsible about making them when I should.  My health is too important to be childish about it.

List Item 22: Teach Someone to Read – I taught myself to read when I was four.  Reading has always been one of the joys of my life, and I’ve always read fast and far above my chronological and educational level.  I can’t imagine how hard it would be if you didn’t know how to read and how much that would limit you.  I want to help someone experience the beauty of words as I know them.  I’m not sure what form this will take yet, but I do know I want to help someone learn to read.

List Item 23: Take in one cultural event a season – There aren’t many ways in which I consider my childhood to be lucky, but one thing in which I was fortunate was culture.  The town where I grew up had a great library, a terrific theater company, a marvelous symphony and an outstanding Center for the Arts.  As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten away from the joys of theater and the symphony.  I’d like to be able to enjoy some of what I’ve been missing.

List Item 24:  Believe in a benevolent Universe – I tend to be a “waiting for the other shoe to drop” kind of person.  Although I try to be positive and hope for the best, secretly, inside, I’m expecting the worst.  During my 40th year I choose to believe that only the best will happen, and I choose to live my life as though I only expect the best.  After all, I’m planning to take a lot of chances this year, and people who believe the universe has a safety net for them are more likely to push the boundaries.

List Item 25:  Personalize the look of my blogs -  These blogs have templates and themes that are not personalized at all.  That’s largely because I have next to no graphic design skills.  My talent is words, not drawing or painting or any sort of design.  This year one of my goals is to give these blogs a look that reflects what they are, and who I am.

That concludes the fifth five things.  Fifteen more to go and the list is complete.

This list has been so much fun to create so far, and every time I sit down to write one of these posts I discover more things that I want to do and more areas I want to improve.  I really getting excited about how full of change and new discoveries my 40th year is going to be.

List Item 16: Start a Garden – I bought my first house last August and I finally have a yard and a deck.  I will probably start a container garden, just to try things out, but I’m really excited about being able to grow my own vegetables.  It will be healthier and I’ll save money on produce.

List Item 17: Try 1 New Form of Exercise a Month – I’m the Queen of Routine and I tend to do the same things over and over again because they’re comfortable.  This year I want to stretch myself, both literally and figuratively.  The new form of exercise I try can be something entirely new, like swimming or biking, or it can be a new exercise tape.  The form really doesn’t matter, what matters is that I’m going outside my comfort zone.

List Item 18: Meet my Neighbors – I moved into the condo complex where I now live in August.  If I were a “hail fellow well met” kind of girl I would have met all my neighbors in the first week.  I am not, alas, that sort of person.  My goal for the year is to meet the neighbors and at least get to know them well enough to call them by name and pass casual conversation if I see them around.  I’m not looking for best friends forever, I just want to feel a part of the neighborhood.

List Item 19:  Clean Out the Closets -  I tend to be a bit of  packrat.  I hold on to things in case I might need them someday.  One of my goals for this year is to get rid of stuff I don’t need or use, but which someone else probably would need or use.  There are a lot of people out there who need help right now.  It seem selfish to stockpile perfectly good stuff that I don’t need or use.

List Item 20: Volunteer 12 hours a quarter – I feel strongly about volunteering and I know it is something that could benefit both me and my community.  The problem is that I work a lot of hours and I have projects, like this blog, that I do in my spare time.  Finding time to volunteer is a bit of a problem.  12 hours a quarter, however, is only 4 hours a month.  That seems like enough time to be able to do something meaningful, without being so much time that it will cause stress.

Well, with this list I’m halfway to the finish line.  I find my first 20 things really exciting.  I can’t wait to see what will show up on the second half of the list.

For those who missed the other parts of the list, you can find them in these posts:

The First Five Things

The Second Five Things

The Third Five Things

Today I bring you the third group of five things on my 40 things list.  At the end of this post I’ll have 15 things on my list.  It’s been fun to create the list this way.  I had a basic idea of some of the things I wanted to do, but writing these posts has helped me clarify what is going on the list and why.  I’m enjoying watching the list grow, and I hope you are too.

List Item 11: Take a Class Each Season – Our local community college puts out a catalog of enrichment classes every season and every season I look at the catalog and find three or four classes I’d like to take, but I somehow never do.  This year I want to take advantage of this great opportunity.

List Item 12: Write 3 Freelance Pieces for Payment – Part of my job is writing and I get paid to write, but most of the stuff I enjoy writing I’m currently writing for free.  I want to expand my writing career and my goal is eventually to have writing be the way I support myself without being dependant on any on company.  This year I’d like to get paid, and paid well, for three pieces I write.  The piece can be a blog post, and article or a script for a video, I’m not picky about that.

List Item 13: Achieve my Fitness and Weight Loss Goals – In 2008 I lost about 50 pounds after a health crisis.  I’m proud of that achievement, but I’m not yet where I want to be when it comes to my weight and my fitness level.  My goal in my 40th year is to achieve a healthy weight and an appropriate fitness level.

List Item 14: Create a Budget and Stick To It – I’m pretty good at handling my money, but I think I could be better.  This year I want to look at the ways I use my money and figure out if I could be using it more wisely.  I’d like to increase my savings and start planning more for retirement.

List Item 15: Get a Professional Photograph Taken – I don’t photograph well.  While I think I’m a reasonably attractive person,  pictures of my are almost always uniformly awful.  I almost have a phobia about being photographed, and will never release pictures of myself unless absolutely necessary.   This year I’d like a picture I can be proud to share with others.

So, that’s the third list of five things, which means my next post will put me at the halfway mark.  If you missed the first two posts in the series,  here are the first five things and the second five things.

On Wednesday, I began with the first five things on my 40 things list.   Today I wanted to discuss the second five things.  I’m breaking the list up into groups of five because it seems about the right length for a blog post.  Once I’ve listed all the items in posts, I’ll create a page which will have the list in its entirety.   For today, however, we’ll just deal with the second group of five.

List Item 6:  Find some style -  I have, and I freely admit this, the world’s most boring wardrobe.  I have made attempts to be fashionable and/or find a style of my own in the past and they didn’t work well.  Most attempts were not attractive and some were downright painful.   This time I’d like to find  look that is both comfortable and attractive.

List Item 7: Help fight cancer – I lost my mother to cancer six years ago.  I have an uncle that survived a round of prostate cancer and another that is currently fighting colon cancer.  I know what devestation cancer can cause, and I’d like to be at least a small part of helping fight it.  I’m guessing that will mean that I do something like Relay for Life, or it could mean volunteering for the American Cancer Society.  I just know I want to make at least some small contribution.

List Item 8: Have a Party – This may sound like an odd list item, but throwing parties is something I don’t do well or easily.   I’m very protective of my private space and very choosy about who I let into it.  I also tend to be a perfectionist and suffer extreme levels of stress and anxiety when I think of having people over to my home.  I want to get past that.  I want my home to be a welcoming place where my friends and family can come and be comfortable.  I figure one step on that path is to throw a party.

List Item 9:  Create a Home Decor that Suits Me -  I bought my first home in August of 2008.  I’ve done very little about decorating it.  That is partly because money is a bit tight right now, and being crafty is not really a skill set of mine, and partly because I’m not sure what to do.  Part of my goal for this year is to find my own style, and to create a home that reflects my tastes and is welcoming and comfortable.

List Item 10: Learn to shoot a gun – This is another thing that has been on my list of things to do for a while now, but still somehow hasn’t gotten done.  I want to learn to shoot.  I’d like to become a good shot, but I’ll settle for learning how to shoot at all.

This post marks the first quarter of my list.  There are some exciting things on the list so far.  It will be interesting to see how this list changes my life during the course of my 40th year.

Well, I guess I better get this show on the road at some point.  I figured the best way to start would be to begin with the list.  Today I’m going to name the first five items and tell you a bit about why each made the list.  Just so everyone knows, these items are not necessarily in any order.  At some point I will explain how the list was constructed and what criteria I used to decide what made the list and what didn’t, but that point won’t be today.  Right now, I just need to make the list and the project more real by talking about them.  So here goes.

List Item 1: Go on five dates – I’m soon to be 40 and I’m single.  Seriously, extremely, single.  I’m also the world’s worst dater.  I hate dating, and when I did date, which was quite some time ago, I was awkward and bad at it.  I guess it’s time to get back on the horse.  I just hope that fortune will spare some grace for the poor guy who has to be date number one.  I’m not sure anyone deserves that.

List Item 2:  Try one new recipe a week – I’m in a serious food rut, and I need to get out of it.  In the past six months, I’ve lost about 50 pounds and I have learned to eat better and smarter.  The problem is that I need to expand my food choices.  I figure trying one new recipe a week will let me experience 52 new recipes in a year.  I can also write about the recipes I try here.  We can have Foodie Friday.  How cute is that?

List Item 3:  Get my Hunter Safety Training – I’ve been talking about this for two years now, and still haven’t done it.  I’m worried I’ll be stuck in a class with 40 11 year old boys, or that I’ll do something stupid, but it’s important to me to accomplish this goal.  A lot of people I admire hunt, and I’d like to have to option to do so too, should the mood take me.

List Item 4: Sing a Solo in Public – I used to love singing and sang solos and in choirs all the time.  A combination of laziness and illness has gotten me away from music, and I miss it.  I’m healthy now and in better shape than I’ve been in a long while, and my voice is starting to come back.  I want to use it again.

List Item 5: Learn a second language – I love languages and always have.  I also have always felt vaguely guilty that I only speak one, when so many people in other parts of the world speak their native language and English as well.  In my 40th year I’d like to learn a second language well enough to at least understand what  is being said.  I’m not hoping for fluency, although that would be nice, I’m just hoping to expand my knowledge a little.

So, that’s the first five.  There’s a lot more to come, but I’m excited about the start of the list.  I think there’s some good things here so far.

The next five things should be along in a couple of days, so stay tuned for that.

I am nothing if not consistent.  I wrote the post about my 40 things challenge for 2009 and then went silent.  That was not the plan, but it does point out one of the reasons I haven’t accomplished all that I would like to accomplish.  When something scares me, I tend to hide out.  So, as has been my usual modus operandi, I put a challenge in front of myself and then abruptly went and hid.  That was not, obviously, what I intended to do.

Regardless of my behavior, I am still committed to the 40 things challenge and I am going to see it through.  Since the first of the year has come and gone, I’m going to start my challenge on my birthday.  That was the other logical starting point, and is now, by default, the only logical starting point.

Between now and then I will be making my list and writing about the things that made it on the list.  At present, the list isn’t complete, but it should be soon.  I’m not entirely sure myself what will make the final list, but I’m excited to find out.

I will also be posting more regularly here.  The whole point of having this blog was to step outside my comfort zone.  I can’t do that if I never write anything .   So, those five of you who have been reading, please bare with me.  There will be more posts to come.