One Hundred And One Things

Whittling down the longlist to a shortlist is a little difficult to document on this blog. I might take a photograph of the physical copy of the longlist and show you its multi-coloured amendments. A magenta star means it's something that I really, really want to do. An orange star means worthy and boring, but possibly still a candidate for the list because otherwise it won't get done. A blue crossing-out means that it's something that is important and should be done, but may not get done this time round, or is perhaps something that is not appropriate to talk about in any detail on the internet. A green crossing-out means that it's a really bad idea and I shouldn't do it ever. Yellow highlighter means that I would probably end up doing it whether or not it went on the list, or indeed whether or not I did the list at all. Red annotations are amended goals - conflating goals, replacing xs with actual numbers in 'do y thing x times'. A maroon crossing-out means that I can't really be bothered with that one. And so on.

Here's a sample:

Magenta star - 'Take a flight in a hot air balloon'. Yes, I know freddiefraggles said ephrael said that it can be rather dull. But I've loved hot air balloons ever since I was tiny and witnessed a whole field of them taking off. I had a scrapbook full of pictures, and everything. I really, really want to do it. So it gets a magenta star, and it's staying on the list.

Green crossing-out - 'Argue with an evangelist'. I wrote this down when I was annoyed, having been given a leaflet by a leafletting man, to find that it was all creationist bunkum, which I'd have handed straight back had I read it on the spot. I don't want to deliberately set out to argue with someone, though, and I don't want anything so negative on my list.

Yellow highlighter - 'Finish the queerlit50 challenge'. I've already read 28 books for this; at the current rate I'd probably only have about ten to go by the time I started working on 101 in 1001.

Blue crossing-out - 'Walk the Camino del Norte'. Yes, I do want to do this. Yes, walking the Camino Francès was probably the greatest achievement of my life to date. Yes, this is still a very important goal. Realistically, though, I'm not going to have two straight months to do it in, the way I did in 2007. And, equally important in a completely different way, I don't want to do it without my best friend, who came with me last time. If it would be difficult for me to manage it, it would be impossible for her. I'm not going to lose sight of this goal, but I'm happy for it to wait.

At this stage I'm still dreaming; I'm writing things down regardless of whether or not I think I have the physical, financial, or chronological capacity to do them. Writing them down, and seeing other people's comments on them, is helping me to work out how practical they are, and how badly I want to do them. Still, at the moment, the sky's the limit.

( Part the Fourth )

Some of these are variants on possibilities I've already posted. I've tried to weed out those that are exact duplicates, but may have missed some. If there are any duplicates on the final list I will have done something very wrong indeed.

Here's the next section of the longlist. Any comments?

( text )

Over the last couple of weeks I've been writing down potential goals. I started out with half a sheet of scrap paper. I filled one side. Then I turned it over and filled the other side. Then I filled three more sides of scrap with potential goals. Then I bought a notebook, and copied them into that. Then I wrote some more goals straight into the notebook.

I haven't actually counted them. I'm a bit scared to, to tell the truth. Also, I can't be bothered. I can tell without counting that there are more than 101. Even allowing for the fact that I managed to write some of them down twice, there are way, way more than 101. It's because I wrote down everything that I could think of that I wanted to do, regardless of practicality, and everything that I liked the look of that I hadn't thought of myself, but had found on other people's lists.

I'm going to have to do some serious trimming. It's a good thing. There is serious competition for space on my list, so that means that the only goals that will make it on to the final version will be the ones that I really want to do, and, more than that, the ones that I really want to do and that I have a reasonable prospect of accomplishing.

Over the next few days I'll be posting the longlist, a couple of notebook pages at a time, and ask for your comments, your advice, your experience. Have you, for example, cooked crumpets from scratch? Could you tell me about it? Would you advise me to try it? What about trying 30 different beers? Reading a book in the place it's set? Most of the things I've written down are things I've not tried before, so the advice of people who have will be very useful in helping me decide whether they're feasible.

Some of my goals I like better than others, some I think I'll be able to do within the space of 1001 days, some I think I won't. I won't tell you which are which - this spoils the fun, and possibly biases the results. I don't know. Watch this space.