Category: Living My Life List

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Everyday Avenger Living My Life List

My Life List…

My Life List

I’ve thought about this whole Life List thing for a long time. I’ve talked about creating one. I’ve helped document friends crossing items off of theirs. I set one up on the Go Mighty site. Somehow, I never got around to setting one up here. We are going to change that today.

What is a Life List? You might think of it as a bucket list. Only better, because we are going to celebrate what I want to do in my life. It is all about the spin.

The first part of this list is alphabetical not because I’m that OCD, but because that is how they are sorted on the Go Mighty site. In case you wondered. Everything at the end will be added as I think of it, and it will be haphazard. Eventually that will make me crazy, so I’ll make it all haphazard – but for today? I’m just writing the list.

Items in italics are completed.

  1. Create a Life List – DONE! Score! First thing marked off!
  2. Attend a Jewish High Holy Days Service
  3. Be published in a national magazine
  4. Breakfast at Tiffany & Co in New York
  5. Create & plan the You Are Enough Project
  6. Create a mission plan for Avenger of Sexiness
  7. Develop a coaching program for women focused on journaling & personal projects – Done! Launched 9/30/13 – Vivid & Brave
  8. Drive the Beartooth Scenic Highway in Wyoming & Montana – Done! August 2013, I looked over the edge
  9. Drive the Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park – Done! August 2013
  10. Finish decorating my house in its entirety
  11. Get a tattoo – “You Are Enough” – in my own handwriting – Done! September 2013
  12. Go camping for a week with Mike
  13. Go on a road trip of 10,000 miles – it ended up being over 19,000 miles. June 30, 2013 – November 7, 2013
  14. Go to a Broadway show in New York
  15. Go to the Kentucky Derby, wearing the essential big hat
  16. Hike a portion of the Appalachian Trail
  17. Help someone else with a life list item
  18. Knit a cowl to wear in the winter
  19. Knit a sweater for myself
  20. Learn to grill
  21. Live on the road for one summer – Done! June 30 – November 7, 2013
  22. Live for a year in another country
  23. Make my bedroom a relaxing retreat
  24. Night photography of the Milky Way at Crater Lake, Oregon – Done! July 2013
  25. Night photography of Old Faithful in Yellowstone – Done! September 28, 2013 – Old Faithful at night, complete with a perfect Big Dipper
  26. Night photography of the Milky Way in Banff, Alberta, Canada – Done! Near Lake Louise, September 2013 with red trees
  27. Paint the whole interior of the house – no more yellow and green!
  28. Photograph 20 women for the You Are Enough Project
  29. Photograph a boudoir session outdoors in the rain
  30. Photograph the Aurora Borealis in Alaska
  31. Photograph the Milky Way in Jasper National Park, Canada
  32. Plant a garden in our garden plot
  33. Raise $440 for the Camp Mighty drive for Charity:Water for my 44th Birthday – Done! September 2013
  34. Read one book a month for a year. Audiobooks count.
  35. Send 10 friends something special on a random day
  36. Set up an annual physical for myself
  37. Sit outside and read a book
  38. Speak at TEDx Houston about the Avenger of Sexiness mission
  39. Spend a weekend in silence, offline
  40. Stay at the inn at Moraine Lake, Banff National Park in Canada
  41. Take a trip with Jason to somewhere he wants to go and has never been
  42. Take the Chicago Architect Foundation River Tour – Done! July 2013
  43. Update my entire yarn stash on Ravelry
  44. Visit Alaska by my 45th Birthday
  45. Visit the region of Austria where my mother’s family is from
  46. Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge – both directions
  47. Walk across the Golden Gate Bridge – done! October, 2013
  48. Walk on a glacier
  49. Write about my epic road trip in my Mini – the Avenger of Sexiness Tour – Started! Have Gear Will Travel
  50. Write a book
  51. Photograph a Traveling Red Dress for someone
  52. Exercise routinely
  53. Have a gigantic yard sale to get rid of everything we don’t use
  54. Learn to make pottery
  55. Have my mom teach me how to sew and make something
  56. Visit all 59 National Parks in the USA: Acadia, American Samoa, Arches, Badlands, Big Bend, Biscayne, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Carlsbad Caverns, Channel Islands, Congaree, Crater Lake, Cuyahoga Valley, Death Valley, Denali, Dry Tortugas, Everglades, Gates of the Arctic, Glacier, Glacier Bay, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Great Basin, Great Sand Dunes, Great Smoky Mountains, Guadalupe Mountains, Haleakala, Hawaii Volcanoes, Hot Springs, Isle Royale, Joshua Tree, Katmai, Kenai Fjords, Kings Canyon, Kobuk Valley, Lake Clark, Lassen Volcanic, Mammoth Cave, Mesa Verde, Mount Rainier, North Cascades, Olympic, Petrified Forest, Pinnacles, Redwood, Rocky Mountain, Saguaro, Sequoia, Shenandoah, Theodore Roosevelt, Virgin Islands, Voyageurs, Wind Cave, Wrangell Saint Elias, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Zion (Thanks for the inspiration, Laura!)
  57. Visit Fallingwater – Done! June 1, 2014
  58. Visit the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago with my Dad, like when I was a kid
  59. Create a YouTube Channel and post regularly
  60. Leaf Peeping in Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts

(Last updated on June 5, 2014)

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Living My Life List Smaller Pink Cookie

Learning to Love Veggies…

I’m afraid to write this post. I feel like every time I share something big like this, I immediately sink myself and fail. I’m hoping that if I admit that up front this time, I won’t do it to myself. *fingers crossed*

My mom has talked a lot over the past year about how she has been dieting & losing weight, and the biggest change? Low (slow) carbs, cutting out bread & pasta, and cutting out high-fructose corn syrup. No “diet” – just making changes. I was inspired, but with our move & everything else, I made some changes to my diet but didn’t dive too deep. I knew she was losing weight, but it wasn’t until she wore a sweater on her birthday a few weeks ago that I know fit her completely different a year ago that I saw how much weight she had lost! Go Mom!

A few days after her birthday, while I was out Christmas shopping, I stopped in Anthropologie – but I didn’t bother looking at the clothes. I knew they didn’t carry my size, and that made me sad, frustrated, angry – a whole range of emotions. Dr. Donald Roland, a plastic surgeon specializing in breast augmentation, notes that most of his patients come to him with this body image issue. I feel that way all the time when I shop. Even though a huge portion of the women in America are technically Plus Size, plus size clothing is so hit or miss still. (Come on designers! Catch up with the needs!) Right then, as I stood in the store, I set a goal for myself that a year from now I want to be able to walk in there and buy a dress off the rack. I’m adding it to my Life List even.

Then I watched “Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead” last Tuesday. Talk about motivational! Oh my goodness! It is on Netflix, and if you want a swift kick to make you want to diet, watch it. Follow it up with “Food, Inc.” like I did, and it will cause a big shift if you’re like me. I’m fortunate that we already go to Revival Market for most of our meat, and I know they could probably tell me exactly where every piece comes from, plus they butcher things in-house. YAY!

As soon as I finished watching those movies, I decided to run with the motivation. So what if it was just days before Christmas??? I decided then and there, that very day, that it was time to change my diet.

By last Thursday, I was off of drinking caffeine. (Fountain Coke is my weakness!) I’ve cut way, way back on the “bad whites” – flour, rice, potatoes. I’ve nearly eliminated flour & therefore gluten as well. I’ve cut back on dairy, because I love cheese a bit too much. My goal is to consume 50% of the volume of what I eat as vegetables. The rest of my diet from meats, fruit and the occasional nut, plus ketones powder that can help jump start ketosis in the body.

I may get to the point of going with the Four Hour Body diet – I know so many people that have been very successful on it. The Crazy Sexy Diet book has also been mentioned many times. I have even considered juicing for 30 days just to really kick start everything, or at least doing a 5 day juicing fast. We’ll see. Ultimately, I know that in order to make it stick, I have to modify it and make it my own.

Diets never succeed. They might help get you started, but they are NOT sustainable. Life changes, and improving your eating habits overall? That will stick!

The whole reason I’m writing this post is so I can look back later and remind myself of why I started doing this, and how after a week of just drinking water and eating lots of veggies, I woke up this morning craving carrots! Not a bready starchy “goodness” full of empty calories, but carrots! And a BIG glass of water, not a Coke. That is already a HUGE change from a week ago!

Interesting side note – I’ve battled being congested for most of the month of December, and nothing seemed to help. Then I started this dietary change, cut out most of my gluten consumption, and viola! NO CONGESTION!!! Coincidence? I don’t think so.

I made it through Christmas without too much of an issue – I did sample a few sweets here & there, but any time I did I kept it minimal – and I ended up 2lbs down from where I was a week ago when I started. I’ll take that!

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Living My Life List

The Start of My Life List…

I’ve been thinking of creating a life list for some time now. I first came across Mighty Girl’s Mighty Life List awhile back, and it got me thinking. But I wasn’t ready yet. Then I met style bloger Pam at Mom 2.0, and as I’ve worked with her on some style shoots for her blog we made plans for me to document some of her life list achievements as well. For example, one of her goals was to find the perfect pair of cowboy boots – aren’t they fantastic?!

A life list isn’t quite the same as a bucket list. A bucket list is all about the things you want to do before you die, which is just depressing. A life list is all about creating the life you want to live. I think it ties in perfectly to this quote:

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”
– George Harrison

So for months it has been on my mind, but never enough to write things down. Not until tonight. Tonight I was watching Netflix and came across a National Geographic special on the Appalachian Trail. I had no idea about its history, traveling from Georgia to Maine, crossing 14 states. The whole thing fascinated me. And then I realized that I have the very first item for my list.

I want to hike a portion of the Appalachian Trail.

Now that I’ve started it, I wonder what I should add next?!?!!!

What about you? Do you have a Life List? What is on yours?