The past week has found me attempt­ing to cap­ture the pos­si­bil­i­ties of a year in order to ful­fill the task of my twenty ninth. What can 366 days–I’m lucky to get leap year for this– yield a per­son when seek­ing to squeeze every drop of juice from them? A task such as this takes a plot and a vision to inten­tion­ally take advan­tage of each of those 366 days.

I’ve come up with some categories:

• Grat­i­tude
• Adven­ture
• Income
• Fit­ness
• Artis­tic Expression
• Lead­er­ship
• Uncer­tainty

It’s likely that these cat­e­gories will evolve over time, but con­sider this the ini­tial draft of the list.

Grat­i­tude

Grat­i­tude is always a good place to start. I’ve lived 29 won­der­ful years and have had at least 52 peo­ple con­tribute to mak­ing them that way. My life’s con­trib­u­tors deserve a let­ter express­ing my thanks. I will write one hand-written let­ter plus an email of the same letter–easier to save–per week for the dura­tion of my twenty ninth year.

Adven­ture

There are adven­tures that have been wast­ing away while dan­gling on my to-do list for far too long. At 29, I won’t stand for it any­more. There are too many adven­tures to be had in this life to not get some checked off.

Income

At first glance this cat­e­gory seems sim­ple, but I’m one to explain things. As a 20 year old I began to for­mu­late entre­pre­neur­ial dreams. I was a sopho­more in col­lege seek­ing my next pas­sion. The pas­sions of my life–sports–had become less a part of it than ever before, and a melan­choly tone had set­tled itself upon me as I fought to find what was next. I read Rich Dad Poor Dad and felt inspired to see if I could pur­chase a house. I ben­e­fited from naivete in that my every attempt, regard­less of suc­cess or fail­ure, made me feel proud of try­ing. I was swing­ing for the fences, and if I struck-out the skin came off no one’s nose. I was a col­lege kid with big eyes, big ideas, blind opti­mism, and few real respon­si­bil­i­ties. As a 29 year old, I’ve now spent time and energy in pur­suit of more knowl­edge and more entre­pre­neur­ial skills. The weight of fail­ure has set­tled ago­niz­ingly upon my shoul­ders. With each dream comes a healthy dose of “real­ism”. With each fail­ure comes a mul­ti­tude of ques­tions, from myself, about whether I have what it takes. The “Income” cat­e­gory is where I envi­sion a return of the fear­less­ness of a 20 year old being assisted by the wis­dom of a 29 year old.

Fit­ness

Fit­ness is some­thing that has cap­tured my atten­tion for years. I turned my atten­tion to under­stand­ing how to achieve an elite level of fit­ness years ago, but the strug­gle has been to make its pur­suit a pri­or­ity in my life. I believe a sel­dom rec­og­nized obsta­cle we all encounter dur­ing our daily inter­nal feuds over get­ting to the gym is guilt over mak­ing fit­ness a pri­or­ity. It feels like the peo­ple in our lives should always be the pri­or­ity. This cat­e­gory can be summed up as my attempts to bat­tle that obsta­cle and make fit­ness a priority.

Artis­tic Expression

An appre­ci­a­tion for ther­a­peu­tic activ­i­ties has found its way into my psy­che in recent years. Never before had I really under­stood the concept–perhaps because as a kid I did a vari­ety of things–but as one ages it becomes increas­ingly easy to nar­row his activ­i­ties so far that he cuts out past joys. Draw­ing was always some­thing I strived to excel at, then some­where along the line I just stopped. I think my soul needs me to do some­thing artis­tic again.

Lead­er­ship

Lead­er­ship is a topic I have had a pas­sion for for some time now and have pur­sued an inno­v­a­tive under­stand­ing of it. Mar­ry­ing the con­cept of lead­er­ship, the con­cept of entre­pre­neur­ship, and the con­cept of mak­ing dif­fer­ence in some cre­ative empow­er­ing way is a very excit­ing con­cept to me.

Uncer­tainty

This is a catch-all, because I have become a strong believer that the great­est sin­gle cul­prit in putting off dreams is uncer­tainty. I’m deter­mined that fear of the uncer­tain will not direct my life.

The posts will be pick­ing up and I’ll pro­vide a link to the cal­en­dar of the year’s tasks.