I have been fortunate enough to be participating in the Path Finder course with Karen Walrond these past five weeks. I'm dreadfully behind, but that's okay. I look at it as if I'm doing it on a tortoise's pace. Each lesson has been emailed to us during the week. We work at our own pace (mine=slow). Most of the group has found each other on twitter and had continued discussions there as well. It has been an amazing process for me. Connecting with a group of women so talented and passionate about such a variety of things has pushed me in my own explorations. If you are interested in the course I can't recommend it enough. In Karen's words, the class is for "anyone who is in a place of transition, professionally or personally; or who is just looking to inject a bit more awesome into his/her life."
Now, because I am taking the tortoise approach to this, I am slowly plodding my way through creating a Life Menu. I am about one week behind everyone else. The "good student" in me is sooooooo freaking over this and wants to catch up, like, yesterday. But the woman who started practicing meditation over the summer, who is journaling daily, who has integrated daily gratitude practice in her life is fighting the urge to push faster and am taking my sweet time. If I am going to create a Life Menu, I want it to be filled with gems of things I love. Things that light me up each and every time I read the menu. Things that make me excited to jump out of bed in the morning and take on the day. I'm so excited about the work I've done so far, that I couldn't wait to create a new page just for the Menu, so you are getting a taste today (taste...bad pun, I know!)
1. Create my own recipes I can put in a food journal to pass down through generations
2. March in my college alumni band
3. See the monarch butterfly migration
4. Take a decadent spring break with my husband
5. Create a separate journal of family recipes
6. Restore an American Muscle Car
7. Become a certified master gardener
8. Write a travel book about the Midwest
9. Roadtrip all 50 US States with my husband and son
10. Learn the art of beekeeping
11. Raise laying chickens
12. See Tina Turner live
13. Attend a Presidential Inauguration
14. Road trip major college football rivalry games
15. Visit the Ukraine/Welsh/German towns of my ancestry
16. Pay off our house
17. Attend a family reunion
18. Make a memory quilt for our son
19. Return to Europe with my husband
20. Renew our wedding vows
21. Learn how to throw clay pottery (and make mugs!)
22. Learn how to weld
23. Make glass ornaments at Christmas with my husband and son at the Toledo Museum Glass Pavilion
24. Solve a corn maze without a map
25. Take cello lessons
26. Do the dance from the end of Dirty Dancing-with the lift
27. Attend high tea in England
28. Re-trace LM Montgomery's footsteps on Prince Edward Island
29. Drive a combine
30. Win a blue ribbon at a county fair
31. Tobogganing at the chutes with my husband and son
32. Attend a bottling party at Middle West Spirits
33. Learn how to drive a motorcycle
34. Ride in a hot air balloon
35. Sail (not motorized) the islands of Lake Erie
36. Jet ski
37. Go to a Hawaiian luau in Hawaii
That's all I've got so far. My goal number is big...100. When I get there, I'll add them to the blog for the world to see. I'm fired up about each and every one of these. Some are fantastical. Some are so within reach I can do it this afternoon. But reading this menu makes me all excited and jumpy. Like I am sitting on a spring. And after all, shouldn't that be what life is like anyhow?
