response 1 to "the path not travelled"

I was starting to get stressed about a) not having responded yet and b) having to write down my MULTITUDE of thoughts on the subject so I've decided to divide it up into separate posts.

Remember in high school, how we were convinced that there should be a book called "1000 Things You Should Do Before You Die" and we went to look for it at Borders more than once? Besides the fact that we should WRITE that book (although we now have some competition, see above), I was reading in Glamour that everyone should have a list of things they want to do/try/accomplish in their lifetime, AND that 43 is a reasonable number to achieve. I took a class once, on Composing A Life After College, and we had to write a final paper; I structured mine as a list of 10 things I want to do before I die... now I have to go find that paper, since I can only remember a few of them!

Things on my list (to be added to. Hey, I need 43!):
- Have babies.
- Cook the cover recipe of Gourmet magazine every month for a full year.
- Run a marathon.
- Live abroad.
- Have a book published.

Part of the reason that I loved the ExBoy so much, and loved my imaginings of our future life together, is that he pushed and challenged me to do things that I would never otherwise do. Would I live abroad in a third-world country without him? Never. Wouldn't even contemplate it. But I loved thinking about doing it with him in a few years, it felt do-able and like something I could almost convince myself into wanting. (And hey, then I could write a memoir of it and get it published upon our return to the States, thereby killing two birds with one stone.) It was smaller things, too. I'm not an outdoorsy girl, but on one of our earliest dates, we went sledding down steep-ass hills. He made me so comfortable and sure of him that he was able to bring me out of my comfort zone without having it be something scary. Or at least, not too scary.

Because I need scarier things in my life, I know. I know I'm incredibly risk-averse, as it sounds like you are too. Besides the occasional shootout in Newro, I think we both have charted our lives on fairly certain courses, on very traditional paths (succeed in school, graduate school, good job, marriage, kids, suburbs). I KNOW that I need to challenge myself more, to push MYSELF out of my comfort zone (without the ExBoy doing it for me), but it's scary to do it alone.

That's all for now... and a quote that I have been just love-love-LOVING lately:
"One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very, very long time." (Andre Gide.. French, so the translation may be a little off.)