525,600 Minutes: How I Ended Up Taking My Life in My Hands, Part I

"So, what's your dinner story?" my older daughter asked me, after she and her sister had shared the excitement and joy of their day. Blank. I was totally blank. After 11 years of suburban life, I was suddenly, finally, completely speechless. Me, the native New Yorker who couldn't go to the corner deli and back without three stories. Blank. Totally blank. And that's about when it happened. When I found the long-lost list full of things I long-ago wanted to do in life. And this is what happened next.

Publicly Committed

“It’s not the flying you have to worry about,” my friend Chip says, at the edge of the school playground where our fourth-graders are playing. “It’s the crash landings.”

“Thanks,” I answer, now having yet something more to feed my intense fear of ballooning. 

At least I have until October, which is really a lifetime away. It isn’t even January yet and I have already plotted out the year—matching up actions from The List with each month in 2005, and even, in true Virgo style, starting research on most of them.

The List. I found the list about a month ago, somehow, between shuttling my kids to karate and chorus, trying to keep the house clean and food on the table, running a writing studio, staying up to date—and dates—with my husband, and squeezing in exercise a few times a week. The List was the last thing I had time for. 

Yet…Number seven: Quit corporate America. I had done that, not long after I wrote the list, in fact, in that Masters-level communications class at Georgia State University exactly eleven years ago, when I was thirty. The assignment was “100 Things I Want to Do in Life.” I got an A. 

But, in reality, how far had I progressed through it? Number 16: Cheer my husband at his law school graduation. Yes, I’d done that, too. Number 23: Celebrate my children’s birthdays. Yes and yes—for both of them. Number 24: Win a Pulitzer Prize. Well, no. Ditto for Number 26, which is win an Academy Award for Best Screenplay. Number 33: Live abroad. I don’t even like to fly anymore. Not since 9/11. Number 36: Spend time on a kibbutz. See number 33, please. Number 52: Meet my former friend at 9 West 57th Street on 9/9/99 as we agreed when we were eighteen. Yes, we did that, and I’m happy to report that she is back to being one of my best friends. Number 91: Ride a camel. Not yet.