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…so, long time no talk. I’m hoping to remedy that in the near future as I document my 101 in 1001 list! I was inspired by a few friends (Meghan, Katy, Elizabeth) who have done this challenge.
Basically, you make a list of 101 things you want to do and you aim to complete the whole list in 1001 days. 1001 days is just shy of three years, which is conveniently the (minimum) amount of time I’ll be living in Charleston. I decided to make it a Charleston bucket list/life goals combination. I’ve created a separate page to keep track of my progress, but the posts about projects/completions will be on the regular blog. Without further ado, here’s the list!
Begin: July 1, 2013 End: March 28, 2016
Eat
1.Try twenty new restaurants (Suggestions: McCrady’s, Husk, The Grocery, Glass Onion, Hank’s, The Ordinary, The Lot, Basil, Zia’s, Three Little Birds, Glazed, Fat Hen)
2. Try at least three food trucks (Roti Rolls, ?, ?)
3. Find my favorite Mexican restaurant
4. Find my favorite local pizza place
5. Try a new ethnic cuisine
Have a Drink
6. Holy City Brewery
7. Social Wine Bar
8. Charleston Beer Week
9. Try at least five different wines from Trader Joe’s and pick a favorite
10. Irvin-House Vineyard
Things to See and Do
11. Aquarium
12. Middleton Place
13. Farmers Market
14. RiverDogs game
15. Visit the different beaches (Kiawah, Isle of Palms, Folly, Seabrook Island, Sullivan’s Island)
16. See a movie at Cinebarre
17. See at least one new (to me) theater show
18. Visit Patriot’s Point and the Maritime Museum
19. Ghost tour
20. Boat tour of Charleston
21. Attend three events with live music
Festivals
22. Spoleto Festival
23. Wine and Food Festival
24. Restaurant Week
25. The Lowcountry Strawberry Festival
26. The Southern Living Taste of Charleston
27. Lowcountry Oyster Festival
In the Kitchen
28. Create my own signature seafood dish
29. Try ten new recipes from Pinterest
30. Try three recipes that are outside of my comfort zone
31. Make a meal using only fresh items from the farmers market
32. Join a CSA for a season
33. Plant a garden of herbs
34. Plan menus each week for a month and stick to them!
Play Hostess
35. Host a lowcountry boil
36. Host a holiday party
37. Have at least three out-of-town friends visit
38. Host a wine and cheese party
39. Host a cookie swap
At Home
40. Find a secondhand piece of furniture and fix it up to make it all mine!
41. Save for and buy at least one new piece of furniture
42. Buy one piece of art to remind me of my time in Charleston
43. Create my own spring cleaning list and complete all the items on it!
Photography
44. Tackle my iPhoto organization and keep it up-to-date with new events!
45. Make a yearly book of photos
46. Own a DSLR and learn to use it!
At Work
47. Get my first “big girl” paycheck!
48. Apply for fellowship
49. Pass my last set of licensing exams
50. Present a poster
51. Learn how to become an effective teacher
52. Become comfortable speaking Spanish
53. Read at least two parenting books for continuity clinic
Collect
54. Five beautiful coffee table books
55. Ten children’s books about visiting the doctor
Travel
56. Washington, D.C.
57. Baltimore, MD
58. Richmond, VA
59. Return to NYC
60. Somewhere west of the Mississippi River
61. Day/weekend trip to Savannah, GA
62. Travel to at least one city I haven’t been to before (so many choices!)
63. Use my passport again
64. Go to at least one Vanderbilt sporting event (in Nashville or on the road!)
Faith
65. Find a church to attend
66. Join the church
67. Join a small group or Sunday School class
68. Find a devotional book to use daily
69. Maintain a daily prayer journal for at least a month…and hopefully a lot longer!
70. Read the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John)
71. Read the epistles of Paul (Romans, First Corinthians, Second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 71. Colossians, First Thessalonians, Second Thessalonians, First Timothy, Second Timothy, Titus, Philemon)
Routine/habits
72. Become a breakfast eater each day for a month
73. Create a nightly ritual and follow it each night for a month
74. Create a book of things for which I’m grateful and write in it daily for a month
Crafts/DIY
75. Make three things I’ve pinned on Pinterest
76. Make a set of Christmas ornaments
77. Buy a postcard in each city I travel to, write a memory from the trip, and create a book with them
Read
78. Subscribe to at least one “fun” magazine for reading outside of work
79. Read an article a day for a month related to my career
80. Read a “beach read” on the beach all in one day
Correspondence
81. Send Christmas cards
82. Send at least ten birthday cards to friends in other cities
83. Send out “round robin” emails at least twice a year to different friend groups to stay in touch
84. Buy stationery that I love
85. Send ten unexpected thank you notes
86. Send an email to five different med school professors with life updates
87. Update and organize my address book
Holidays
88. Buy candy and be ready for trick-or-treaters
89. Buy ten Christmas ornaments to jumpstart my collection
90. Dress up at work for Halloween
91. Bake and/or make all of my Christmas gifts one year
Finances
92. Get a credit card with some sort of perk (points, cash rewards, sky miles…)
93. Open a savings account and put a percentage of my paycheck in it each month
94. Start a 401k
95. Start paying my student loans
96. Donate to five charities/causes that I believe in
Health/Fitness
97. Exercise five days a week for two months–until it becomes a habit!
98. Walk on the beach on my day off every week for a month
99. Do Pilates and/or yoga twice a week for a month
100. Do at least one philanthropic fitness activity with friends (5k, charity walk, etc)
Blog
101. Blog about at least half of the goals on this list!
Can’t wait to see where this list (and the next three years!) take me!
I happen to live in a part of the country surrounded by mountains. Even the interstate has its twists and bends. You curve gently and before you realize it, you are inundated with the beauty and the grandeur of the mountains that protect our little town.
This is obviously not the same view, but you can see just a little of the mountains during a different sunset.
I haven’t been able to capture this in a photograph. This is probably due to the fact that I’m usually driving…and that trying to capture that moment on film would be far from safe. However, even with the best camera in the world, I’m not sure I could appropriately convey the feeling I get each time I catch a glimpse of those mountains on the horizon.
It was early evening last week, and I was driving away from my home and away from the mountains on the way to see dear friends. It is that perfect combination of late summer and early fall here right now. The leaves are just beginning to show hints of changing into their glorious fall wardrobe. The temperature is still warm, but the humidity is easing off, and there is just a small crispness on the edge of the breeze.
I was soaking in the moment and the setting sun as I drove. As I began to merge, I glanced in the rear view mirror. My heart leaped to see those same mountains standing guard in the light of the setting sun. But this time was different…it was a reflection. It was achingly beautiful and magnificent. I wanted to just gaze back at the view and appreciate its majesty, but I was still driving, and it usually behooves you to keep your eyes focused more on the road ahead instead of spending all your time glancing backward.
This led me to think…as so many things seem to do these days. First, I praised God for the mountains and the fall and the sun and the day. Then, I realized that this little town has become a place more precious to me than I could have ever imagined when I left Nashville on this new adventure…and yet, what was then a new adventure is now coming to a close with the promise of a new adventure lingering just past the horizon. The reflection of those mountains made me realize just how blessed I have been in this place. But soon, it will just be a reflection, for even if my new path leads to the same town, the people will change and the place will again be new. These years and these memories will be achingly beautiful, but they will be the past. I can glance back and appreciate them, but I must keep focused on the road ahead.
Consider me equal parts excited and nervous about the upcoming changes, but most of all, consider me blessed.
Recently, I’ve found a huge part of my life to be about learning. Now, that sounds trite because I’ve been in school for umpteen billion years, so life has always been about learning. However, the tides have shifted, and the learning experiences these days are more about learning how to grow up, learning how to live, and learning how to navigate a world full of friends and family and coworkers.
This world is often full of jubilee…but it can be messy. They get married…and divorced. They have babies…and miscarriages. They buy first homes…and homes burn down. They join the church…and they run the other way. They get jobs…and they lose them. They celebrate parents’ anniversaries…and they mourn parents’ deaths. They succeed…and they fail. They blossom…and they wilt.
Our discussion tonight at small group revolved around the concept of hiding our sin and our ugliness on the inside and wearing a mask for the world. It is such a good protection to just “play the part” and go about the daily rituals without letting anyone inside. However, how much more joyful we are when the people we love are truly in our lives instead of just in a part of them. How much we get in return when we take a risk and invest in the people around us!
Recently, a staff member’s house burned down. The community surrounded them with casseroles, clothing, monetary gifts, and signs of support.
Tonight, we mourned and grieved for friends who were tragically ripped from the celebration of a first pregnancy into the despair of a miscarriage.
Emily Post doesn’t guide us in how to behave when our worlds come crashing down. Because, in the truest form of friendship, what happens to one of us affects us all.
We turn to our heritage and to the ritual laid before us by our mothers and grandmothers and fathers and grandfathers. We learn from their experiences and try to forge our own way into the world to show people that they matter and that we care. We do this with phone calls, with casseroles. We do this with hugs, with tears. We do this with prayers, with love.
The key to what I’m learning can be summed up in a simple sentence: Because we love, we do.
“Have courage my soul, and let us journey on. Though the night is dark, and I am far from home. Thanks be to God, the morning light appears. The storm is passing over, hallelujah!” Hope is an anchor when the storm is raging, and friends are the anchor and provide the hope when we’ve let go of it ourselves. Be still my soul. The storm is passing over.
Spiritual ramblings as I process discussions from small group tonight:
{from google images}
Babies drink milk. Right? Right. Be it breast feeding or bottle feeding, for the first few months of your life, you are complete dependent upon someone else to provide you with what you need. Around 4-6 months, they start adding rice cereal, but again, they feed it to you, and it is in addition to the milk you are already receiving. At 6 months, we slowly introduce foods, one at a time, slowly, and we begin with simple things. Pureed things. And you’re still getting your milk that provides your needed nutrition. It is what sustains you as you grow and prepare and gain the necessary tools to process solid foods. Then, suddenly, you are old enough you can start feeding yourself. You learn how to use a spoon. You can pick up a Cheerio. Overall, though, someone is still making your decisions for you. Eventually, you are self-feeding on solid foods. You continue to age, you begin making decisions, you choose whether to feed your body the healthy stuff or the easy stuff. Milk is no longer provided for you. You have to go find it.
Okay, that is a really long intro, but I was at small group tonight, and we were discussing many issues. One that stuck out to me tonight was this verse:
“I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready.” 1 Corinthians 3:2
And I was convicted. How much I depend on the people around me to “feed” me spiritually. I depend upon others to give me the milk instead of pushing forward to be ready for the solid foods.
Other verses expound upon this theme:
“In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food!” Hebrews 5:12
“Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation” 1 Peter 2:2
These verses teach me how the milk is the basic need. The solid food will come with spiritual maturity, but I can’t neglect the basics and skip ahead. It is important to find those people that will feed me spiritually, but I need to be growing and working on learning to feed myself so that I might in turn feed them.
Just as you can’t give a newborn baby solid foods and expect them to receive the nutrition they need, my understanding and path as a Christian will not receive the nourishment I need if I skip ahead of the basic principles of discipleship and ahead of the basic relationship I need and try to delve into complex spiritual “foods” without having these basics first.
So here’s to milk. “It does a body (and a soul) good.”
Remember this book?
That was my day. At least, I thought that is what it was going to be. I just began a new six week rotation. After deciding last month that I’m 150% going in one direction once school is over, I was not looking forward to this rotation. Combine that with the fact that yesterday’s orientation was more confusing than helpful, I had to be there at 5:30 this morning, and it was cold outside. I’m talking like 14 degrees Fahrenheit. That qualifies as bitterly cold. So, what was I? I was bitter. I was not happy about being awake that early, the cold, or the fact that for the fifth time in the past six months I have to pick up and learn something new. I was not happy that I was basically entering an entirely new world…and I didn’t know what I was doing. Plus, there are acronyms. Lots of acronyms. Deciphering a note took much more time than I had planned to spend. On top of this, the few rules I did cling onto yesterday were immediately changed by my superiors and I felt inferior. I felt like I couldn’t do anything right, like I was dumb, and like I wanted to just start over.
So I did.
Isn’t that wonderful? I did. I whined on Twitter and to a few friends who understand, and then I bucked up and changed the course of my day. You know what? It worked.
It is what it is. Next time, I’ll realize this sooner.
No more terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days for this girl! There are too few of them to spend them that way.
Happy new year!
I’ve recently adopted an unofficial motto. Are you ready?
“It is what it is.”
This is not a cop-out statement. It is not a way to avoid making changes or to default to acceptance of things that are detrimental to me or others. It is a statement that reminds me that I’m not in control. I can’t always control the situation. I can’t always be perfect. I can’t fight every battle.
What the past few months of thinking this way has taught me is that I am happier and more at peace when I pick my battles. I am more grateful for the moment and able to learn more about other people and myself when I am living this way. I’m hoping to utilize this little blog of mine to chronicle this venture.
In this new year, there are thousands of little things that I could worry about or try to change. Instead, I want to live in the moment and learn to adapt and accept things instead of always trying to control them. It is what it is…and I’m okay with that.
May your new year be full of blessings and joy.
"I give Thee back the life I owe, that in Thine ocean's depths its flow may richer, fuller be."
may richer, fuller be 