birthday musings

from march 22--the day i turned 41.

so, inspired by the hula seventy blog, last night, on the eve of my birthday, i started to make a list of 41 things to do before turning 42 (next year). i got to number 39 and couldn’t come up with the last two. isn’t that strange? looking over the list, it seems a bit vapid in spots, so i don’t feel up to sharing it here. it has a wide variety of things on it, from learning to knit and going on at least 3 city weekend holidays to the rather empty wish of obtaining an iPod Touch, to more noble pursuits, like getting serious about my writing.

whether the things i wrote down were important or not, is actually beside the point. what’s interesting is taking stock of your life and where it’s headed and where you want it to head. it can only help to get all of those wishes out and articulated—even if some of them are seemingly as empty as remaining “gold” on SAS—being gold is, for whatever strange reason, important to me. and it doesn’t hurt anyone, so it’s not so bad.

i guess i have, over the past few months, come to realize that taking stock of your life and where it’s headed and whether the things you’re doing are making you happy is a good thing. even more importantly, if you realize that what you’re doing isn’t making you happy, you have to take steps to change that. that, i have done. and it feels good and right. so, the birthday list of things i’d like to see happen over the next year is also a healthy act. it will be interesting to check back in with it regularly and see what happens. whether i will act to make them happen and even more interestingly, how i will act to make them happen.

one of the things i noted was to spend more time with friends. i already got a good start on this, since we had ab & karin and maria over for my birthday dinner. we had some great food—fresh, organic, local lamb from årstiderne, nice wine to go with it and a dense chocolate cake from nigel slater’s real food. we had lots of laughs and everyone got to make several delicious juices in the juicer. we haven’t entertained to much over the past year or so—too busy with work and then with our building project, but the house doesn’t have to be in perfect order in order for us to have people over. what matters is sharing some good food, good wine and lots of laughs.