Twenty-Five And Counting

This time next year I shall have celebrated another birthday and will have reached the quarter of a century mark. For something that sounds so significant I know already that I won’t feel any different. Logically, of course, I know this because really I’ll only be a day older than I was the day before. We celebrate the passing of a year, but I wonder now if the days in between those celebrations are of more importance. If I want to wake up the morning I turn twenty-five and feel different I am better off doing something in the 364 days before my next birthday, rather than expecting an automatic annual upgrade.

Seeing a picture of your two day old self certainly puts things into a strange perspective. It has made me reflect upon everything I ever said I would do by the time I was a grown up. A quarter of a century is sounding pretty grown up to me, yet I still find myself wondering sometimes when the life I imagined for myself might begin. This year I have decided to act on that feeling and try to achieve some of the wishes my younger self earnestly made. Obviously this takes an amount of careful thinking as I couldn’t choose the utterly ridiculous and implausible. For example I haven’t decided to travel the world, fall in love and immediately elope. I also didn’t want to make promises I couldn’t keep; I have learnt by now that I cannot change who I am and the bigger challenge will always be to respect that.

After all this careful thought I came up with three ‘wishes’ that I think I could realistically fulfil in the coming year:

Revisit Scotland and stay in a castle: Admittedly this wish had to be adapted as I originally told everyone that I was going to move to Scotland, live in a castle and keep a flock of sheep. Whilst this may still be on the boundary of improbable I am able to save the money needed to spend a weekend in a Scottish castle.
Write a novella: I started this blog nearly three years ago after realising that I hadn’t written anything substantial in a long time, despite that very week telling someone I was going to write a novel. For as long as I can remember I have said that I wanted to write a book and it seems to me time to finally do something about it.
Go swimming once a week: In the grand scheme of things this wish probably appears quite unremarkable. I can remember, however, always begging for an extra five minutes in the pool and confidently believing that I’d never stop swimming. Well now I’m old enough to get those extra five minutes so it seems silly not to enjoy them.

And so, dear reader, if I haven’t completed these wishes in the coming year then you must call me out on it. I want to be able to approach the next milestone knowing that I have achieved something. Instead of continuing to attach all my aspirations and wishes to an unknown future life, I want to try and start some of that life from today. Perhaps in time I can come to appreciate the everyday of now just as much as the idea of tomorrow.