Lorna's 50 Things - Midlife Challenges - author Lorna Davies
On May 7th this year I reached my half century milestone. In my infinite wisdom I decided to mark this momentous occasion by taking on 50 challenges to achieve between May 7th 2009 and May 7th 2010.
I wanted a broad range of challenges so I set up a website
lornas50things.weebly.com and asked my family, friends and colleagues to challenge me which they duly did. I received over eighty challenges in total and then narrowed them down to fifty. There was a great selection and it was difficult to choose. Sometimes the decision was logistical, for example I wouldn't be able to travel overseas to some of the suggested locations. Sometimes the challenges were too similiar to others, or incorporated things in other challenges. And sometimes the choice was hedonistic, as the challenge was something that I had always wanted to do. For example who wouldn't want to swim with dolphins.
To date I have completed about 20 challenges fully. These include; reading a poem written by me at an open mike session; flying a plane; cycling from Nelson to Christchurch and having a tattoo on my bottom. There are others that are an ongoing process such as drinking fifty glasses on NZ wine in 50 places and making a quilt.
It has been an amazing year so far and I have done things that I would never have thought about doing, such as shearing a sheep, and things that I needed a push to make me do them, such as swimming with dolphins. The year ends in May 2010 and there are a couple of challenges that I am not sure that I will be able to complete, mainly because of financial restraints, but I may seek sponsorship or turn to my reserve list.
The challenge quest has helped me to learn new things about me, which is always a good thing especially in mid-life when we can become complacent I think. s a result of the experience, I am looking forward to being 60 and repeating the challenge quest then!
pass this on to a friend -
twitter
facebook
linked in
