On My 29th Birthday

Sharing is caring!

When I laid out 30 goals for me to complete before my 30th birthday in January, I had not planned on adding a new traveler to our little family. Pregnancy and a new baby come with a lot of life changes that slowed my roll and reprioritized my goals.

My 29th birthday was almost 3 weeks ago and 2018 has already begun. With 12 months left in my 30 By 30 challenge, it is time to see how I am doing on checking things off of my list.

      Completed

  1. Get Stress & Rescue Certified. I feel cheap counting this one, since I did not take the training in the 30 months leading up to my 30th birthday. As I stated earlier, I had completed the training in November 2014 and the dive portion in March 2015 but didn’t officially receive the certification due to a mix up with the CPR & Oxygen training. I went to the dive shop fully prepared to repeat the training but with a little chatting and negotiating while registering for the Science of Diving course; they moved my Stress & Rescue certification through making me officially Stress & Rescue certified!

    In Progress

  2. Hike 100 miles on the Appalachian Trail. This year I accomplished a whopping 1.8 miles. I could say it was 3.6 miles, since I failed to specify unique miles but I won’t do that because that is not the spirit of what I wanted my 30 By 30 to be. So that leaves me 99.2 miles to knock out in 2018…with a toddler and a new baby at home or in tow.
  3. Get Dive Master certified. I took my own advice about how to stay active in the dive community when you can’t dive and knocked out the Science of Diving course while I was 5 months pregnant. Conveniently this course is the first half of SSI’s Dive Master certification and requires no underwater time to complete. So I am halfway there and will complete the Dive Guide course in 2018 and officially become at certified Dive Master.
  4. Less screen time. I struggled with where to put this one, since I failed to put a tangible measurement to it…and I will continue to not do so. But I can say I have been more present for Ella. That may be a function of a toddler requiring more supervision and stimulation than a baby but I have been trying to catch myself when I am wasting time scrolling through Facebook rather than engaging her in active play. I am putting this goal in In Progress because I want to see where I will be next year if I continue working to limit unproductive screen time.
  5. Build a productive blog… I have written more in 2017 than I did in the first 3 years of Sarah Under the Sea. But all of that writing has been about my pregnancy and this is not a pregnancy blog; it is in the transitioning phase from a travel and diving blog to more of an adventure mommy type blog. My big hurdle is simply pushing publish and accepting that as a mom of two tiny girls, perfect is not achievable.

    Remaining

  6. Go to Diagon Alley, Universal Studios.
  7. Camp in the Dry Tortugas.
  8. Experience New York City.
  9. Do a “Heavy Metal” tour.
  10. Log 30 dives. I still have those 2 dives from August 2016 that can count towards this goal.
  11. Dive with the whale sharks
  12. Get my Scientific Diving certificate.
  13. Get Dry Suit certified.
  14. Develop a financial portfolio
  15. Make organization a habit.
  16. Learn Spanish.
  17. Create a yoga/meditation habit.
  18. Learn how to do the splits.
  19. Complete some kind of photography training.

    Unlikely to Happen

  20. Travel to Cuba.
  21. Visit the deserts of the American West.
  22. Ride in a hot air balloon.
  23. Go zip lining.
  24. Visit Monterey Bay Aquarium
  25. Dive Mexico.
  26. Dive in the Pacific Ocean.
  27. Be enrolled in and actively taking classes for Grad School.
  28. Sell a print of one of my pictures.
  29. Land an axel.
  30. Attend a major figure skating competition.

Having a new baby unfortunately means funds will be tight next year; with 2 littles in daycare and 2 college funds to build. Only made tighter by me taking at least 1, maybe 2, months off unpaid. I should have started on #13 sooner and maybe I would be better suited to pay for all of these adventures.

As 2017 has shown me, a lot can happen in a year. Follow along to see what next year brings!

What life goals or bucket list items did you complete in 2017? Do you set goals for this year? If so, what are some of your goals for 2018?

Sharing is caring!

You May Also Like

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>