Make Your “Some Day” Today
It is easy for me to rack up a list of “some day” items. Some people call it long-term planning, and others call it having a “bucket list” mentality. Whatever term you use, I’m prone to have a list of “hope to/want to” things when it comes to my creative life and my personal life.
Some Day I’ll MFA
In my 20’s and early 30’s, one of the big “some day” things on my list was to get my MFA in creative writing. Even as I bounced around from classroom teacher to law school applicant to political campaign manager to public servant to church business manager to insurance professional, the idea of going off to study writing in an intensive and purposeful way was always a long-term dream.
Somewhere in the mixed up world of my “professional life,” my wife said to me: “Why some day? Why not now?”
Some Day I’ll FLA
During the last six years (or so) that we lived in Indiana, my in-laws moved into a semi-retired state of life, living in Florida for some (then later, all) of the year. Cami and I would visit at Christmas break and sometimes again during Spring Break. It was a great way to get away from the long winters of Indiana, and at the end of each trip (eight or nine over a seven-year period) it got harder and harder for us to leave. We would say, “Maybe some day we can just live here, and not have to go back to the wind and ice and snow.
Three years ago, when our lives were about to be inverted, for a series of reasons, we looked at each other and said, “Why some day? Why not now?
The Latest Some Day
Your bank may do this: When I log on to my on-line banking web page, there is a little picture and “unique identifier” that comes up beside the log-in fields to “prove” that it is really the bank’s website and not some phishing site set up to mirror the bank’s web page. The little icon beside my login is a sailboat, and the “unique identifier” printed beneath it is, “some day.”
One of the reasons we wanted to live in Florida is because we love the beach, the water, and the weather, and having a boat has always been a part of that long-term planning for us here. We have a small kayak, which we enjoy, but we thought the “real boat” was out of our reach for a while. (Anyone who’s put gas in a motor boat in the last two years knows what I mean…)
<img class="size-medium wp-image-1353 lazyload" alt="Our latest "some day" that has turned into a "today"...we are now the owners of a Columbia 7.6m (25ft) sailboat. " src="https://ericswyatt.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/img_1335.jpg?w=300" width="300" height="300" /> Our latest “some day” that has turned into a “today”…we are now the owners of a Columbia 7.6m (25ft) sailboat.
The ideal of sailing has always been the more reasonable (cost-wise) and the more romantic option, to me. The problem was, I didn’t know a thing about sailing, so it was always a “some day” sort of idea.
Over the last couple of months, we’ve said, “Why some day? Why not now?”
So, last weekend, Cami and I took our second “test drive” sail on the boat we’ve now officially purchased. It is a Columbia 7.6m sailboat, built around the time I was born. She’s not new and high-tech and a show-off, and that makes her just about perfect.
What Are Your Some Days?
Maybe you are a free spirit who always acts impulsively and never allows something to languish in a some day, bucket list. But, if you are like me, you have a whole host of things you want to do, or accomplish, or see, or experience, or say….some day.
I’m a firm believer in “panning your work, then working your plan” and I think having medium- and long-term goals out ahead of us is an important component of propelling us forward.
I’m also a firm believer in reviewing that list of goals on a regular basis and asking, “Why some day? Why not now?”
There are plenty of things in life that we have to put off for another day, but it never hurts to review our list and make sure that the reasons we are putting things off are valid, and then, to be ready to jump in, head first, when “some day” becomes today.
Do you have any “some day” items that could be moved up?