Goals # 28, 29 and 30 – Read the top 10 of the Guardian’s 100 greatest novels of all time, watch 50 of the top films of all time, and read the Bible all the way through

I’ve finally done it! I’ve freed myself from the shackles of my 30 list (and believe me it did take over my life for a while)! I have crossed everything off my 30 list!

It has been quite the experience. It has been a nuisance and a chore at times, but I’m also so glad I did it. It has given me a sense of achievement and I’ve had a fun and eventful year that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

I’m not actually 30 until next Wednesday, but I planned to finish tonight as I am going on holiday tomorrow and want to do so without the pressure of having to tick anything off a list. So today I finished reading the last book on my list, finished the bible and watched the last two films off my list.

Here are the books on the top 10 list:

1. Don Quixote Miguel De Cervantes
2. Pilgrim’s Progress John Bunyan
3. Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe
4. Gulliver’s Travels Jonathan Swift
5. Tom Jones Henry Fielding
6. Clarissa Samuel Richardson
7. Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne
8. Dangerous Liaisons Pierre Choderlos De Laclos
9. Emma Jane Austen
10. Frankenstein Mary Shelley

Of the above, I really enjoyed Emma, kind of liked Frankenstein, Tom Jones and Gulliver’s Travels, and really hated Don Quixote (so long and not really about anything at all!), Tristram Shandy (could barely understand what was written) and Clarissa (the longest book I ever read which could have been a quarter of the length it is and still told the same story).

And here are the films I watched:

1. Bambi
2. Lawrence of Arabia
3. Gone With the Wind
4. E.T.
5. Back to the Future
6. Star Wars
7. Shawshank Redemption
8. Lord of the Rings
9. Blade Runner
10. Roman Holiday
11. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
12. My Darling Clementine
13. It’s a Wonderful Life
14. Some Like It Hot
15. His Girl Friday
16. Apocalypse Now
17. Schindler’s List
18. Casablanca
19. Kind Hearts and Coronets
20. Dr Strangelove
21. Sunset Boulevard
22. Citizen Kane
23. Bonnie and Clyde
24. All About Eve
25. Annie Hall
26. The Bicycle Thieves
27. The Godfather
28. American Graffiti
29. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
30. Raiders of the Lost Ark
31. It Happened One Night
32. Letter from an Unknown Woman
33. The Third Man
34. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
35. Rear Window
36. Vertigo
37. North By Northwest
38. Amadeus
39. Singin’ In The Rain
40. 2001: A Space Odyssey
41. Chinatown
42. West Side Story
43. Network
44. The Lady Eve
45. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
46. Rebecca
47. Tokyo Story
48. Nashville
49. The Philadelphia Story
50. The Quiet Man

Of this list I really didn’t enjoy Lawrence of Arabia, Apocalypse Now, Dr Strangelove, Citizen Kane and The Godfather! But some of the others were OK! 2001: A Space Odyssey was one of the strangest films I ever saw. My favourites were probably Roman Holiday and Rebecca.

Watching the film definitely expanded my very narrow film watching horizons, and I’ve also spotted lots of references to the films I’ve watched in other TV shows, songs and books, which has made me feel in the know, like I’m in some sort of secret club! 🙂

Reading the Bible was hard going at times, but was also a great experience. I do plan to go through it again more slowly with a study guide, but I’ve learned a lot I didn’t know already and it was the most worthwhile of all my goals.

All in all, I would definitely recommend doing a 30 (or 40 or 50 etc) list to anyone who is considering it! If you are, here are some of my tips:

1. Plan ahead. Some goals are better for different times of the year, some require booking and some will take longer than you think. I’d say it’s best to plan well ahead so you don’t end up like I have having to change any goals (The Northern Lights) or cramming too much into the last couple of days!
2. Mix it up. For a bit of variety, I would suggest mixing different types of goals (physical, intellectual, fun, etc) as well as goals that take different amounts of time (i.e. ones you can do in one day, and ones that carry on throughout the year) and are different levels of difficulty, just to keep it interesting!

3. Be flexible. Sometimes things don’t go to plan, so be prepared to amend goals if necessary. It’s your list, your rules after all!
4. Be realistic. This is something I wasn’t when it came to the amount of things I had to read, and it ended up a bit stressful! Really think about how long things will take and how much time you have to spare. Remember it’s supposed to be fun!

 

So that’s it for me! Thanks to everyone who read, commented or followed any of my blog. It’s been fun!

Goal # 27 – Visit another city by myself

I hadn’t written this one yet as wasn’t sure if I would do another trip too, but the one I had planned never happened due to bad weather and there wasn’t anywhere else I fancied going. However, I did do a trip by myself a few weeks ago to a little town in North Wales (which is just as good as visiting a city) for work, and I traveled there by myself, found the place and conquered some fears by meeting new people, so that’s good enough for me! So, I’m ticking this one off the list. And now I know I can do it, so when the weather is right I can take myself off wherever I like! 🙂

Goal # 26 – Go stargazing

After realising that it would be impossible to see the Northern Lights within the time limit of my list, I decided to think of an alternative for my list and move seeing the Northern Lights until after my 30th. Originally I was going to go to an Aurora Night up north, although it wasn’t likely I would see anything in August, but this was fully booked. So instead I attended a stargazing night at the same observatory.

As it turned out, ticking this goal off my list turned out to be more of an adventure than I anticipated! My mum kindly offered to drive me to the event, which was over 4 hours away in the car, and which started at 11.30pm. So we headed off and all was going well, until the sat nav directed us up a steep windy path. We headed up this path, which was kind of scary in the pitch black with loads of bushes on either side and nobody around. Eventually, after driving for a bit, we thought maybe we were headed in the wrong direction and decided to turn around and go back to see. However, in trying to turn round the car got stuck in a ditch and wouldn’t move (despite our best attempts at pushing!).

There was no signal so we realised the only option was to walk back down this creepy path and find somewhere we could call a rescue service from. Luckily we had brought torches as it was a really dark place (hence it being a suitable place for stargazing) and we wouldn’t have been able to see a thing without.

So we walked for quite some time down this path, me terrified someone was going to jump out on us and both of us worried about whether we were going to be able to find help! Luckily, once we got to the bottom, there was a house across the road which we decided (after a while of weighing up the options) to call at –  frightening the people inside quite a lot, as they were currently in the process of watching a horror movie when they heard a knock on the door in the middle of the night!

Fortunately they were really lovely and kind and let us use the phone and come in and wait while two of them went up the path to try and get our car out – which they did!! 🙂

We were so ridiculously pleased and grateful but also quite tempted to just turn around and go back home. However, we thought after coming all that way we’d have another quick shot at finding the place, which we did!

After finally getting to the place, we spent a lovely two and a half hours there listening to them talking about star formations and galaxies (WAY over my head) and looking at things through telescopes. It was all very pretty. So I may not have seen the Northern Lights, but I saw galaxies, clusters, nebula and lots of other things up there in the sky (I’m sorry, it was all a bit sciencey for me so I can’t be more accurate than this, but it was impressive at the time)! I was also assured that some of the things I saw had been seen by less people than the Northern Lights had, which made me feel better about the list! I also held a piece of the moon and a piece of Mars and saw a shooting star.

So all in all, I may not have seen the Northern Lights yet, but this was an unexpectedly fun and interesting experience which I may never have got if I had!

(PS. Sorry there are no pics, I’m not nearly clever enough or in possession of good enough photographic equipment to get any of anything I saw, and it was too dark to get photos of much else!)

 

 

 

Goals # 23, 24 and 25 – See a play at the Globe Theatre, do a night-time sponsored walk for charity, and have a moonlit picnic

So, I am just over two weeks away from my 30th birthday (eek – bit scared about this!) and it’s safe to say my list has pretty much taken over my life in my desperate attempt to tick off the final things! This is mainly because I left reading Clarissa quite late and it’s unexpectedly thick and quite hard going! I also got way behind on my daily page count for reading the bible so have a fair bit left to go!

However, last weekend I managed to tick off my goal to see a play at the Globe Theatre! I saw King Lear, which was really good. I thought there was maybe a little too much singing and dancing for a tragedy, but on the whole I really enjoyed it.

Then yesterday I took part in a 10k evening walk for charity. Here’s a pic of me ready to go!

Ready for my 10k

It was a great atmosphere and I really enjoyed the event, and afterwards I got to tick off my goal to have a moonlit picnic.

Originally, when I came up with the list, my idea was to have a romantic picnic, as I was optimistic (kind of) about the idea I might find someone to do this with in the course of a year, however this turned out to be not the case. But in the spirit of being an independent woman I figured I could do this without a man 🙂 And the sponsored walk provided the perfect opportunity for a group picnic in lovely surroundings with live music, surrounded by lots of people celebrating the completion of the 10k walk and funds raised for a good cause. Here is a pic:

Moonlit picnic

It turned out to be a lovely night – and now I only have 5 more goals to tick off my list! 🙂

Goals # 19, 20, 21 and 22 – Raise £130 for charity, plan some amazing 30th birthday celebrations, go to an ice bar, and go paragliding

So, I have just over one month left to complete my list (eek – one month till I turn 30!) and am not doing so badly. As of this week I have just 8 things left on my list!

This week I received a few more donations for my forthcoming sponsored walk, taking my combined fundraising efforts from that and my 5k up to £145. Yey – mission accomplished, and £145 raised for some good causes (both events raise money for cancer charities).

I also finished planning some things for my 30th birthday. Originally, I had thought about having a party, but I decided it was too much stress worrying whether people were going to turn up. So instead I booked a holiday abroad for over my birthday (I plan to have a spa day there on the actual day) and have booked a log cabin for me and some friends on the following weekend. I decided I wanted to celebrate becoming a proper grown up and hitting my 30s with one of my favourite things from my childhood – a sleepover! So we are going to head to the log cabin and celebrate with a proper 90s style sleepover, complete with girly DVDs, board games, face masks and a few cocktails!

Also this week I visited an ice bar, made entirely from ice, and drank a cocktail from an ice glass. Here’s a pic:

Ice bar

Finally, this week I also went paragliding! I did a tandem paraglide off a huge hill. It was hard work (climbing the hill for an hour) and I got a bit of motion sickness unfortunately while up there, but it was a good experience and I got to go up twice for 20 minutes each time (it would have been longer if I hadn’t felt so sick). Here’s a picture of me as a tiny speck in the sky :):

Paragliding

It’s certainly been a fun and busy week! 🙂

Goal # 17 – Sponsor a child, and Goal # 18 – Improve my fitness levels

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to update this, but a couple of weeks ago I completed number 17 on my list, which was to sponsor a child in a developing country. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for ages, so when I got my first wages in my new job I had a little look and found a lovely little 5 year old girl in Ethiopia in need of sponsoring. Very excited now to write her my first letter and hear back from her!

I also ticked off a slightly moderated goal off my list. When I first started my list, I had been determined to lose a stone, despite not actually being overweight (my BMI is right in the middle of my healthy weight range). I think I just thought I would feel more comfortable and confident at the weight I chose. I started off with the best intentions, eating less, exercising more, and I slowly lost some weight. However, after 4 months (and a pound over my target weight!) I broke my little finger and had to have it operated on and put in a splint. Here’s a lovely pic of my splinted hand:

Now, I know it sounds really over the top for a broken little finger to affect my weight, but I couldn’t do a lot of the exercise I was doing while it healed (Pilates involved too much of using my hands, running jolted my arm around too much and hurt and netball was out for obvious reasons), and I couldn’t go out much for walks as I couldn’t get sleeves over the splint and it was January and really cold! I also had to eat a tiny bit more so that I was getting enough nutrients for it to heal quickly, as it was a right pain having the finger on my writing hand broken.

Consequently, I quickly went back up to the weight I was before after all my hard work! After my finger was healed, I tried again with exercising and eating a bit less, but as I’m not overweight and don’t eat loads anyway it’s quite hard to lose weight. So I tried an extreme smoothie diet, which just made me feel a bit sick after a few days. I also contemplated a 5:2 diet, but I read it can affect your hormones and give you spots, and I’m already struggling with hormonal skin!

So, after a while, I just had to accept that without embarking on an extreme and unhealthy diet, I am just meant to be this weight. However, although I may not have lost weight this year, what I have done is improve my fitness levels, and better fitness is probably more important than being skinnier! So I have decided to have that as an achievement for my list instead. This year I have started doing more Pilates classes, started tennis lessons, ran a 5k and bought a bike, amongst other things, and I am quite proud of that. So I’m counting that as another goal ticked off my list!

As an aside, I have also had to moderate two other goals due to circumstances and preference. One of the goals is seeing the Northern Lights. I still really want to do this and am trying, but I had to add a substitute goal to my list as unfortunately I didn’t get my new job (and money to travel to see the Northern Lights) until April and it’s my 30th this September, and between April and September isn’t a great time to see the Northern Lights. I have found somewhere in the UK where you can go and they give you lessons on how to spot them and have equipment and stuff, so I’m going to go and try there in a couple of weeks, but I’m not holding out much hope! If it’s not to be this year, I have updated the goal to stargazing at the top of a volcano (which sounds almost as exciting) which I am going to do when I’m on holiday this summer!

I have also changed skydiving to paragliding, as I decided I would rather do this.

So here is my updated list – only 12 goals left!!:

1. Start a blog

2. Learn how to play chess

3. Have a bath with candles and champagne

4. Have a 12 hour DVD-athon

5. See the sunrise 

6. Create my own ice cream flavour

7. Run a 5K in less than 30 minutes

8. Knit something

9. Take part in National Novel Writing Month

10. Win a competition

11. Read War and Peace

12. Cook Christmas dinner

13. Go to an Opera

14. Create my own perfume

15. Learn how to make candles

16. Go on a long bike ride

17. Sponsor a child in a developing country

18. Improve my fitness levels

19. Go paragliding

20. See a Shakespeare play at the Globe Theatre

21. Go to an ice bar

22. Do a night-time sponsored walk for charity

23. Have a moonlit picnic

24. Raise £130 for charity

25. Visit another city by myself

26. See the Northern Lights / Stargaze at the top of a volcano

27. Watch 50 of the top films of all time

28. Read the top 10 of the Guardian’s 100 greatest novels of all time

29. Read the Bible all the way through

30. Plan some extremely amazing 30th birthday celebrations

 

Goals # 14 – 16 – Make my own perfume, learn how to make candles, and go for a bike ride

Due to starting a new job, I haven’t had much time to blog, but I have managed to tick a few more things off my list!

Making my own perfume is something I have wanted to do for a while, mostly because I am obsessed with vanilla scented things and have struggled to find a good vanilla perfume. I also try to use natural products where possible, so wanted to try making my own natural perfume. I have also been keen to try making my own candles (vanilla scented, obviously) as I love candles and thought it would be a nice skill to learn.

So, a few weeks ago I had a lovely crafty afternoon making some homemade candles and perfume. For the candles, I bought some oils off the internet (vanilla, neroli and jasmine), some pipettes and roller ball bottles and found a good recipe for making a perfume oil – then I set to work mixing oils. After the perfume was made it needed to be left to settle or brew or something for a month, before being ready to use, and last week it was finally ready! Unfortunately, while it smells quite nice, it doesn’t smell very vanilla-y. This is mostly because I struggled to find an undiluted vanilla oil so it wasn’t quite as strong as the others. It also worked out quite expensive for a small bottle of oil! However, I did have fun making it and would probably try again at some point.

For the candles, I bought a kit off the internet, which had everything I needed and good detailed instructions. It didn’t take long to make them and they were fun and easy to make! The only problem was  they did need to cool for quite a while and I only got two moulds so it would have took days to make all 10, but I ended up only making four candles and set the rest of the wax in cake trays to make wax melts. Here’s a pic of the finished candles!

Last weekend I also ticked off another goal to go for a bike ride. While it wasn’t the world’s longest bike ride, it was pretty long for me and I was out for about 3 hours in total. It was actually one of the most fun goals to tick off so far and was nice to spend a day riding around in the sun, and has actually inspired me to get out and about on my bike more often. 🙂

 

 

Goal # 13 – Go to an opera

I haven’t written for a while due to the simple reason that I’ve ground to a (hopefully temporary) halt in ticking things off my list! This is due to the fact that I can’t afford to do some of the things on it right now, some of the others are more ongoing projects, and I’m waiting for the summer to do others …

Unfortunately, now that I have got something to write about I’m having a bit of difficulty with the actual writing, due to having broken a finger on my right hand! So,  I’ll keep this short and sweet!

Going to an opera is something I’ve always sort of wanted to do (just so I can tell people that I’ve been to an opera) but I was never sure that I’d enjoy it. However, last week I finally got the opportunity to see one and headed off to see Nabucco with my mum. The music was really good, and thanks to subtitles I could actually follow what was going on – bonus! Plus, I got to eat ice cream, which makes any night more enjoyable! 🙂

While I still prefer a good old cheesy musical, a good night was had by all (well, me and my mum. I can’t really speak for the others) and I would definitely consider going again. Plus there is something about seeing an  opera that makes you feel instantly more cultured and grown up! 🙂

Must go for now and rest my hand, but hopefully back soon with another thing ticked off my list!

Goal # 12 – Cook Christmas dinner

I have always loved cooking so wanted to give myself a bit of a cooking challenge as part of my 30 list, and I thought taking on the challenge of cooking a full Christmas dinner for me, my mum, my brother and sister-in-law would be a suitable goal.

As I am a vegetarian, my mum sorted the turkey, but I made a chestnut roast from scratch for myself and also took care of the carrot and turnip, sprouts, parsnips, roast potatoes, yorkshire pudding, stuffing and bread sauce!

I have to admit, the night before I almost chickened out and asked my mum if she would do it (after all, people had been looking forward to this meal for a year and I didn’t want to let them down!), but I decided to give it a shot and, actually, it was easier than I thought! The hardest part was planning all the timings for everything the day before, to make sure everything would be ready at the right time. And the good news was, everyone enjoyed it and ate (almost) every bit (it was a huge meal)!

Unfortunately, everyone was so busy tucking in I only remember afterwards I should have taken a photo … Ah well, maybe next year 🙂

Goals # 9, 10 and 11 – Take part in National Novel Writing Month, win a competition, and read War and Peace

Ever since I was four years old it has been my lifetime ambition to write a novel. However, unfortunately I have continually fallen into the pattern many writers fall into of starting a novel then losing interest, coming up with a better idea, or getting too busy halfway through, and leaving the novel unfinished.

Initially, one of my goals for this list was simply to write a novel. However, as I had many ongoing goals already for the list (such as watching the top 50 films and reading several books) I quickly realised that I would probably fall into the same trap of never finishing my novel if I spread it out over the year. So, to give me a bit more motivation to write, I decided to enter the National Novel Writing Month competition (nanowrimo) that takes place every November – something I have thought about doing for a while.

So, this November, at midnight on 31st October/1st November, I set off on my writing adventure! After much deliberation, I decided to write a young adult novel, although I had absolutely no idea what it would be about even as I started writing. I put together a very vague idea about 5 minutes before I started (and when I say very vague, I mean very) and hoped the rest would come along as I wrote. Which it sort of did (although I had to go back once I had reached the end of the novel and fill in some gaps to improve the novel and add to the word count).

Then, on 24th November, I reached the 50,000 word word count and became a nanowrimo winner and the author of my very first complete novel!! 🙂

Not only that, but I decided my completion of this goal meant that I could tick off another goal on my list. After reading about National Novel Writing Month, I noticed that it was often referred to as a competition. Also, those who complete the month with a 50,000 word novel are referred to on the site as ‘winners’. Therefore, I concluded I could quite legitimately count this as me winning a competition (after all, it required a lot more time, effort and hard work than the lucky draws I had so far been trying and failing to win!). Here is a screenshot of my National Novel Writing Month page, declaring me a winner 🙂

Wonderfully, on the same day I completed my novel, I also managed to finally finish War and Peace, three months after I began! While some parts of the novel were a difficult read and there were times I longed for it to end, all in all I would definitely recommend it to anyone wanting to give it a go. I thought the characters were complex and interesting and I enjoyed the plot. And I also enjoyed being able to casually read War and Peace in public, as though I read those sort of novels all the time … 🙂

Now on to the rest of the books I’m reading for my list, starting with Tristram Shandy!

Here is an update of the goals I have completed so far:

1. Start a blog

2. Learn how to play chess

3. Have a bath with candles and champagne

4. Have a 12 hour DVD-athon

5. See the sunrise 

6. Create my own ice cream flavour

7. Run a 5K in less than 30 minutes

8. Knit something

9. Take part in National Novel Writing Month

10. Win a competition

11. Read War and Peace

12. Cook a Christmas dinner

13. Go to an ice bar

14. Learn how to make candles

15. Reach my target weight

16. See the Northern Lights

17. Go to the Opera

18. See a Shakespeare play at the Globe Theatre

19. Do a night-time sponsored walk for charity

20. Read the top 10 of the Guardian’s 100 greatest novels of all time

21. Raise £130 for charity

22. Go on a long bike ride

23. Create my own perfume

24. Visit another city by myself

25. Have a moonlit picnic

26. Do a parachute jump

27. Sponsor a child in a developing country

28. Watch 50 of the top films of all time

29. Read the Bible all the way through

30. Plan some extremely amazing 30th birthday celebrations