At the start of the year, I wrote a to-do list. I felt like in 2015 I got caught up in the have-tos and must-dos and somehow skipped a lot of just-for-fun stuff that I should have been doing, if I thought about how I really wanted to spend my time. So, when it came to thinking about 2016 and how I wanted it to go, I wrote a list 12 fun things that I wanted to do with the aim of accomplishing one per month. It was probably some idea I saw on Instagram about living meaningfully or something, and I’m always vaguely optimistic in the new year. Anyway, it seemed a good plan, so I wrote my list and I was pretty chuffed about it.

And do you know what? It’s the end of November and I have not done a single one.

Not a single one!

And I’m really disappointed. It’s not like they were even hard big-ticket things, like writing a book, or things that required a lot of money, like eating French cheese in Paris (both bucket list items, in case you were wondering). Some of them would have needed an afternoon at most, so time can’t have been a factor either. Am I just the walking epitome of slackness? What are you doing, April?

Luckily, I love deadlines and happen to [legitimately, not in a cliche job interview way] work best under pressure. Sure, there’s only a handful of weeks left in the year, but I think I can – potentially with a few clever reinterpretations or edits based on time restraints – smash out all 12 in this last leg of the year. There is nothing more satisfying than a completed to-do list, after all.

I already have a very vague bare-bones sort of plan of how to make it work. 2016: game on.

‘Til next time,