This just in from my friend Dave Castillo at Blue Barn Pictures. To stay updated on the progress he makes checking items off this list, go to his blog - THE BARN.I have, FOR as long as I can remember, done something completely different on my birthday, be it climbing a mountain, get a tattoo, spending it in quiet seclusion, inviting everyone I know to celebrate with me, getting high on the Great Wall or completely ignoring it (last year).
I will share this year’s birthday with my daughter who will be born April 17ish, a month and some change after my thirty-third birthday.
Birth, like everything else in life, is not predictable so I have given myself a a ten day window before she rightly steals the show, to accomplish this surmountable task I have laid out for myself.
To celebrate my birthday and my daughter’s, I have laid out 56 things that I would like to do before I meet her.
In no particular order, the list:
1. Be more patient with people and with myself
2. Read Pablo Neruda’s poetry in Spanish and write the ones I like in green ink.
3. Support the Brooklyn music scene by going to concerts
4. Go to the MoMA
5. Restart the mix CD group
6. Go to the gym 3 times a week
7. Play more
8. Take yoga classes
9. Read ‘Your baby’s first year’
10. Learn how to make sushi
11. Shoot a short film for myself
12. Make the bed every morning
13. I will speak more Spanish at home
14. Scan old photographs and post them
15. Build the baby’s crib
16. Make a stop motion video
17. Cook more
18. Make time to relax
19. Eat sitting down and enjoy my meals
20. Take a hot bath once a week
21. Drink more water
22. Listen to my body
23. Photograph the Brooklyn Bridge
24. Fix the breaks on my bike
25. Keep my desk clean
26. Organize my storage space
27. Sell or give away what I don’t needed
28. Sew the buttons back on my coat
29. Call friends I have not heard from in awhile
30. Spend 5 minutes a day with the belly
31. Write more in the black moleskin
32. Go to the MET and look at a Caravaggio
33. Stop looking at Porn
34. Learn how to say No
35. Stop checking work emails on the weekends
36. Listen to more classical music
37. Write down my dreams
38. Take more time explaining my ideas
39. Realize stress is self induced
40. Free my photography from my self imposed rules
41. Take more pictures
42. Eat more vegetables
43. Write down the names of the wines I like
44. Go to art gallery openings.
45. Organize my digital photo library
46. Pay more attention to my grammar
47. Speak to my father
48. Contribute to other blogs
49. Discuss in depth the finer points of Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman, Ave Gardner, Sophia Loren and Grace Kelly over Ketel One martinis.
50. Take my wife out on dates
51. Visit my mother’s grave
52. Start drawing again
53. Take my shoes off when I get home
54. Spend an afternoon listening to vinyl with my friend Jim
55. Document tackling this list
56. Have drinks with friends at the Brooklyn Inn on April 6th and look at the list
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