PAPA DAVE'S 56 THINGS TO DO BEFORE HIS DAUGHTER IS BORN

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