To Do Redo

I’ve been absent from the blog for a while which is something I’m a bit sad about.

Camp was downright demanding.  Any time you weren’t spending teaching or supervising you spent hanging out with co-workers and students anyway or just simply crashed and asleep in your room.

But camp has been over for about two months now, so that excuse for neglect is right out.

I have started a new job as a Teacher’s Assistant/After School Counselor at Magic Years Child Care.  The age group is notably different than what I’m used to (infants to age 12 as opposed to iD’s 7 through 17) as is the structure of the day.  It’s tiring and interesting in its own unique way and I’m considering it a sort of crash course in behavior management.

In any case, now that I’ve settled into my new job and my new apartment and what is a pleasantly routine daily life, it’s high time to revisit the blog.

I have a few things I’m thinking of for the coming week or so, but for the moment I’d like to revisit my To Do list.  I’m scrapping the previous ones in favor of a complete rework since the flow of my life has changed so much over the past couple of months.  I’m going to start this off big.

Learn to Fly

This may seem like an off base goal, but it’s actually one I’ve had sitting in the periphery of my mind for a while now.  As I have mentioned previously, my grandfather was an aeronautical engineer and served for a time in the Air Force.  His love of planes had at one point driven him to purchase a small private plane whose make and model I cannot at this moment remember.  He and the rest of my mother’s family would often take trips in the plane.

The most interesting result of his owning this plane was, to me, that my mother learned to fly it a good deal before she learned to drive a car.  So, as I watch one of my room mates continually looking for new and interesting (and sometimes dangerous) hobbies to take up, I found myself remembering that old echo of a dream to learn to fly.

As such, I’m now seriously looking into it and have found a number of semi-local organizations by which I may accomplish this goal.  I will surely write more on this as I go about the process over the coming months.

Ride a horse

            This may seem relatively simple, but I mean to actually RIDE a horse, not sit on one in a line with other tourists on a trail.

I mean to ride a horse such that I am actively guiding it to move where I would like it to.  This goal may ultimately require some form of riding lessons, which I honestly may be totally willing to endure.  I haven’t taken lessons since I was… probably ten years old.

Join a gym

            I’ve made a lot of good progress health wise over the past 10 months.  Winter in RI, however, does not make for great outdoor running and walking weather.  There are a couple of gyms within reasonable walking distance of my apartment that I’m currently looking into.

Write, design, and publish a book

            This is something I’ve had on my mind for almost a year at this point.  As I was coming into adulthood, I would often wish that I had a manual for it (“it” being “adulthood”).  I kept finding myself wondering about things like buying and maintaining a car, paying taxes, renting a home as opposed to buying one, what kinds of insurance I was likely to start needing out of college, etc.

It occurred to me that creating such a thorough but concise guide to figuring out those things would be an interesting challenge for myself as a writer and a designer.  It’s definitely something I will be working on in the long-term, and pieces of it may show up here.