Have a Happy, Healthy Birthday

As I wrote in my last post, my adventures will include many new experiences, but I am not aiming for experiences that are purely outrageous or sensational. For example, I've never gotten:

-Arrested

-Alarmingly drunk

-Knocked unconscious

-Knocked up

-A tattoo or regrettable piercing

-Electrocuted

And while getting in any of these states would certainly be a novel experience, to say the least, they don't fit within the parameters of my project. My project is not about novelty for novelty's sake. Instead, I want to explore the ways healthy, exciting, fulfilling, and life-giving go together. I hope to discover some new healthy habits that stick with me beyond the length of the Birthday Exercises.

Yesterday I did laundry, and as I lifted the folded things out of the laundry basket, I noticed I was putting away four pairs of pajamas and absolutely no workout clothes. This is pretty reflective of the way the past few weeks have been going for me. I have been rushed and tired, and I've noticed that both my mind and my work have not felt as sharp as they should. As I lay in bed on Friday night, I couldn't sleep because I was so worried about not getting enough sleep, especially as the Birthday Exercises approached. I cycled through frustrated feelings. I acknowledged that embarking on One Adventure a Day  would mean committing myself to not going to the gym, doing laundry, going to bed on time, or cooking myself dinner for a month. At the same time, I wasn't willing to give up on a project that I felt to excited about and inspired by. 

I found some peace when I remembered that my initial motivation was for the project was to try out activities that could become new healthy habits. The Birthday Exercises are not about adventure for adventure's sake but about discovering what is life-giving, fulfilling and enriching, about drawing closer to God and understanding and honoring my unique gifts and call. I can't do that by running myself ragged. So I decided to continue with the project in a modified way. I'll still try out 30 challenges, many of them in October and all of them before the end of the year, but I'll take a break whenever self-care intervenes. 

And now I'm off to sleep, because Day 1 begins bright and early tomorrow!

Plotting my Course, Choosing my Adventure

My birthday exercises began as a rather vague idea. The idea pricked the back of my mind with a sense of obligation and niggled at me there. I should, I reckoned, take on something momentous to commemorate my thirty years. I had an uneasy worry that I would let my birthday go by without noting it and making it noted, really living it and being present to it — and, worst of all, without live-tweeting it.

In the past month, though, just as my expectations about my birthday itself have become more positive, so have my expectations about my birthday adventure. They've also started to become more concrete. In early September, my plans for my birthday challenge were pretty simple: "Do one new thing each day." With more excited reflection, I've began to understand what I hope to gain from the challenges and to recognize some common themes.

"Doing one new thing each day" doesn't stop at having fun, while that is part of the equation. Trying something new each day will mean pushing boundaries and stepping out of my comfort zone. By doing so I'll learn new things and, perhaps more importantly, examine why my boundaries exist where they do. What experiences and relationships am I missing out on by holding back too much, and where do I need to hold fast? 

I'll also examine my opinions and assumptions. As I've made a list of the new experiences I hope to undertake, some clear themes have emerged: food, cuisines, and food justice; spirituality and religious experience; art and photography; global New York. I hope that my new experiences in these topics that are close to my heart will challenge my knee-jerk responses. 

Some of the challenges will be difficult; some time-consuming; some simple. Some will require a map and some will be accomplished at home or in my neighborhood. Best of all, some of them (many of them?) will be free!

My challenges will be revealed each day, so if you want to find out what they are, keep reading!   

Why "The Birthday Exercises?"

When I was a kid, I sniffed at the blind, joyless grownups who dreaded their birthdays. I thought age had made them foolish, not wise; they wasted the days they had in worrying about the days' passing, and closed themselves off to the rather obvious delights of frosting, candlelight, and colored tissue paper gathered around mysteries. I swore I wouldn't be like them, and that I would look forward to my own birthdays, no matter how old I got.

Of course, I had specific expectations about adulthood and adult birthdays as a child. As a young adult, I read about the Things Every Woman Should Have (Or Know, Or Do) By Her 30th Birthday collected in checklists in women's magazines. Those lists never got under my skin: I never worried about knowing How to Roast a Chicken or having decided on the Handbag that would be my Statement. But what did get under my skin were the expectations about who I would be by the time I was 30 that were formed by the same child who promised to rejoice in each birthday.

You can probably guess what those expectations were. When I turned 29, I told myself to stay calm as I still had another year to find life-long love. That's enough to be nervous about, but I had more questions. I was in a job that I believed in and wanted to excel at but that felt like a bad fit for my gifts and weaknesses. I was still struggling to find my feet in a city that seemed worse than anonymous: intentional in its attempts to weed out the unworthy.

The coming year provided challenges that became opportunities, love found and lost, and moments of grace. I wrestled with discovering the way my gifts, temperament, and background were leading me to a vocation and a career in which I could be myself and be of service. I thought about the way I define my worth and my happiness by my relationships. As I reach my 30th birthday, those questions have taken on new meaning - but they're no longer a source of anxiety for me. Instead, they've become something quite positive - a mystery to rejoice in, and a puzzle to throw myself into. So I set off on my Birthday Exercises with arms open and a joyful heart.