Someday Syndrome

We all have it.  It is a contagious sickness.  It starts off with an idea entering our ear drum or our optic nerves.  Pretty soon that idea attacks our brain.  That is sometimes followed with a feeling of emptiness and aching in our stomachs.  We've got to do something about it!  Then we start spouting things like: 

"I'm going to do that someday!"
"As soon as I'm done with [something], I'll do it."
"Someday, I'll check that off my list."
"I want to do that."
"When I'm [age], I am so going to . . ."

That's right, we've got Someday Syndrome.  We watch "Dancing with the Stars" and suddenly we want to learn to salsa.  We hear about that guy that climbed Mt. Everest and wonder how tough we are.  Our best friend reaches her goal weight and suddenly we want to as well.  Weeks pass by and a few of the things slip from our brain, but some of them remain.  These items are often moved onto the famed "Bucket List".

I searched and searched for the bucket list I made when I was 14.  I'm not sure where it went, but I'm guessing it has joined ranks with my Honda's missing remote and that black tie sweater that made me look skinny.  I do remember a few items on the list: get married in the temple (check), run a marathon (check), and become a pediatrician (still working on that one . . . does being a mom count?).   I know there were some other items that seemed super important at the time.  In honor of those forgotten goals and the disease associated with it, I have created a new list that will forever be etched in internet history.  Now this list below contains items that I not only want to do, but I believe could really happen.  So I guess it isn't just a bucket list - it's a inventory of my goals in no particular order. 

1. Publish a book
2. Go to Law School
3. Perform a solo in a Broadway musical
4. Speak at General Conference
5. Be in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
6. Go sailing
7. Hang glide off the Point of the Mountain
8. Climb Mt. Everest 
9. Go on a week long backpacking trip
10. Write a top 100 song
11. Read the Book of Mormon in one sitting
12. Visit Europe
13. Run a half marathon with my husband
14. Learn to surf
15. Take a spontaneous trip (no packing, just leave)
16. Make a dress patterned after a designer one
17. Meet my husband at a new restaurant and pretend we've just met
18. Go to a Broadway Musical in New York
19. Visit each of the 50 states (only been to 14/50 - AZ, CA, CO, FL, HI, ID, MO, NV, NM, OR, TX, UT, WA, WY)
20. Run a marathon outside of UT
21. Take a kayaking trip
22. Go to New Zealand
23. Move from Utah and live in the Northwest
24. Live within half hour to the beach
25. Do a half ironman
26. Win an award for something I write
27. Get a framable family portrait on the beach
28. Live in a beach house
29. Design and make my own piece of jewelry
30. Record a CD of songs I perform/write
31. Teach voice lessons
32. Learn to play a hymn on the piano
33. Be debt-free
34. Have Dad teach me to play the guitar
35. Sing a duet with someone famous
36. Write a non-fiction book
37. Have 6 kids
38. Reach my goal weight and stay there
39. Live near my parents
40. Run a 5k in under 22 minutes
41. Be one of the top 3 women in the Apple Blossom 10k
42. Host a fundraiser that earns $10K or more towards a good cause
43. Be the mayor of a city
44. Write a series of novels for teenage boys
45. Make my own cheese
46. Read 50 books in 1 year
47. Design and sew a wedding dress
48. Swing on a rope swing into a lake
49. Go fishing
50. Get a nice telescope and learn the main constellations
51. Be secret best friends with someone super famous
52. Have a bikini beach body and still wear a fabulous modest one piece
53. Buy three new oufits and never look at the pricetags
54. Own a swimming pool
55. Be on a tv show/movie (I'd be content with being an extra)
56. Teach a class at a university
57. Ride a motorcycle (by myself)
58. Go on a 100 mile bike ride
59. Create a photobook for each year for my family
60. Build a treehouse
61. Go on a cruise
62. Paint a picture (that I can hang in my home)
63. Own a bonzai tree
64. Learn the basics of ballet

Thanks to a friend (fellow writer and blogger), I decided to put together a "Before Bucket List" as well (things that were on my bucket list, but I have already checked off).

1. Run a marathon (9 times)
2. Get married in the temple
3. Live in another country (2 months in Mexico)
4. Learn another language (Spanish)
5. Be a teacher (one year of 3rd grade, still tutor)
6. Get my Bachelor's degree from BYU
7. Do a triathlon (2 done)
8. Write a book
9. Plant my own apple tree
10. Never swear
11. Learn to sew
12. Perform a solo in front of 1,000 people
13. Have a baby (4 so far)
14. Have a photography business
15. Go sky diving
16. Qualify for the Boston Marathon
17. Learn household repair (fixed dryer, washer, disposal, fridge, toilet)
18. Sing the National Anthem at a football game
19. Read all the Standard Works (Bible, BOM, D&C, NT, OT)
20. Memorize all the Articles of Faith
21. Build my own garden boxes
22. Grow a vegetable garden (and strawberries & raspberries)
23. Refinish my own furniture (piano, dresser, chair, bookcase)
24. Tile my kitchen backsplash
25. Go skinny dipping (not giving the details)
26. Lay my own wood floor
27. Scrapbook my photos (still working on this)
28. Sew a blessing gown and tuxedo (I still love these!)
29. Be in a musical (8)
30. Design and sew costumes for a musical
31. Become a couponer
32. Learn Photoshop
33. Create my own website
34. Have a blog

Come on, get a little closer to the screen.  Have you caught it yet?  You starting to feel the itching to do something? It's time now to make your list.  If you write it down, it's more likely to happen.

**I give myself the right to add to my bucket list each time a new symptom presents itself**

My New BFF - Veronica Roth

Disclaimer: The blog post below has not been endorsed by Veronica Roth, her agent or publisher☺

Veronica Roth, right, and I during the Dark Days Tour, July 2012

My new best friend and I have done a lot together lately. We've gone running together.  She joined me at the park one day. We worked side-by-side doing laundry and dishes. I went to her Dark Days Tour and she came with me to get my hair done.  She even helped me cut coupons one day. Veronica doesn't know it yet, but we are best friends.

Ok, so we are not really BFF's, but if I could chose an author that I'd like to be best friends with right now, it would be Veronica Roth, author of Divergent and the recently released, Insurgent.   For the past week, I have taken my book with me everywhere or I've been listening to her book in my iPhone. My favorite young adult books are ones that have a little bit of everything: adventure, romance, mystery, friendship, supernatural, coming of age, and action.  When I find one that has those qualities and is clean (no sex, foul language, drug abuse, etc), it is a keeper for me.  Insurgent was one of those books for me.

My Book Review for:

Insurgent by Veronica Roth

My Star Rating: 4/5

My Content Rating: PG-13 (Violence, Kissy Moments)

My Summary:  Beatrice Prior (Tris) lives in a society consisting of five factions: Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent).  Tris is Divergent, meaning she doesn't levitate to just one faction, but three of them.  She left her family's faction, the Abnegation, to join the Dauntless where she found friends to relate with and a boy she cares for.  Unfortunately, the factions who supposedly hold society together are falling apart and war is looming all around.

Tris is haunted by her parents' selfless death to save her and the horrible memory of choosing to kill her friend, Will, whose mind had been overtaken by the simulation serum.  As the old Dauntless and Erudite wage war on the remaining factions, Tris has to chose which side she will join.  She must choose to support her friends and love, Four, to join with the Factionless by overtaking the Erudite OR she must chose to fight against them to save the Erudite information that holds secrets her parents tried to reveal before they died.

My Opinion:  This book really did have it all.  The action kept my attention throughout all 525 pages.  My heart ached and fluttered along with Tris the whole way. The romance was still there, although I missed the sweet, quiet moments from the first book that didn't surface because both Four and Tris had a hard time trusting and confiding in each other.  There were many moments where I wanted to shake both of them and yell, "JUST TELL EACH OTHER YOUR PLANS AND WHAT YOU ARE THINKING!" Unfortunately, since they are real people, ☺, and make mistakes, they kept each other in the dark.

I'm glad that Roth didn't let Tris get over Will's death quickly.  She is a strong and brave character, but like her divergence shows, she has a selfless side that wouldn't let her get past it so easily.  I feel like I understood her need for self-sacrifice as she tried to overcome her hardships and discover more about her true character. 

Throughout the book, I kept wondering if we would find out more about the outside world and how the Five Factioned Society came to be.  I won't ruin it for everyone, but it made me happy to find out more at the end.  I'm a little disappointed that I'm going to have to wait more than a year to get the rest of the story. Darn you, Veronica!  Since we're friends now, maybe she'll give me the inside scoop.