I just celebrated my 46th birthday. A few months ago, I created a 50 Before 50 challenge to make the 50 months leading up to my 50th birthday more interesting. Goals fell into 5 categories: learning, giving, fun, investing, and self-improvement. I’m 2 months into the challenge. Progress has been a bit slower than I’d planned, but at least there is progress to report. To save you from a lengthy post, I will give you updates one category at a time. Here are my learning goals: 

1. 50 songs on piano

2. 50 skills or facts about a subject I know little about

3. 50 minutes a week learning Spanish

4. 50 podcasts

5. 50 card games

6. 50 ways/languages to say I Love You

7. 50 things to make instead of buy

50 songs on piano: 1/50

I’m not doing so great with the piano. I don’t like practicing in front of people, and the keyboard is in the living room. There’s always people around. But soon, our downstairs reno will be complete and Reagan will use one of those bedrooms when she’s home from school. Her old bedroom can become an office/craft/music room. I started taking some lessons online, but found that I knew a lot of the basics and theory already. I’ve decided to just jump in and start learning one piece of music at a time. I have picked up a short little song. It’s a few simple bars that are repeated about 50 times. I’ll post a video. 

50 skills or facts about a subject I know little about: 1/50

I love yearly planners. I also love making lists and journaling. But it’s hard to find a perfect all-in-one book. Bullet journaling has intrigued me for a couple of years. It looks fun, but popular Instagram accounts and Pinterest boards are so intricate, decorative, and flawless, they make BuJo seem too complicated. I like to draw, but I am no artist by ANY stretch of the imagination. I found some bullet journaling classes on SkillShare, and I’ve watched a lot of videos. I’ve learned that bullet journaling can be as basic or fancy as you want it to be. I started a bullet journal in July, and I’m having fun with it. By keeping my design simple on most pages, I can spend a little more time dressing up a handful of pages, like calendars or monthly title pages. This book for July-December 2020 is my practice journal. I can play around with a few different styles until I find one that works best for me.

50 minutes a week learning Spanish: Crushing it, yet still feel dumb

As you may know, I have another winter sabbatical planned for January and February 2021, this time in Mexico. I took 2 years of Spanish in high school, but that was a million years ago. After a scouting trip to Mexico in July to check out the tiny town and the beach house I’ll be living in for 2 months, I realized I needed to get serious about improving my Spanish. I started using the Dulingo app in July, and I’ve got an 80 day streak of daily lessons. Although the sabbatical in Mexico is my main motivation, I have another major reason to learn the language. Bates has 4 staffers from Mexico. A couple of these guys (Pedro and Abelardo) were there long before I came on the scene. Oscar was hired about 3 years ago, and his wife Laura joined my greenhouse crew this spring. While the guys know enough to get by, Laura doesn’t speak English. The other app that has proven MOST helpful to me is SpanishDict. I use it throughout the work day to type in what I want to say to Laura and get the Spanish translation. After about 6 months of working together, our communication has improved. It’s mostly a combo of charades, me consulting the app, patience and profuse apology on both our parts, shrugging, and laughter. Laura knows I’m trying to learn the language, so she will occasionally offer me the Spanish term for certain plants or things she’s doing. We recently figured out both of our birthdays are in September, and we somehow managed an exchange about what kind of cake and gifts we like: chocolate cake and flowers for me and tres leche cake and perfume for Laura. Last Monday was my birthday and my day off. When I got back to work the next day, Laura gave me yellow roses and a cake. I’ve worked with Pedro and Abelardo since I first started at Bates 6 years ago. I’m ashamed and embarrassed that I haven’t made more of an effort before now to communicate with them in español. Working with Laura every day has helped me with my conversational skills in Spanish more than any app could. We’re fortunate to call each other amigas.

50 podcasts: 6/50

Good Christian Fun- I listened to this a lot last year, but with so many episodes (150), I got a little overwhelmed. I recently picked it back up. This podcast is all about analyzing Christian pop culture. There are 2 hosts and a different guest every week. Some of these guests are self-proclaimed Christians, many are not. If you are easily offended, this is NOT for you. They poke a lot of fun at Christian music, movies, and kids videos, but there’s also deep and honest discussions about faith and deconstruction.

Oh, Hello the P’dcast- I’m a big John Mulaney fan. When I heard he was involved in a podcast, I was instantly on board. He’s teamed up with Nick Kroll, and they play fictional characters “investigating” a crime. It’s weird and goofy, but fun.

The Daily- In an effort to become more knowledgable about politics and current events, I started listening to this podcast from The New York Times. Every day, there’s a deep-dive about a story in the news, as well as a brief summary of top headlines. 

The Dream (season 1)- Investigative reporting on Multi Level Marketing, particularly why so many women are attracted to MLM. I enjoyed this.

Dolly Parton’s America- I’ve never claimed to be a Dolly fan…until now. She is a freakin delight. 

Dissect (season 7)- I’ve listened to  seasons 1, 2, 5, and 6. Season 7 just started a couple weeks ago. Each season analyzes an album track by track. This season looks at Childish Gambino’s Because The Internet. Dissect satisfies my inner music geek. 

50 card games: 0

I’ve got some work to do. Maybe I need to spend some time with my college girl and her friends.

50 ways/languages to say I Love You: 1/50

Te amo is I love you in Spanish.

50 things to make instead of buy: 2/50

Several weeks ago, we ended up with a surplus of peaches. Normally when I make cobbler, I use canned fillings. But with the extra peaches on hand, I decided to make my own. I was not disappointed. The second thing I made was granola. I have a tiny addiction to granola. Cascadian Farms makes a lemon blueberry variety that I LOVE. But for whatever reason, it has become impossible to find in stores. Ordering it on Amazon costs about $10 a bag. I set out on a quest to make my own. I found a recipe for this and several other varieties of granola on Pinterest. Then I went to Sprouts and spent WAY more than $10 on ingredients (I told myself this would make several batches of granola, so the cost would even out in the end. So far, I’ve only made one batch.) I was only marginally pleased with my end result. I think the recipe needs some tweaking to taste more like the CF brand.

This wasn’t supposed to be lengthy, but oh well. I’ll write about my other goals in the coming weeks.