"THE 52 LISTS PROJECT"

I received a wonderful book for Christmas.  It's called "The 52 Lists Project" by Moorea Seal.  Seal is an example (for me, anyway) of a person who is achieving her dreams by taking advantage of today's technology.  Not that she wouldn't have achieved them without technology, but the Big T provided a platform to display her talents to a wider audience, and she has grabbed hold. Her bio tells us that she is:  A retailer, a designer, and an online curator.  She has a fashion and lifestyle brand called Moorea Seal, from which she contributes seven per cent of proceeds to non-profits.  I noted it is 7% of proceeds.  Not 7% of profits.  I like that.

But, back to her book.  It is, per the title, a nicely designed book of illustrations, brief instructions and empty lines perfectly spaced for 52 lists--one for each week of the year.  I love lists.  I have lists all over the house and cannot begin a project without a list.  If I don't have a list I lose my way.  Which may be why a rather large writing project I'm involved with has been such a bugger.  I didn't make a list.  I thought it would fall into place, but it hasn't.  Obviously, I made a mistake by not being true to myself.  Right now I feel that I should stop writing this essay and make the damned list because I don't want my big project to turn out as a half-done piece of work laid on the guest room bed with the thirty never-finished, half-done pieces of work that didn't come to fruition because I didn't have a list. Thank you.  I'm done now.

LIST ONE:
This list, designed for the first week of the year, requested that I list my goals and dreams for 2016.  It didn't demand resolutions.  It asked for goals and dreams.  That, in itself, put me a little off-balance. At 71, do I even have goals and dreams?  Of course I do.  Everyone has goals and dreams, but people like me misplace them under the stack of resolutions.  And then, after a few months, they're not just misplaced.  They're lost.  Probably thrown away in a fit of cleaning, never to be remembered again.

I worked on List One for the entire week.  I incorporated it into my early morning routine and determined that I would dig up at least one goal or dream each day.  By the end of the week, I had actually created ten goals and/or dreams.  Well, really nine...I stretched one into two parts.  But still, I was pretty pleased with myself.  Goals and dreams are hard.  Resolutions are much easier to list--we know our shortcomings even if we don't want to think about them.  Goals and dreams aren't nearly so clear-cut.  They're our mental stretching exercise, and if you haven't done that for awhile (and I hadn't) you might wake up a bit stiff, sore and scared the next morning.  Dreams and goals require action.  Often, action we haven't practiced before.  At least, not successfully.

I used words in my Goals and Dreams List like "connect," "balance," "relax," "highest and best self," "focus," "authentic," and "challenge."  And that's only half the list...

This week--Week Fourteen--I'm required to List the Ways I Can Cleanse My Life For Spring.  These lists require more than a little thought for me, and I have grown to love that.  For the moment, I'm cleansing my life by cleaning out a few drawers, reviewing my notes from a personal development webinar I attended a couple of years ago, and turning off the TV.

Next week I will be challenged to list my Dream Trips.  That will be fairly easy for me.  I can remember the best of the best, and research a few more.  That's the beauty of the 52 List Project.  It's wonderfully balanced between our past and our future, and that's a good place to be.  We learn from the one and thus, are able to enrich the other.

Amen.