Sure, I'll try and set some achievable goals whilst drunk and losing my mind...
The first few weeks after I turned thirty became affectionately known as ‘Kim’s breakdown’. I was exceptionally miserable and spent my evenings wrapped in a blanket, clutching a bottle of wine and mourning my lost youth. That said, I did make a few attempts to get myself back on track.
In a moment of inspiration (and after multiple glasses of wine), my friend and I decided to write a bucket list. The idea was that it would give us some goals to achieve during our first year of being 30 and stop us being such desolate souls.
At that point I had already been lucky to check off some truly awesome shit off my ultimate bucket list. I'd traveled, ridden elephants, swim with dolphins/sharks, skydived and so on. Unsurprisingly, at this moment I didn’t acknowledge any of these great things and instead cobbled together a list of random crap.
I’ve just copied the original list from the back of the grubby, slightly tear stained envelope on which it was scrawled. Interestingly, it’s an unopened letter that looks like some kind of bill. I’m still not in the best of places so I can't face opening it right now.
Here's what I thought I needed to achieve to turn my life around at the grand old age of thirty.
1. Go to a Festival – I’m really not very cool, I don’t know any band and I’ve never ever had the desire to go to a festival. It does seem like something that everyone should do at least once though so I guess this wasn't a terrible start.
2. Go camping – Okay, I literally can’t think of anything worse. 98% of people who go camping get bummed by a bear (yeah I've seen The Revenant), or killed by an axe murderer * . Fuck that, someone tell the Four Seasons I'll be needing a suite.
* Unconfirmed statistic
3. Run 10k - At this point I was on week 3 of the couch to 5k running course and hating every second of it. Maybe this was a form of self harm. Pretty good goal though, well done me.
4. Full Tough Mudder – Clearly still feeling athletic after the previous 10k goal. I'd bullied my colleagues into doing a half Tough Mudder the year before. Maybe a cold and muddy 10 mile course with 25 obstacles might do me some good.
5. Volunteer project – I'd like to say this is just because I'm a nice person. In reality I know my own messed up logic though. I bet this was to do with a sudden and drunken belief in Karma and hoping that it might come back and sort my life out for me.
6. New York – I met the most awesome group of girls climbing Kilimanjaro in 2010 and every year we plan to meet up in New York. As with most things, life just got in the way and plans always fell through. Sex and the City (FYI I'm Samantha) was my favourite series through uni and I've always wanted to visit so yes, this was a great idea.
7. Be able to do the splits - Erm yeah, not sure where this came from. We had clearly opened another bottle of wine and I thought being able to spread my legs would solve all my problems. Contrary to what my mother always warned me.
8. Tattoo – I don’t have any tattoos, and until that moment I'd never wanted one. I think I was entering self destruct stage by this point. I can’t convey how awful the doodles that accompanied this drunken scrawl were. I bet we thought they were incredible at the time.
9. Grow nails – As I’m typing up this list I’m acutely aware of how awful my nails are right now. Great idea but possibly a tad ambitious during what would turn out to be one of the most stressful years of my life.
10. Have a psychic reading – We were probably very drunk by now and having heartfelt discussions about spirits (not the liqueur kind). I have always wondered if there is any truth in spirit readings, tarot and other things. Ultimately I just wanted someone to read my palm and tell me what the hell I should be doing with my life.
11. Pitch the God book – I started writing a book years ago, I go back to it a few times a year. I’m still on chapter one so hell knows what I was planning on pitching. Maybe I just wanted to publish something so in some ways this was a good goal. In other news I haven't even looked at the God book draft since then...
12. Change hairstyle – My hair is long, usually un-brushed and tied in a knot on my head. Radical hair overhaul seems like a normal thing for someone to do during a breakdown. I vaguely remembering we were talking about undercuts and fringes. Thank god we had no scissors to hand.
13. Do karaoke – I hate karaoke. Second only to bowling. Maybe I was channelling ‘PS I love you’? I definitely fueled my misery with that film a few times around that time.
14. Under 10 stone – At my absolute best I weigh 10.5 stone. I haven’t been under 10 stone for 15 years. I had no plan to lose weight at the time. I was clearly clutching for straws here. Amazingly I did actually make it to 10st for my Wedding day but that was purely because I was surviving off gin and Rescue Remedy by that point.
15. Rescue dive course – Actually not a shite idea. I love diving but I must have forgotten that on my last dive my ear drum blew and my eye started bleeding when I could equalize. I was convinced a shark was going to sniff the blood and eat me. I swore off diving for life.
16. Go on a retreat - At this point getting away from the rest of the worst seemed the best possible idea. I think I hoped that some kind empowering yoga or meditation retreat might be able to bring some balance and fix my brain. Turns out only meds could do they but hey, I was still optimistic.
Looking back it's actually impressive how many of the items on my list that I managed to fulfill, given that some days I couldn't face getting out of bed. I'm going to use this list to blog about the experiences we had in the quest to tick off everything.
I've also taken the opportunity to do a bucket list for my 31st year that I'll publish shortly. It's a tad less manic than last year!