The year I turned fifty, I resolved to do something new every day. However, balancing 365 new things with work and family, while still managing to do the laundry and get dinner on the table every night, was not always easy. In the early weeks of the project, I found it difficult to find so many new things.
It wasn't long before my friends learned that I was open to almost anything I could consider a new thing, and the invitations began pouring in not just from friends, but friends of friends. As a result, my life was new. I went dog sledding. I attended a Fashion Week fashion show. I went to numerous lectures on all kinds of topics that I never would have previously considered useful or interesting and found something to appreciate in every single one. I even signed up immediately when learning about a local group trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records by doing something unusual.
As time went by, whenever I learned about something that seemed remarkable, I did what I could to pursue it. Instead of "Why", I began to ask "Why not". Now I find it is easier to just keep my eyes open to the possibilities that surrounded me. It turns out that there were new things everywhere, and all I had to do was make a little effort to enjoy them.
I look back on the year. It doesn't matter to me that many of my "new things" weren't exactly meaningful. What matters is how to make full use of them when discovering there is an endless number of new things for me. It seemed to me an obvious sign that at fifty, my life was full of promise. I could continue to grow, stretch my wings, and learn more every day for the rest of my life. I enjoyed the idea of something new, and it gave me a reason to welcome each day as an opportunity to experience the world a little differently.