Author: commitandventure

#74 Throwback Outings

For the past year I have joined a bowling league, so every Thursday I go bowling.

Now in my initial idea of throwback outings I would go out and do kid-ish things. What has happened was I started doing things that were things I enjoyed as a kid and it turned out that I still enjoy those things.

I’ve even gone back to collecting Pokemon cards because I enjoyed that so much when I was younger and I still have my collection from 20 years ago.

Thursday night is becoming a throwback night period. I go out get Chinese food, hit the Pokemon card shop, and then go bowling with friends. It’s one simple night a week that is just easily the essence of this goal. I go out and have a good time and forget about adult life. Plus it’s fun and what’s the point of life if you aren’t having fun.

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#5 Keep consistent pace on a run

I hate running.

I don’t know why I made this goal.

Running has never been my strong suit and I know it’s good cardio and great for your health (well except for you knees…). I’ve made an effort, but my goodness; I hate running.

Now with that whine session over let me tell you what I’ve learned about myself:

  1. I am not a fast runner
  2. I don’t need to be fast to run
  3. A light run is manageable as long as I have an audiobook
  4. Audiobooks are a great running companion
  5. I like being able to feel healthy and gain knowledge at the same time
  6. As long as I have headphones I can run

What I’ve really learned is I can’t run without having something to distract my mind. Without a distraction I won’t run for very long and I will easily give up. Having something to focus on besides just the run is the key to my success. Well “success”.

Hitting that first point just for good measure. I am not fast. I initially wanted a fast pace for this challenge, after the first few runs I immediately settled for slow. I figured as long as I’m running in some capacity it’s got to be better than nothing.

I consider this a win even if I’m not the best runner in the world.

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#58 Proper Accounting

Okay, well I didn’t become an accountant or anything, but I think I can say with some confidence that I understand accounting a lot better than when I wrote that goal.

I was thrown into learning how to manage finances for a business and learning the ins and out of the business was really the key in me understanding how the finances worked. Which took me a couple years to fully grasp and once I got that the books for the business became way easier to understand. Understanding a business is super helpful when you are learning how to bookkeep if you never really were a book keeper. There were things I didn’t understand and as I’ve grown up things started clicking more and stuff that’s obvious to me now were completely unknown to me like 4 years ago.

So I am not an accountant of any type, but I can do some book keeping and keep up with my taxes and financials pretty well and that seems like a solid life skill attained.

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#45 South Korea & #33 Korean

Guys. I made it. I made it to South Korea. And I loved it so much.

I had the opportunity to go there because one of my best friends moved there last year and I just knew I had to go visit her and use the chance to visit as much of South Korea as I could in my limited time there.

There is so much I want to say about my experience in South Korea, but right now I have no idea how to write a blog post anymore. It has been so long and there are so many goals for me to complete. For now I can say that I have traveled around Seoul and spoken decent Korean that got me by quite well. Unfortunately, my biggest language struggle was accents. As I continue to study Korean I need to focus on understanding people with accents and not perfect crisp language like it is when you are learning and studying a language.

As for my experience in South Korea, specifically Seoul, is that it’s easily one of my favorite places. From the food to the culture to the accessibility to everything around you there. It’s so easy to go from place to place and see so much and do so much. There is just so much to do, that it’s addictive. In my time there I walked nearly 100 miles because I just loved walking around and seeing as much as I could.

Picture Montage!

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#72 Monthly Board Game Night

This is a goal that I am most shocked that I’ve completed. It’s really hard to keep game nights going. Usually it’s one person starts bailing and soon the rest follow. Fingers crossed that doesn’t happen and hopefully I didn’t jinx something.

I had tried in the past to get game nights going, but it was always empty promises and then never actually getting to it. It wasn’t until last year that I found out the way to do game nights and to keep them going.

The secret is to stop playing only physical board games and dive into the world of role playing games. Since I’ve started doing weekly D&D sessions I’ve had a consistent game night. Yeah it’s not a full on board game, but it has game mechanics and at this point I’m grateful to be hanging out with friends playing any game.

I’ve also learned a game that you can play via online or in person is a great thing. Sometimes people just can’t meet up at a house, or people move, or you don’t feel like company. Adapting games over discord has been the best and honestly if it hadn’t been pandemic era I never would have thought of playing games over video calls. It was always in my brain that I had to have people over and set up a date and make a big deal out of game nights.

It’s much easier now. Sometimes it’s in person gaming, sometimes it’s over discord. It’s easy and it’s fun. I’m grateful to have a group to play games with because for the longest time it was just me and my brother playing complex tabletop games that took 5 hours to set up. Granted I’ll still do that whenever I hang out with my brother, but the RPG set up I’ve got going on right now is really nice.

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#29 Bungee Jump

Okay well I didn’t actually bungee jump, but I’ve done something similar to the point I want to cross of this goal because it was close enough.

See bungee jumps have the big drop and all the bouncing around. What I did was just the big drop and no bouncing around.

I went camping near the Royal Gorge a while back (and I mean a while back, as in end of 2020, that’s how long I’ve been debating whether to count this as a completed goal) and I convinced my father to join me on a zipline tour around the Royal Gorge. He had never been on a zipline and it was right after the first time I went. I enjoyed ziplining so much that I knew my dad would love it. He did.

I know, what does all this have to do with a bungee jump? Well it turned out the final course of the zipline was a race to a platform that was about 50ft off the ground and the only way to get off this platform was to jump. Instead of having a bungee jump cable they had something called a FlightLine. Which is similar a type of cable that lets you safely freefall to the ground, it’s absolutely wild and I highly recommend it.

Now it’s not a bungee jump, but I also jumped from really high up and put my trust in a rope once before already. Granted I may do a bungee jump eventually in the future, as for now I am okay with just my freefall experience with the FlightLine.

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#78 Go to Vegas with a Group

This was not on the original list. Stuff happens and lists change. No big deal.

But actually after spending a weekend in Vegas with a group of people and some friends I haven’t seen in a while, it felt like I deserved to cross off a goal. So hence this goal was created!

Now I just spent 4 days in Vegas and as far as my social comfort zone is concerned I stomped over it and properly socialized. Went to brunches, fancy dinners, crazy dinners, hung out by the pool, went to Blue Man Group, saw Penn &Teller, got to drive sports cars, and lots of walking around the strip. That’s a lot for my workaholic introverted self. I crammed just enough of Vegas for me to probably not want to do Vegas for a decade or 2.

No offense, but Vegas is not for me. I had a lot of fun and it was great to see my friends, but when it comes down to it I was definitely socially overloaded. Grateful I did it and I was proud of my dorky self for going and enjoying myself.

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#89 Drive an Expensive Sports Car

I went to Las Vegas last week and found a race track that lets you drive sports cars around their track. I chose the Toyota Supra which isn’t their most expensive sports car, but I chose that one so I could drive around in something I would feel comfortable in. The Supra is valued at $65k.

I got to drive 15 laps in a the Supra and I had an instructor with me the whole time. I got some awesome racing tips and tricks and by the end of it I felt confident in driving at speeds I never thought I’d get to and I got to go 127mph on the straight away, which just felt fantastic.

Driving the Supra was easily one of the best times I’ve had in a long time!

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#76 Make New Friends

Friends are interesting. For the most part I consider myself friendly and easy to get along with as long as whomever I am interacting isn’t a bad human. I have no problem starting conversations with people and though I consider myself an introvert when I’m around strangers, more often then not I am the one initiating conversation because I just like talking.

It’s the step of taking friendly interactions to actually committing to doing something and actually creating a friendship which is what makes it hard. I find I have no issues talking which puts me half way there, but it’s finding people who want to make the same effort to hang out and go do things the hard part.

Obviously, since I am writing this posts I feel in some way that I have accomplished this goal and it’s not necessarily cause I just went out and started hanging out with a bunch of people and decided we were friends. It has been months and years of me developing and restoring connections with people.

I made an effort to get in contact with people that I had met back in 2015 and just never saw each other again. We started talking monthly and updating each other on life, going out for lunch, brain storming future business ideas.

I befriended customers at my families restaurant, which normally I stray away from. But I met some wonderful people and I got a sassy hair stylist friend out of it.

I went out of my way to talk to people at the dance studio I go to workout at and it wasn’t even that hard. The people I know there are some of the happiest and inspiring people and they are so fun to be around. I don’t get to see them as often, but I try my hardest to reach out to people that make me smile and love myself that much.

And lastly I have the friends that have been with me through everything, my constants. It’s friendships that I have had for years that I continually nurture. Because it’s those friendship that I want to still surround myself with and though I had started a goal to make new friends it has made me think back on my current friendships and how important they are to me.

When I wrote this goal I think I thought that I needed to get a more solid group of friends, but I was looking at it too seriously. I just needed to focus on surrounding myself with good and happy people. Friends don’t have to be a serious thing and you also don’t have to constantly making plans. That’s something I have to remind myself. Life isn’t that serious, just gotta slow down and enjoy the days.

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#54 800+ Credit Score

Y’all I did it and I know it really doesn’t matter at this point in my life as I am not going for loans or anything. But I got there and I now have a taste of what that feels like.

It was hard getting my finances in the right place and I know I won’t keep this score, but I got it just this once and I’m thrilled.

That’s all. Nothing else to say, but just a quick post.

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