Yes, I’m still making my way through Debbie Millman’s Remarkable Life Deck.1 If you missed the last installment, you can catch up here. This week I pulled four cards, slightly out of order (for reasons that will become clear in future posts… oooh, suspense!).
My starting card didn’t excite me. “Do you own a … car, boat, skateboard, scooter, bike?” I’m not passionate about privately-owned means of transportation, even “active” ones like bikes (biking is so not my thing). I know I’ll own a car, and given my government’s recent announcement that all cars should be electric by 2035, it’s safe to assume it’ll be an electric vehicle, although not one made by Tesla, thank you. I do enjoy a hatchback, so I’m picturing a cute 5-door, shiny and clean. Assuming we still have winter in Canada in ten years time, heated seats and steering wheel will be a must. I’ve never cared much about the colour of my cars, but maybe in my remarkable future I’ll pick something bright that gives me a little lift when I see it.
The important thing about a car for me is what it allows me to do: get out of the house, see friends, feel independent, and get stuff done.
My next card of the day asks, “What do you like to do when you relax?” Obviously, plan my future life! Aside from this, it’s hard to imagine that my favourite forms of relaxation will change much over ten years, unless someone happens to invent some new ones. My list includes: watching interesting documentaries and miniseries (I love a miniseries); reading novels and memoirs; writing in my bullet journal (planning ‘til I die); hanging out in comfy spaces with my friends (picturing leafy backyards and hot tubs); going out for coffee with a book; napping.
As I’m writing this it’s winter, but I vaguely remember that I also love lying on my back deck in the sun and taking outdoor naps.
I feel as though I already have a good amount of relaxation time in my life. The challenge is, and will remain, I imagine, cultivating relaxing habits that aren’t entirely passive, like watching tv. I love watching tv, but I do find myself craving other ways to relax, especially when I’m by myself. Something to keep working on as I plan for the future.
The next prompt was more intriguing. I rarely think about things in terms of mastery, but maybe, by the time I’m 58, I’d like to feel masterful in certain areas of my life. If not masterful, at least unconsciously competent.
I have a lot of things that I’m trying to improve on (many of which are on my 24 for 24 list). Maybe I’ll feel masterful at them in ten years! The ten year time frame is also a helpful reminder of something that I recently had to tell myself, which is that THERE IS NO RUSH. When I first starting learning Spanish and decided that I wanted to commit to it, I felt like I needed to make all this progress in a short period of time. But to what end? I’m doing this because I want to, not because I have to. It doesn’t matter one bit whether it takes two years or ten to meet my goal.
So with the comfortable cushion of ten years, here are few of the things on my “mastery” list: nice handwriting (which I practiced while writing in my life deck journal); conversational Spanish; coaching; giving book talks; comfortable 5K runs.
Given that I do like to collect goals and projects (I turned liking olives and learning to appreciate whiskey into projects), I had to wonder what was missing from my list. It’s inevitable that I’ll add more in the next ten years. Current me is curious to see what future me will cook up.
Our last card for today asks a question that I can only describe as aggressive: “What do you do for fun?” The last time someone asked me this I froze and waited for a hole in the earth (bar) to swallow me up. When it didn’t, I replied, “umm, yoga?”
Why is this seemingly innocuous question so confronting? Perhaps because fun is tiring, no one has hobbies anymore, and even the few nice little pastimes we may have are not so easily stretched to fit the word “fun.” Is knitting fun? Not really! Fun is a high bar, people.
A friend once described the perfect middle-aged evening out as “medium fun.” You’re sitting down, the music isn’t too loud, you’re in a small group, you’re not wearing heels, and you’re home before 11. Medium fun keeps the fun bar low enough that I can almost imagine meeting it. But aside from low-key nights out with friends, what else is on the fun list?
Maybe in ten years time I’ll have taken up some new hobbies that reach the fun bar (not pickleball, though, please). In the meantime, I imagine fun will look like: entertaining friends and family in my home; going to concerts of artists I loved in the 90s (are matinee concerts a thing? they should be); travelling with my partner, daughter, and friends; little adventures to places I haven’t been before.
Meanwhile, if anyone knows what “fun” is these days, please let me know so I can have a cheat card handy the next time somebody ambushes me with this question.
What I’m reading: Let Me Lie, by Clare Mackintosh. I figured out the “twist” in the this one pretty early on. I thank my gender studies degree for reminding me never to assume the gender of a nameless narrator.
What I’m watching: The Terror on Prime. Historical, creepy, supernatural, British, a little gay… what’s not to love about this miniseries (yay!) about a doomed Arctic voyage?
No promotional consideration is received for these posts.