Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The Ten Year Self-Improvement Challenge

Alright, well doing this whole Ten Year Self-Improvement Challenge has inspired me to make a blogspot. I'm new to all this so I'm not sure how this whole thing is going to work out. I tend to be horrible at sticking to things, or just procrastinate my self out of things that I should probably do. I had written it this down on Livejournal, but thought that maybe this would be a little bit more appropriate.

I decided to do it because well I thought it sounded like a neat idea. It's kinda cool to know that all these people have goals out there that they are trying to get accomplished at the same time and your able to keep track of everyone.

Okay in 10 years I would have just turned 29 years old and these are the things I want to have accomplished by that time. (I'll probably add more later on, I haven't given as much thought to this list as I should have)

1. Be more optimistic. Reason: I'm really rather negative and for the most part I'm okay with it. But my friends probably don't like it as much. My mom sure doesn't because she brings it up all the time when I talk to her on the phone. So really I'm trying to at least be positive around others. And not be so snarky all the time.

2. Put myself out there more. Reason: I have a problem being confident and going up and just starting a conversation. I've been in college since September and haven't even gone out once. I pretty much eat by myself everyday too and bring my computer along instead of eating with friends. I don't want to make myself sound like I have no friends, even by not participating I surprisingly find myself with a pretty good group of people. The problem is that for the most part, at least in college I find myself on the outside of the inner circle. I just never take the time to be around them, and also never take the time to meet new people. In 10 years, I want to know that I can be sociable.

3. Have a good job in the business field that allows me to travel. Reason: People need jobs. I'm majoring in business. And I like to travel.

4. Have gone to South America, Central America, and Europe. Reason: I want to visit where my dad was born, Argentina, (South America), where my mom was born, Honduras, (Central America), and my favorite continent (Europe). I've always had an obsession with going to Europe, specifically going to England or actually the whole United Kingdom. Also I want to visit Prague, in the Czech Republic.

5. Start writing again. Reason: I used to love writing, and a couple years ago I stopped. I want to write a novel or at least something the length of a short novel. I don't care so much about getting it published as much as just proving to myself I can actually write a novel.

6. Promise to keep in touch with friends. Reason: Well I mean this will be after college. I still want to leave knowing that I'm friends with them. And I want to have kept in touch with my high school friends. It's getting difficult to now and I'm only a freshmen in college. I also want to meet back up with my elementary school friends. I've only gotten to talk to them on facebook so far.

7. Have completed reading my list of books to read. Reason: I started the list about 2 years ago, and well have absolutely not kept up with it. Hmmm... I'm debating putting up the list or just saying I finished one when I'm done reading it. Ummm... alright I'll put it up, here at the end of this post. I feel like this list will get longer before it gets shorter since I'm always looking for recommendations, but that's okay at least I'm reading.

8. Find love. Reason: Well I do want to find someone I want to spend the rest of my life with. I don't care so much about getting married and having children. At least not, yet anyways, I'm only 19. Maybe when I'm 29. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to go out and find myself someone now. But I think this one would probably go best with putting my self out there more, but I don't care I've written this as number 8 and it's going to stay there now. I'm terribly shy around new people, so talking to boys I don't know rarely happens. Which sucks because around people I don't know I tend to ramble on and on. So I hope in 10 years I would have found someone.

9. Go to a concert. Reason: I've never been to one, though I really love music.

10. Go to New York and see a Broadway show. Reason: It's just always seemed like a cool idea.

11. Visit California. Reason: It's freaking Hollywood, I think it be really cool to see, not much to live there just to visit. Also want to visit San Francisco, and the Haight & Ashbury district because I know it's changed but it reminds me of hippies in the 60's.

12. Follow Through. Reason: As mentioned earlier I really suck at sticking to things. I just have the mentality of saying "oh this doesn't matter; I give up." I'd rather not have that happen with this challenge or with other things in life.

List of Books: (This is the exact list I made 2 or 3 years ago, so not really in any sort of order. A lot of these books are books I feel everyone in the world has read and I feel left out. )
1. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
2. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
3. Possession by A.S. Byatt
4. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
5. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
6. The Stranger by Albert Camus
7. Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
8. 1984 by George Orwell
9. 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
10. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
11. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
12. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
13. Faust by Johann Wolgang Von Goethe
14. The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
15. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
16. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
17. Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett
18. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
19. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
20. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
21. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
22. Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut
23. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
24. White Noise by Don Delillo
25. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
26. The Bell Jar by Slyvia Plath
27. The Portable Dorothy Parker
28. Deliverance by James Dickey
29. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
30. Ubik by Phillip K. Dick
31. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
32. On the Road by Kerouac
33. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
34. The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
35. The Man who Loved Children by Christina Stead
36. Must Try Harder by Norman McGreevy
36. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
37. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
38. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
39. 2666 by Roberto Balano
40. Money by Martin Amis
41. Ticket to Ride by Dennis Potter
42. Dead Babies by Martin Amis
43. Carry Me Down by MJ Hyland
44. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
45. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
46. A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde
47. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
48. Demian by Herman Hesse
49. Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
50. The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse
51. The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum
52. Red by Jack Ketchum
53. Peaceable Kingdom by Jack Ketchum
54. The Lost by Jack Ketchum
55. Swan Song by Robert McCammon
56. Lost Boy, Lost Girl by Peter Straub
57. The Burning Man by Ray Bradbury

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