A Year of First Times

Getting out of my comfort zone, one day at a time.

It all started on January 1st, 2015. We left home to encourage friends swimming in the ocean. It’s called the Polar Bear swim and it happens every year.
It is crazy. Why on earth would anyone ever do this?

I distinctly remember saying that there is no f***ing chance I would ever do it.

And yet… Something clicked. Why not, I thought? After all, this is the one chance to do it. I’ve never done it before, it would be a first.

So I did it.

It was crazy. It was unplanned. It was exhilarating.

It felt good.

So good that it dawned on me: should I be a bit crazy more often? How about every day? I since realized that there’s nothing original about this kind of challenge; in fact, others have written books and blogs about exactly that. But I didn’t know that at the time. Maybe I wouldn’t have done it if I had.

For me, it was very personal and it became my new year’s resolution: to have a first time every day in 2015.

That’s how I got started. I setup a recurring alert in my outlook calendar so that every day at noon it would ask me: “What is my first time today?”

And I took notes on a daily basis about what my first time was. I contemplated sharing that log publicly in an anonymous blog, but in the end I decided against it. This was my personal journey and I wanted to be able to record it as a diary, not in a public place. It was easier that way for me.

I’m very happy I wrote about these first times, because reading through this journal I realize that I have forgotten some things I did, and together they tell the story of a very active year!

Today, for the first time, I would like to share some of my first times:

• I cooked a meatloaf, a brisket and new thai recipes, baked soft cheese bread and ciabatta (but failed at making a mother starter for sourdough bread)
• I counted myself to sleep with the 4–7–8 method (it really works!), walked to work (and back — once!), rode my bike to work (often!) and started doing mindfulness exercises
• I tried not to speak unless spoken to in a work meeting (I failed, but I’ll try again: anything that makes me shut up is a good exercise)
• I travelled to Cancun, Mexico, dived cenotes, visited Mayan ruins and changed timezones without moving
• I visited museums, discovered many new restaurants and went to Cirque du Soleil
• I spent 5 days alone with my 15-month-old daughter (it was a petrifying experience ), took her to the aquarium, Science World, the pool and the ice rink
• I changed the shocks on my van and flew a plane on my birthday
• I became Canadian, voted for the federal elections and read the Raven steals the light
• I attended TEDxVancouver, got paid to give a speech at a small conference, wrote my first posts in LinkedIn (and now in Medium!) and raised money for Movember

It makes me happy to remember these first times, and amazes me that it all fit in a single year. It felt longer.

On my first day, I wrote:

It’s pretty intimidating, thinking that I have to find a new thing to do every day for a whole year.

I felt a lot of pressure at the beginning and I didn’t like that. To help, I wrote a list of ideas, and it’s funny to look through them: some I’ve done, others I haven’t (and I wish I had!). Maybe I should have looked at that list more often.

The pressure ebbed, but it took some time. On January 10th I wrote:

Yesterday, for the first time this year, I don’t think I did something for the first time. Shit. I’m upset. 
I won’t give up, and I guess I should have known this would happen. But I feel like a failure.

It didn’t take long to drop the ball, eh? Seeing my reaction, I was really serious about this challenge. But that guilt also eased over time.

To be honest, even though I lasted a few months with daily logs, at some point reality took over and I just ignored the daily alerts in my outlook. But it was still nagging at me, and it’s one reason why I never gave up (even though I almost did, and there are wide gaps in my journal).

I’m sharing this story because I think it’s easy to stick with what we know, what we’re comfortable with. Before we realize it, a year has gone and we haven’t really changed anything in our lives.

On January 1st, 2015 in my journal, I wrote:

Lately I have noticed how some older people get scared of doing anything at all. I think they’re scared of going out because they forget how it is out there. They spend more time thinking of things than doing them. In the end, doing “things you know” feels safe because you know what to expect, even if it sucks. I don’t want to end up like this.

I’m proud I tried to have a first time every day. It helped me re-invent myself, look ahead to make things happen in my life, discover places or people I would have never met otherwise.

I feel like my year of first times was richer than it would have been otherwise.

2015 is ending. I don’t think I’ll stop, though. I want to keep having first times. Because it’s crazy. Because it’s exhilarating. Because it makes me free.

January 1st, 2016 is just around the corner. Maybe I’ll see you at the beach?