What’s your crazy dream for 2017? Me, I’m going to become a farmer.
In preparation for 2017, earlier today I was meticulously scrolling my Facebook feed (if you were expecting something like “researching [insert something inspiring, challenging, and ambitious here]” you’re reading the wrong post). I came across a friend’s Medium article “What are the craziest things you could do in 2017?” and decided to answer the challenge she and Tim Ferris threw at me.
As I started compiling a list, I realized most of my supposedly crazy goals were in fact very real goals I had for myself. Was I not doing this right? Was my creativity failing me? Or worse, was I censoring myself unintentionally?
Let me share my list before I go any further (note that these are in no particular order):
1. Become a farmer
2. Write a book
3. Fly (e.g., jumping off a mountain, aka paragliding)
4. Ride in a cavalry charge as a movie extra
5. Learn how to be legitimately badass*
6. Get a tattoo
I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions, but I do believe in continuously improving myself, learning, and working towards becoming the person I want to be (a mix of Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider and in terms of how she lives her life by her own rules, Calamity Jane for added badassery, and Joel Salatin for the farm revolution he stands for).
This past year has set the stage for a big transition in my life: I quit a job I loved, working in public health in New York City, and embarked on a belated one-year around-the-world honeymoon with my husband, stopping at various farms and hostels along the way to volunteer in exchange for room and board, extending our budget seemingly magically (thank you Workaway!).
So after much reflection — and a glass of wine or two — my self-diagnosis is that I am living the best version of my life I can imagine, in which what other people deem “crazy goals” have become “goals” — because I am no longer doing things based on what I think society expects of me, or based on what I think is reasonable.
Instead, I am living my dreams and building the life I want, brick by brick and one adventure at a time.
I did not win the lottery, nor am I any good at managing budgets. However, I am lucky enough to have an amazing partner in awesomeness, and to have been taught that anything is possible (my mother once called me asking why I hadn’t signed up to represent Bolivia at the Beijing Olympics, but that’s a whole other story).
So thank you Tim Ferris for the Four Hour Work Week which was one of my early-on bibles, and for the podcast which inspired Claire’s post. I am going into 2017 on an absolute high, excited to continue forging the life I have always wanted and becoming a farmer.
Passing it forward, what’s your list of things — crazy or not — that you could do in 2017?
*This includes but is not limited to developing the following skills: knife throwing, shooting — both with a bow and arrow and a gun, wood chopping, being self-sustainable from starting fires to living off the land and everything in-between, self-defense
