Today I have exactly nine months left of my twenties.
On my 18th birthday, someone gave me a notebook, and on each page I wrote one thing I wanted to do before I turned 30. Some trivial, some important.
I’d largely forgotten about this exercise, but as I was moving house a couple of years ago I found the notebook and realised I’d done almost all of the things I’d listed in it.
So I’ve visited Asia and both ends of the Americas, bought an original piece of art, got my degree, gone somewhere I don’t speak the language and where no one speaks English, and so on. Most important of all was ambition number sixteen: fall in love, which I did five-and-a-bit years ago and remain happily so today.
However, three wishes in the book remain unfulfilled. These were:
- Visit Africa
- Visit Australia
- Find a sport I like and do it regularly
Now the first two sound tricky, but if I really wanted to go I could book a plane ticket. No, the latter’s the hard one.
To give you some background, I am entirely blind in my right eye, which means I have pretty bad spacial awareness can’t see anything on my right-hand side. I also have really awful balance, which might be related to my first point, but that could just be me making excuses. Consequently, I am appallingly bad at every sport I’ve ever tried.
I’ve posted this challenge to Feats of Tweet, the new project from Paul Smith, better known as the Twitchiker. Paul wants to harness the goodwill of the Twitter community to help people fulfil their goals and wishes. He’s invited people to Tweet in their wishes, and will select a few to go to the public vote on Monday (it’s a great idea, do check it out if you haven’t already).
My own unfulfilled wish isn’t likely to garner much sympathy when up against desperately-needed transplant organs, and rightly so. So I’m asking you, people on the interwebs; do you do any sport at all? Could an unfit, half-blind not-quite-thirty-year-old join in?
Over the next nine months I must surely be able to find some from of exercise that I’m not totally, depressingly crap at. But what? I’m willing to try pretty much anything. What can you suggest?