Ending the year with a list!

If I was ever asked to give a success tip, I would definitely say 'Make a list!'. Everything I have going for me in the present, was a line item on a list I made sometime in the past. Of course some lucky things also followed of their own accord. But making a list and obsessively following it, is a way to ensure that your goals remain on your mind and within sight. At all times. Trust me, it works.


2013 is an extremely important year for me. There are a million things I need to push in order for them to get going for me. It is almost like I feel time is running out... LOL! I just simply refuse to be another 30 year old (when the time comes) who just had it average. I dread the thought of wasting my life accomplishing nothing, or something so mediocre a child would have done it. I look around me and I see kids so full of plans and ideas of what they want to change in the world. How they want to craft their destiny. I want that. A few close friends argue I might have already done it, but according to me there is still a long way to go..

Also, the best part of being a December baby, is how birthday goals turn into new year goals.. :) So here it is, my 2013 / 26 before 26 list.

1. Visit another continent
2. Do the Leh-Ladakh trip that has kept getting postponed since the last two years
3. Finish my Mumbai photo series
4. Make an app
5. Design and develop a functional website, just for kicks! :)
6. Try at least 1 adventure sports - Bungee jumping, Cave Diving, Skydiving, Paragliding, Scuba diving.. so many to choose from! 
7. Read one book / month starting Jan 2013. I have way too many unfinished books!
8. Finish the interiors of the house, turn it into the cozy, pet friendly home I have always imagined
9. Take a foreign language class (keeps getting pushed off the list! Always!)
10. Raise a decent amount of money for World For All (animal welfare NGO I work for), and use it for cat sterilizations / adoptions across the city. Check out our Meow Mumbai  initiative (photographs and posters by yours truly)
11. Do at least 5 weddings and 20 portraits (The paid kind. I do enough of the non-paid ones... since I am such a nice person and I cannot talk money with people :P)
12. Write one fiction post a month in 2013
13. Go on a 'girls-only' vacation with my BFFs 
14. Own a fabulous LBD
15. Visit an UNESCO world heritage site that dates back to many centuries ago
16. Learn how to and take HDR photos (seriously with all my expertise, I have no clue how to do this!)
17. Throw a self-made cupcakes party
18. Take a picture of myself surrounded by lots and lots of snow! :D
19. Get a drivers license and drive out of the city
20. Hand-make something pretty and sell it
21. Plan a fantastic birthday for the husband (He insists I put this on my list... :P)
22. Spend time on a Kerala house boat (have heard so much about it, virtually everyone I know has been on it, except me! And to think I am married to a Keralite!)
23. Watch a Theyyam ceremony and photograph it
24. INDIAN ROAD TRIP! As amazing as the US road trips sound to me (will surely do a coast to coast US-50 once day!), I think the idea of an Indian road trip is superrrrr exciting. :D
25. Get my 3rd and final tattoo
26. Buy myself something ridiculously expensive on my 26th birthday :P

There are so many things on this list that are already making me apprehensive. But like Nutties reminded me just now as we sat and made this list, 'If your dream doesn't scare you, it isn't big enough'... So yes, 2013, bring it on! :)

~ Annie.

P.S: Almost forgot, warm Christmas and New Year wishes to everyone reading this! :)

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