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As if starting law school wasn't enough

I suppose I'm the last one on the Internet to hear about this "101 in 1001" idea--I'm pretty sure I noticed it on a few other law blogs. Bear with me if you've heard this already. I'm going to write about it anyway.

Basically, the challenge is to make a list of 101 specific tasks and then accomplish all of them within the next 1001 days.

Obviously, this was right up my alley. I'm already so into the idea of making lists and setting goals and working to learn or do new things. It wasn't hard for me to come up with a couple dozen things right off the top of my head, and everything just fell into place after that.

I'm not going to share the entire list (unless someone out there actually wants to see it), but I will say that as I wrote it out, it began to look like the training regimen for a sexy international superspy. Check these out:

  1. Learn to hotwire a car
  2. Learn to ride a motorcycle
  3. Practice a martial art for one year
  4. Learn to speak conversational French
  5. Learn to use a handgun at a firing range
  6. Spend at least a week in Japan
  7. Learn to give a professional-quality massage
  8. Jump out of a plane

[update: if you decide to jump on the bandwagon and are having trouble calculating the date 1001 days from now (I did), then here's a handy tool to make it easier. My deadline is Wednesday, September 11, 2007. At least that won't be difficult to remember.]

Days go by

I've been so busy filling myself up with the true spirit of Christmas that I haven't had the heart to blog. It was a very strange feeling to decorate our little Christmas tree in our little apartment with just my new wife. "This is something I'm supposed to be doing with my family," I told her. Then I realized in a new way that she really is my family now. It was a strange, wonderful, magical thing. I stopped by my parents' house last night and picked up some ornaments to decorate our tree. It's like I'm really growing up.

Tonight is the party with my local friends to celebrate our successes with novel writing attempts. Dr. Vono and I both reached 50,000 words last month. His wife made some significant progress on hers but slowed down to focus on quality. And my other participating friend had computer issues and lost her novel for good. According to the official site, it looks like there were 5,891 verified winners this year. I can't find a number of total participants, though, so that number doesn't mean much to me. I'd like to say that my friends and I came out overall above the average success rate. Although, to be honest, what really makes WriMo a success is what you get out of it personally. You can't really quantify that.

Personally, I'm glad I did it. NaNaWriMo helped to jumpstart something that I've wanted to do for a long time but might never have done without that kick in the pants. Now I'm just trying to stay on task and actually finish this thing.