30 before 30 Explained
The list of things I’d like to accomplish before I’m 30. In no particular order
- Pay off my Student Loans
- Get Scuba Certified
- Post every day on Instagram for 30 days
- Do a Handstand (and hold it for 30 seconds)
- Upgrade to a Full Frame Camera
- See the Northern Lights
- Do Scorpion Pose
- Go on a Solo Trip
- Learn how to Surf
- Net Worth= $0
- Swim in a Glacial Lake
- Do a 30 day Yoga Challenge
- Photograph the Milky Way
- Squat & Deadlift my own body weight
- Swim with a whale shark
- Learn how to properly free dive
- Backpack a small section hike (High Sierra Trail, 100 Mile Wilderness in Maine)
- Take a Figure Drawing Course
- Get lost in the Louvre
- Go on a family trip to India
- Learn how to lead climb
- Blog every day for a month
- Convince and take my dad to hike Mount Kailash (Cross that off his bucket list)
- Go on a yoga retreat
- Publish a Blog post on a different platform ( Medium, thought catalog or even another blog)
- Invest in underwater housing for my camera
- Top Rope & Boulder outside
- Ice skate on a frozen lake
- Go on the Harry Potter Studio Tour
- Cross off one thing off my Wanderlist every year
As I begin to check these items off this list, you’ll see a strikethrough on the goals I’ve been able to complete. Check out my progress on completing these goals here.
Priorities
It’s important to quit fantasizing about your goals and to give them a hard deadline. One way for me to take these things seriously is to give myself a deadline ( or by posting it on the internet), to complete these goals before I turn 30. I’m 25 now which gives me some time to accomplish the goals I’ve mentioned above. It’s a serious undertaking that could feasibly take me to different parts of the globe!
Mostly, I want to focus on the parts of my life that I want to grow in. These areas require a lot of work and planning in order to cross off my list. They are all parts of my life that I deem super important to become the version of myself that I picture in my head.
Basically, if anyone asks me what I want my life to look like over the next 5 years, I can point to this and say that these are my priorities.
Heath & Fitness
Part of the reason that this section is so important to me is how much I strive to be a stronger person. Physically, mentally, spiritually, all of it.
I want to be the type of person that never has to turn down an opportunity because I don’t feel fit enough. The type of person that decides to run up mountains for fun.
That’s why goals like Deadlifting and Squatting my own body weight are important for me. Seeing badass women accomplishing unanimously badass things is what I strive for. Holding a Handstand for 30 seconds is a unanimously badass thing! This is also where becoming a yogi, climber, & power lifter come into play. I want to be strong in multiple facets. I want to be able to do a fucking pull up already!
Learning New Things (mostly things that scare/excite me)
Your blood is pumping so fast because you’ve never been 30 meters underwater. The anxiety of sitting in a room full of artists that are all better than you. Taking someone else’s life literally into your hands as they ascend a rock face. These are the things that excite me beyond all else.
Taking the leap to Boulder and Top Rope Outside means to step outside the comforts of a gym and put myself into a different version of a sport that I’ve come to love. Taking a figure drawing course sounds like the best way to combat the fears of being new to something. Learning how to surf or free dive puts me back to square one. It’s okay to be a noobie once in a while. In art school, figure drawing was something that I took for granted and it’s something that I loved in school but I sadly neglected. Now I want to try it again!
Freedom from my debt
Becoming debt free is the ultimate pursuit. The day I finish paying off my student loan debt is when I will finally feel like my life isn’t on fire.
Another milestone in my financial endeavor, having my Net worth = $0. Right now, my net worth is negative because of my debt. Thanks to investment plans and an emergency fund, I’m on my way to reach a net worth of $0, then a positive net worth, and then to officially pay off all my student loans. Eagerly, I long for the day that my net worth becomes positive because it only goes up from there.
Enhancing Skills: Writing, Shooting, Editing, & POSTING
Enhancing my skills as an artist is something that I am guilty of forgetting. Photography, writing, editing, and filmmaking are all passions that I don’t want to lose sight of. Some of them come more easily to me but the hardest part that I struggle with is posting content. I shy away from this all the time. Putting a challenge, like Posting on Instagram for 30 days, holds me accountable to focus on shooting a diverse amount of imagery that reflects my own artistic style (whatever that is) with composition, subject matter, and written content. I want it to be more than 30 travel related images that just look pretty.
The same goes for this blog. I love the idea of having a travel related blog. Do I travel enough to continually post content on here? Is this blog for someone else or am I writing it for myself? Is this something I’m willing to dedicate so much of my free time to? Hopefully, I’ll figure out the answer to all these questions when I have to Post on my blog for 30 days.
Travel
I love it so much and I can’t wait to go out there and see as much as I possibly can. The End.
Family Stuff
Working full time means that per year, my small amount of paid vacation is divided up between travel and family.
Being across the country (or globe) from my parents and sister (not to mention my huge extended family) is hard. FaceTiming most Sundays is simply not enough. You miss out on a lot when you’re away.
So what do you do when the majority of your life is spent away from your parents? You go on family trips!
Going on a family trip to India means spending (I’m hoping) 1-2 months traveling all around India. Trips with this type of significance mean quality family time. Convincing my dad to hike Mount Kailash is another HUGE undertaking. The man has been talking about this trip for a decade and (don’t tell him this :P) but he’s probably as fit as he’ll ever be so why not go now! Somehow I have to convince my sister to go too. Maybe bribing her with a trip to London to visit the Harry Potter Studio Tour will work. The best way to bridge the gap between travel and family time means to spend time traveling with my family.
Riding Solo
So much of my travels have been with other people, family, friends, and significant others. I want to go on a trip(s?) that I can call my own. Where I decide the ins and outs of every detail and change them on the fly based on my own experiences.
Most importantly, I want to be okay with being alone.
Deep down. Way, way, deep down, I feel like I need these purely alone moments in my life before I can settle down. How can I commit my life to a career or a significant other if I’m not confident in my ability to be alone with myself? I don’t believe that I’m the type of person that always needs to be around people (totally nothing wrong with that!) but part of me does rely on other people too much for my own liking. I’m incredibly curious about how I handle adversity on my own.
I want to experience the world with myself. Embarking on an adventure where I learn not just about the culture, language, history about a country but also about what it means to be solo in this same environment. You may think this is one of those ‘finding yourself’ kind of moments but that’s only one part of why it’s important to me. I feel like I owe it to myself to eat too much pasta in Italy or spend 3 days getting lost in the Louvre geeking out about art history with no judgment. These are probably things that no one else cares about anyways.
Going on a solo trip seems to take on more and more meaning to me. Lately, I’ve been centrally focused on my own goals and part of this relies on being able to count on myself when it matters most.
At the end of the day, I want to come out with a greater understanding of who I am as a person.
Do I really want this?
Basically, I want to become the baddass version of myself that I see in my head: The person that doesn’t have student loan debt, is a world traveler, has experienced so many new and exciting things and continues to do so, is a yogi, climber, power lifting aficionado. Someone that can dive with her camera to capture sweet photos/videos. Someone that fosters their creative habits and produces content that is out in the world.
These are items that are worth working towards. These are attributes in my life that I want to find out if they actually continually matter to me. Right now, they do and I hope they continue to.
A lot of people are asked about what they want their life to look like. I’ve envisioned it many times too. I want to have that ‘perfect body’ (whatever that is), be extremely well read and written, incredibly fit, financially independent, maintain good relationships, be completely comfortable being alone, and lastly broaden my horizons traveling. But is this a fantasy or is this a person I’m willing to fight to become?
Am I willing to put in the work to master a handstand? Am I willing to save enough money from my day to day spending in order to pay off my debt? Am I willing to focus on key travel moments without compromising time with my family or vice verses? Am I willing to put in the work for this blog and my photography? You get the idea but it’s all valid for me. The stakes are set so let’s find how this internal development project continues.
Things that Didn’t make the list
• Adopting a dog ( Husky! Maybe? ) – I just couldn’t commit
• Personal: Getting Married/ babies? This sort of thing scares me to put into a list like this. Who knows if I’ll be in a place where I’ll be ready to commit to another human being(s?) by the age of 30. Right now, I want to focus on the things that mean the most to me before I settle down.
• Trying the Whole 30 – I’m probably going to try this soon anyways
• Test drive my mid-life crisis car – Audi R8 (the Iron Man car!)
_
A big peek inside my head after having a mini quarter-life crisis
Nimisha
June 11, 2017