year of fun

Its the first time I’m doing a suggested activity from a reader! I have received several very exciting and good ideas from people reading this blog, and I fully intend to do as many of them as I can over the year. The days that I have the hardest time coming up with something to do are the ones where I work until almost 8:00pm. Usually I don’t do the fun thing until I get home and, at that point, I am usually quite tired so going back out to do something is not a great option. My sister sent in a suggestion for something the hubs and I could do together that would also work for our no devices time: make a couple’s bucket list.

We sat at our dining table and started thinking of things we want to do together as a couple. The first thing we came up with was “buy a house.” We put it on the list, but I wanted us to get more creative, to dream a little bigger and maybe even challenge ourselves. I suggested everything from “go in a shark cage” to “climb down a volcano” just to get our minds brainstorming. We then came up with seven less terrifying things to add to our bucket list that is written in the last page of that new notebook.

This whole time, my new shot (Enbrel) was sitting on the table. If you take it out of the fridge about 20 minutes before you do it, it is less painful (something about it being cold or not). Instead of sitting and staring at it, waiting to do a shot, I was engaged in a creative and fun activity with my husband. Even while I was going through all of the steps of the injection–of course I was focused and made sure to do them properly–I was thinking of new ideas. It took my mind off of what can be an intimidating and anxiety producing activity and for that, I am very grateful.

Once I finished, we made it a goal to have 10 items on the list, so we came up with the final two, both excellent, but I am partial to “Go to the Super Bowl.” We can surely add to it if we think of more things we would like to do. I am thinking of it as a continuation of the Year of Fun. We probably won’t get to most of the things on the bucket list this year, if any, so they will keep us (me) going after this year is up. Thanks sis for the suggestion (you should do it too)!