January | 2016 | Yamfoot

My dream stock just got richer. I dreamt about Marlon James last night. In case you have been under a rock, Marlon James is a Jamaican author who won the Man Booker prize. (Let Google be your friend.)

Turns out that he had been living in Grenada for many years, in an apartment building (a proper one….not like what Grenadians call apartment which is a flat in Jamaican language) near to a good friend of mind. So of course, budding writer that I am, I struck up a conversation with him. He was affable….easily met.

Marlon James (source: Global Voices)

His locks were longer than they are in real life. I told him I didn’t like them. He eventually gave me a key to his apartment and said he was going away. When I thought he had left, I went in to do stuff for him and saw a ton of locks in the kitchen garbage bin. I smiled. Someone valued my opinion.

I then went next door to my friend’s apartment and there he was, having just sat down for a cup of coffee. At the empty place setting, there was a cup for me too. Sweet!

We got to talking eventually about the writing that I do (not much :() and he said he would help me. Yay! There’s the pot of gold that I wished for when I saw the rainbow yesterday.

I confessed to him that I had looked at snippets of A Brief History of Seven Killings and that I would not be able to manage that, but that I intend to read the others one day. In real life, part of my #50To50 list includes reading more.

There needs to be some system where during dreams, it video tapes the fascinating events one’s subconscious is churning out. Of course, some of the footage would have to be deleted :). But in general, I have excitement when I close my eyes.

Part 2 of my dream had me ended up in a toasty warm cottage in Sweden about 1 hour from Stockholm. That’s another story.

October 22, 2016. That is THE significant date.

It seems like just yesterday that I was planning my 40^th birthday celebration. At that time, I got into milestone-mode about a year before the birthday. I had decided on the theme ‘Fit, Fabulous and Forty,’ so the time leading up to October 22, 2006 was spent mostly giving updates about my exercise regimen and the struggles I was having avoiding food that didn’t fit in with the theme. Somehow, I managed to be at the weight that would allow me to boogie down without my bits jiggling at the fete on the hill (thanks Patch!) the night before my birthday.

This time, because things take loooooonger when you are older, I had hoped to start the countdown much earlier. But….because one is older, it takes a while to get moving! No, it’s not that. I have just been busy…..

The rationale behind the list is that time passes and it cannot be recaptured. I am reminded of this when I look back in my old journals. I also like to do significant things. Things which matter. Goal setting has also been in my repertoire since I was much younger. [Note: Don’t ask if I have stuck to the goals :(].

Between now and October 22, I hope to tick off several things on my ‘50 to 50’ list. I’ve mostly had them in my head, so when a friend recently asked me what are some of the things I had on the list, I was so sure they were stored somewhere on this laptop. Nupe. So I got writing.

I’ll post what I have so far and you are welcomed to help me choose the last few. Then over the next couple of months, I will do a blog post on the context behind each one. Because with me, there is always context. A root cause.

I like to compartmentalize my life so I first started with 5 categories (Health & Fitness, Fashion, Lifestyle, Learning & Development and Other) and tried to get 10 things for each. Then I threw that out of the window. Goes along with my theme for 2016 which is “doh beat up.” I first heard a friend with this expression. It comes from a Grenada soca song. Continue reading →