The Power of 60 Project began with a conversation at a quilt guild meeting back in January. I was feeling pretty grumpy about turning 60 and just dreading my birthday. Somehow, my friend Judi and I started talking about our birthdays and discovered we were both born in 1950. Yep, major boomer material.
Judi told me that she and her husband (born the same year) were making plans to do things that would really challenge them this year to celebrate. The proverbial lightbulb went off in my head and very soon, I was organizing the Power of 60 project as my own celebration.
My husband said that he could see the change in me. Now instead of dread, I couldn't wait to start re-reading my 60 favorite books or reading something new by a favorite author or cooking 60 new recipes or collecting 60 new thrills (which get to be defined any way I want) and committing 60 creative acts. I've also chosen six subjects I've always wanted to know more about to study more in-depth and to write and publish six new books.
Years ago, I took a watercolor class. Now I've never considered myself a painter but I love watercolors and wanted to explore the medium. One day, I painted an apple I'd brought for lunch. To my eternal surprise, it looked like an apple. But the best part was realizing how much my observation had slowed down so that I noticed what the apple really looked like, where it was red, how the green subtly changed from lime to a bit more yellow, where there were flecks of pale green in the red.
That's the point of this project, slowing down, being deliberate about each day in this year. The different parts of the project function as reminders of what I really want to accomplish with the 365 days of this year from May 18, 2010 to May 18, 2011.
And I'm hoping others will want to come along on the journey and maybe start some projects of their own.
At the end of my year, I'll gather the best from this blog, add in stuff from a handwritten log, put it all together with photos and publish it as an ebook on Kindle. This is my sixth book of the year.
