I’ve been mucking about with 43things.com and I’m finding it rather neat and motivating. Yes, I used the word neat.
As near as I can tell 43things was developed as more of a “getting things done” site than it was as a social networking or peer support site. It seems to have evolved, though, into something that can be used to effect real personal behavioral change with the support of random strangers.
Oh, sure, there are the standard number of those with short attention spans whose biggest dream is to “meet [insert celebrity here].” In the past few days I’ve seen that celebrity be anyone from Kiefer Sutherland to Richard Gere to Jimmy Carter. There are also more than a fair number of get a tattoo or have [name your body part here] pierced goals.
But there are other goals listed too, things like “take more pictures,” “find new music,” “be nicer to my parents,” and “live less inside my own head.” Nebulous things that may mean a great deal to the person who originated the goal and which express something meaningful for those who have glommed on to it since.
Right now I only have three things on my list and it is here that my goal intersected with my day. Today I walked by the Marriot Wardman Park in Woodley Park. The hotel itself is up a hill from the sidewalk and the gardeners who keep the grounds are diligent about making sure the flower beds are weeded and mulched. One section of the flower bed has been given over to bulbs, tulips at this time of year, and it is clear that whoever planted it was going for effect with alternating white and red groupings. This gardener succeeded but not totally. There, in the middle of nicely planned arrangement of red and white lurk the tulip ninjas. Purple tulips dark and mysterious against the bright backgrounds of their neighbors. It made me smile to think of them waiting underground all year to bloom.
And that is one of the things that made me happy and here I’ve written it down.