Thirty animals.....109
PROJECT 60/60
If you were listening to my chat with Sue on Monday morning’s Nightshift, you may have picked up a kind of hint about my Project 60/60 which, I hope, will make my sixtieth birthday year a little bit special. Permit me to explain.
A person’s sixtieth birthday - it seems to me - is peculiarly notable. The other ‘decade’ birthdays (twentieth, thirtieth etc) are useful ‘punctuation marks’ on our long march through the years of our lives, serving as stocktaking opportunities; times when we can ‘stand and stare’, look back at where we’ve been and what we’ve achieved and look forward to where we want to go and how we think we can get there.
Some weeks ago, however, I decided that reaching 60 wasn’t quite the same as reaching 30 or 40. When you get to 50, for example, there’s usually nothing to make you suppose that you won’t keep on going to 60 and beyond. That’s just the way things are - and the way you feel - at 50.
At 60, though, you feel strangely ‘mortal’. You become aware - almost suddenly - of the limited amount of time you may have left. For the first time in your life, you feel that attaining your next decade birthday at 70 is by no means guaranteed. After all, you’re now old enough for the generation ahead of you to have started dying; if you’re particularly unlucky, even members of your own generation may have started to give up the ghost. I guess it’s all part of the human condition. When you get to 60, you realise you have a long past and a shorter - and uncertain - future.
But there’s another side to this new-felt mortality - an exciting and uplifting side, too. It occurred to me that, if the future beyond 60 was uncertain and potentially of limited duration, then I should make the most of the moment of realisation and the year afterwards; I should take control of each precious day - each precious hour - and squeeze as much life out of it as I possibly could. I know that this is what we’re all meant to be doing all the time anyway, but very few of us actually manage it.
So I decided to mark my sixtieth birthday year in a way which, I hope, would allow me to take stock of my life so far (without taking it too seriously) and also to launch myself into the future with a smile on my face and some excitement and adventure on the horizon throughout the year and beyond.
Project 60/60. Sixty things to do (or start to do) while I’m sixty. Places to go because I love being there or have never been and want to. People to meet. Things to say or write or read. Experiences to have - either again or for the first time. Organisations to join or rejoin, charities to help. Relationships to renew, to nurture or even to begin.
To qualify for inclusion, each item on the list must at least be achievable, even though I know I won't achieve them all.
And I hope that a healthily large number of items on the 60/60 list will run on beyond the end of the year, so that my sixtieth birthday year will mark new beginnings too.
Whatever other effect the Project has, it should at least ensure that the year ahead is not the dull, turgid and pedestrian beginning of Old Age to which so many succumb.
Project 60/60 will falter and flounder without your active involvement and participation. In my next posting, I’ll be explaining how I hope you’ll want to make suggestions, how you can help me measure how successfully (or otherwise) the year is progressing and how - with a little judicious manipulation and tailoring - Project 60/60 can become something applicable to all of us in our own way, in our own lives, reflecting our own priorities and at our own pace.
Through you helping me to achieve some rather special things in the upcoming year, perhaps I can also help you to do something similar.
Join me. I reckon we could all have a lot of fun.
CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or contact me in any one (or more) of these ways....
ian.robinson@bbc.co.uk
text 07786 200954 (while the programme is on-air)
call (between about 0545 and 0630 Monday to Friday) 0191 232 6565
Ian Robinson, The Nightshift, BBC Radio Newcastle, Spital Tongues, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE99 1RN
NOTE
Please bear in mind that the views expressed in this blog are my own and NOT the views of the BBC.
19 comments:
I'll say one thing for this blog, when Ian posts on here you're always sure of a surprise.
I think it's a great idea, of course for those of you who haven't worked it out from previous postings I'm four years in front of Ian. And I hope to stay that way for many years to come.lol.
"In spite of illness, in spite of the arch-enemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual state of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in a small way." I wish I could claim this quote as my own but - it's by someone named Edith Wharton.
Hildie that is lovely.
Oh, I had to go and google Edith Wharton, didn't I!? She was an American lady ... born Edith Newbold Jones in 1862. "Keeping up with the Joneses" is said to refer to the family of her father, George Frederic Jones. Apparently, she was a novelist, short-story writer, landscape architect and interior designer! She combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous and incisive novels and short stories.
I apologise for going off at a tangent, Ian ... it's my age, I think!
Sixty things to do (or start to do)... heck, that's a task. Have you ordered your bus pass yet? It sounds like you'll need it.
Ian, I have no doubt that with or without our help you will achieve a lot of special things and there is no "perhaps" about your ability to help us achieve something similar. We're ready to go!
I would like to ask you to PLEASE put the following on your list: Keeping a diary/journal with the intent of writing a book about your Project 60/60.
Your experiences need to be recorded and preserved, it's just such a unique idea.
HILDIE, I may have to break my habit of reading only British authors and try Edith Wharton!
Inga, yes, to the diary/journal
idea! Perhaps Ian could do a blog posting about each project ... and, hey presto, his book is written! I know what you mean about reading Edith Wharton ....
even I'm curious now, and I don't read novels. I heard "The Newsreel" on this morning's "Nightshift" .... haven't heard it in ages and it's one of my favourite features - is it sometimes not on at all? I don't always know what's happening as I listen between 1a.m. and about 2.30a.m. I did hear Ian mention a postcard of Durham Cathedral which had been sent in by Martin & Maureen. They asked for a Dusty Springfield/ Pet Shop Boys track to be played. I think it might have been 'our' Maureen.
Of course, Hildie, blog posting is the answer. Guess I am still lagging a little behind. Diaries, indeed - a thing of the past, I suppose! Collectible as a matter of fact.
I don't hear the Newsreel feature every night, but I, too, may have missed it now and then.
Could Martin AND Maureen be the clue to her disappearance :-) ? But the chosen track doesn't make any sense if it is.
Inga,the plot thickens!
It is indeed, Hildie!
Well, we survived another "Turkey Day" aka Thanksgiving Day! Since I don't do any serious cooking anymore Wendell and I went out to have our Turkey Dinner. I like the dark turkey meat with candied sweet potatoes. Most people prefer the white meat which I consider totally tasteless. For "afters" we had geese and ducks! Actually we walked around a lake [2.4 miles] and saw these animals. It was a wonderful sunny day - 66 F - and lots of people were out walking and the kids were feeding the ducks and geese.
IAN, talking about not seeing things above your head - toward the end of this walk Wendell spotted a squirrel sitting in a tree. I had just walked by this very same tree! But then Wendell is the bird watcher and I am the wildflower watcher!
Speaking of cooking - Ian wants your recipes for Yorkshire Pudding to see how yours compare with the one of some institution whose name I cannot remember. I heard about it recently and I think this institution claims that theirs is the absolute best.
Just me again! I do hope that some of you are listening to the Nightshift right now. WHAT A TREAT! Leonard Brown and his accordian are on again. This young man just knocks me off my feet! So far he's played a "Continental Medley" and a Finnish Waltz. Well, you can imagine how that has taken me back to my home land and yes, once again, I wish I was in a "Kneipe" [German for pub] schunkeln with my friends. But let me give you more information about where you can find this amazing performer. He is currently playing at the "Amalfi" [?] restaurant opposite the "Empire" in Sunderland; on Fridays right now but will be there on Thursdays soon [wasn't able to jot down any better details]. On Mondays he performs at the "Harbor Lights" pub in South Shields [his home town]. I would be easier to do this if I hadn't completely forgotten my shorthand skills :-).
The next People's Nightshift will be Dec 3.
Inga....what does your middle initial H stand for? :-))
:-)) Does this big grin mean you have something in mind you would like for it to stand :-)) ????
Now be nice, Ian!
Seriously now - there is also an L. H stands for Heike and L for Lina. Giving people more than one name is a curious custom but there it is.
Nice one!!
(from Stuart)
Thanks Ian S, or is it Stuart I? ! If I could I'd pass your comment on to my Dad, it was his choice.
LOZ, do accordions need tuning :-)?
This young man, Leonard Brown, just blows me away!
Hi Inga.
No I don't believe they need tuning as they are a pre-tuned / fixed-pitch instrument, but I would imagine they would require some sort of regular servicing for it's mechanics.
He's an amazing talent that's for sure.
Cheers Lawrence
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