Bucket List

When I was a teen, I spent my life making lists of things that I wanted to try or achieve. Some had dates by which I wished them fulfilled, some were whimsical ideas and others I look back on and cringe slightly (turns out Orlando Bloom didn't fall in love with me in real life). If you were following this little blog about a year ago, you may have read this list of things I wanted to do when I was rid of my crutches and could walk again. This blog was reborn when I filled my time documenting a positive thing a day to keep me focussed and appreciate the little things in life. Therefore the things on my list might seem a bit simple but they gave me nice little goals to aim for, and I completed most of them.

This is me when I accomplished one thing from that list - doing my vacation scheme!

When the lovely Annie tagged me in Money Supermarket's Bucket List competition, it reminded me of this list. The rules can be found here but the main idea is to talk about two things on your bucket list: one budget, and the other extravagant. 

Budget ambition: run a 5k 

From here

Back to my "When I can walk" to-do list! Before I got my blood clot I was trying to improve my running. I've never had the best relationship with running. Ball girl training when I was 15 involved running lap after lap of a hockey pitch for 9 months and I hated it! That along with the Cooper test and Cross Country in PE lessons had put me off for good, I thought. At university though I had a few friends who wanted to get into running so I decided to join them when they used to run on the common. Eventually I started to see what all the fuss was about and decided that I should probably try and improve, especially as I was also playing netball and knew that my fitness needed it! So I built things up and about 16 months ago, I was able to run more than I had ever been able to in the past. It was a lovely feeling! I decided that I would run Cancer Research UK's Race for Life that year. Then of course my winning streak was rained on by the horrible little blood clot which left my left leg out of action for a fair while. So Race for Life was realistically off the cards but I kid myself for a while that I would do it once I had mastered walking with crutches... This of course did not happen and again I thought I would be able to do it a year later ie. this summer. Unfortunately my fitness is not quite there yet as I have only been active for less than 6 months but is very much an ambition for next year. All this would cost is the registration fee and perhaps a new pair of running leggings. It would mean a great deal for me to be able to do this because I feel like it might give me some closure in a weird sort of way of the things that I've wanted to do in the last year or so, like travelling and exercising etc, but haven't been able to because of my health.

Extravagant ambition: see Iran

From here

From here

Lately I have been thinking about things that I would really like to do and questioned why I think that I have to do them in the future. What's wrong with now? Carpe diem and all that. Unfortunately money is often a barrier and until my job starts next year, a few ambitions like seeing different parts of the world will have to be put on hold. That and my still slightly dodgy leg that is. So once I have some money in my pocket, a healthier leg which won't freak out on long flights and perhaps a few of the country's issues have been ironed out, I would love to travel around Iran. I am Iranian but was born here so have only seen a limited amount of the country and in any case have only been back twice - neither time was in the last decade so I think it is high time I paid a visit to my extended family. Most of all I would love to see my grandparents. It is a strange thing growing up with all family bar immediate on the other side of the world, speaking on the phone in broken Farsi every so often but not knowing the people as well as you feel like you should. I have been to family gatherings of friends here which always make me miss my family and the relationships that I've never had with them. Some people don't know how lucky they are to be surrounded and in close proximity to people who love and care about them. It can be pretty lonely without. So yes, I would go and see all of my family and take some trips with them to the north (where Iranian families go on holiday) because I have fond memories of that when I was really little. Once my uncle drove us for hours on end to get to a villa with a swimming pool facing the mountains. It was one of the quietest and most beautiful places I have ever been to. Another time I remember being on the beach with my grandparents and got scared when a Jeep drove across but it was all okay as my grandparents and Mum scooped my sisters and I up so we felt safe. I would also love to explore the rest of the country as it is so beautiful - skiing in the mountains, swimming in the lakes, shopping in the bazaars, visiting mosques, seeing the places where my parents grew up and tell me all their stories about. I think that by doing this I might be able to fill the empty little bit of me which knows that something is missing. It is a pretty big place so I would need to spend at least three weeks but ideally much longer out there to be able to go to all the different towns and spend proper time with my cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. Once flights, internal transport and spending money (plus loss of earnings) have been tallied up, it would work out as a fairly extravagant expedition but one that I really hope to do in the not so distant future.

From here. This road (Chaloos) leads out of Tehran and towards the North. Like all windy paths, it will reach a good place eventually :)

From here

This competition ends very soon (2nd August) but I will tag Bella, Chloe and Bhavi anyway. Thanks to Annie for getting me involved in this. I would love to hear what is on all of your bucket lists in any case so feel free to tell me in a comment below :)

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