What my 21 year-old self wanted to do by 30, and how successful I was

This is a list I made on 26th December 2010 which I deemed important enough to share with the world. It was titled ‘Ten things I want to do by the age of 30’. I turned 30 last April and had achieved 2/10. I’m 31 now and have still done 2/10. To be honest, a lot of them were quite unattainable, and a reflection of my immature 21-year-old mind, but I wish I’d done a few of the others. Here’s what the list was, I haven't edited the titles at all, so excuse the poor punctuation at certain points;

1.) See snow

For the longest time, I was fascinated by snow. I don’t know whether there was anything special about snow that attracted me to it, or whether it was just something I hadn’t seen yet, and so wanted to see it to complete the ‘set’. One of my biggest flaws to this day is to want something I don’t or can’t have, and growing up, the chances of seeing snow someday were pretty bleak, so it was also perhaps a way of making myself miserable. My parents, sister and I actually went to Shimla (a place in North India where it does snow) for 3 days in December 2001. I don’t know this for sure, but one of the main reasons we chose that time and place was to see snow. And as luck would have it, we had bright sunshine on all three days. It also snowed the day after we left. Fun times indeed. It all worked out okay though, I got to experience snow (and how) just a few months before my 30th birthday when I experienced my first Canadian winter in 2018. I really hate snow now.

2.) Watch Arsenal play LIVE

I used to love Arsenal back in 2010. Actually, as I said in another post, the first football club I was a fan of was Manchester United, because well, all my friends were fans of them. They were also the most successful club, and if you’re new to a sport, you generally support the team which is winning. In 2004, Arsenal won the English Premier League without losing a single game. And boy, did they play beautiful football while achieving that record too. By that time, I’d become disenchanted with the idea of supporting United, and so switched allegiance, if you could call it that, to Arsenal. They haven’t won the league in the 16 years since, and have actually become a laughing stock, so now I don’t support them either. But I did want to always go watch a live Premier League game, and since I supported Arsenal at the time, they were a natural choice. I did have somewhat of a chance when I’d planned to go on holiday to the UK in 2011, but then my visa got rejected, and that dream never materialized. It didn’t over the next few years either, and so that’s something that I didn’t manage to achieve. I wish I had though.

3.) Skydive:

Every time I watch a skydiving video, I want to do it, for the next 5 minutes. It’s thrilling to watch, and I can only imagine the exhilaration one feels the moment they jump, or in some cases, are literally pushed out of the plane. It was always something on my bucket list, but that I never got the chance to do. To be honest, I’m too much of a coward to have done it even if I’d got the chance. I have a fear of heights and flying, so getting ON a plane is a task for me, never mind jumping off it without an open parachute. It’s one of the few things on this list that I think I will never do either.

4.) Visit every state in India:

India is a fascinating country, something you appreciate much more once you live out of India. People abroad are amazed that we have so many people, languages and varying customs, and that it’s entirely possible that 2 people from the same country might not be able to communicate at all because they don’t share even 1 common language between them. I really wanted to visit every state in India, and this is something I always thought I’d do before turning 30. My parents, sister and I would have at least one family holiday a year, which was normally in India, and quite often in a new, unexplored state. Through school trips, and then later, a few trips through work, I’d racked up quite a few states, but moved out of India in my early 20s and so didn’t find the time to visit all of them. I would like to achieve this goal someday, and I’m pretty sure I will.

5.) Visit at least one country in each continent:

Another one that I wished I’d done, though it does seem a bit unattainable to do by 30. Through his work, my dad has travelled to all the continents (except Antarctica), which I always found, and still find, super cool. I enjoy travelling to, though I’ve only visited 2 continents so far; Asia and North America. We did visit the European part of Istanbul in 2015, so I guess you could say I’ve been to Europe too, but that’s iffy. I hope to make this one happen during my lifetime though, including Antarctica.

6.) Learn at least 2 foreign languages:

I think doing at least one of 3 things is pretty important: Playing a sport, learning a language, or learning a musical instrument. I played a few sports growing up, and never really had the skill to learn an instrument, but sadly never learnt a foreign language either, let alone 2. Having moved abroad, I realize that it’s actually pretty cool that I can speak 4 languages, this is something that seems to impress a lot of people, so maybe it’s not all that bad. My mother teaches French to almost all of Pune, so I wish I’d taken the opportunity to learn it from her (might have come in handy in Canada too), but I was just lazy. I don’t feel the need to learn a new language now, so I don’t think this one is going to reach its bitter end.

7.) Buy a car!:

Okay, this is something I’m honestly surprised I haven’t done till now, especially since I started driving when I was 18 (my parents' car of course). Public transport is pretty bad in most Indian cities, and this was pre-Uber, so a car seemed like the only real way to move around. As I said, I moved out of India in my early 20s, and then lived in cities with decent public transport systems, and always lived within the city. I discovered that I didn’t really enjoy driving all that much, and could get by without a car just fine. Sure, there might have been a few experienced I missed out on, but I don’t regret it. I’ve been in Toronto for 2 years now, and still haven’t even got a license, let alone come close to buying a car. I suppose I will end up buying one someday, especially as we move out to the suburbs in the coming years.

8.) Find someone and settle down:

Finally, something I managed to achieve! It’s a bit harsh in retrospect to read it that way, ‘Find someone’, but I wanted to leave the original text in. It’s ironic because this is something I never thought would happen. I was always too shy, and unable to even have a regular conversation, let alone get into a relationship and develop it enough for that person to want to marry me. But it happened! And made me so much of a better person, and also given me the courage and motivation to take certain risks, that have resulted in me ending up where I am today, literally and otherwise.

9.) Walk on Abbey Road..that zebra crossing:

If only. My love for The Beatles had just about hit V1 at this point, and I really, really wanted to go to Abbey Road. I would have too, had my visa got accepted in 2011, but it was not to be. In a way, I’m happy I didn’t get to go then, I didn’t appreciate The Beatles enough at the time for me to truly understand the magnitude of the experience. I think if I went now, or hopefully, sometime during my lifetime, I’d cherish the experience much more, so I hope it happens.

10.) Meet either Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama or Paul Mccartney..not going to happen:

And this is what I meant when I said a couple of these goals were immature. Always wanted to (and still want to) meet Paul McCartney because he’s the cooler surviving Beatle IMO, Barack Obama because he was just a couple of years into office, and he seemed like the coolest guy in the world, and Nelson Mandela, because I’d just watched the film Invictus about 5059353 times, and was getting deeply engrossed in the story of Mandela, and South Africa. Well, Mandela is dead now, and I really, really doubt I’m going to ever meet the other 2, but who knows? Stranger things have happened.

And that's that for this post. I do find it funny that out of everything on this list, I achieved the 2 things I hadn't thought I would. Goes to show that everything happens for a reason, and I wouldn't have it any other way.