Make a wish!!

My 19th this year was different for so many reasons and it gave me time to think: this time next year I'll be 20 - 2 decades old - and suddenly that seems a lot OLDER!! True: after your 20th, there's your 21st, but after that people only start celebrating the 'BIG 30', 'BIG 40', 'BIG 50' ... You get the picture. And that means one of 2 things. Either you savor each 10 year interval for fear of having to circle yourself into another age group on membership forms or you wait in anticipation until you can have a big party! And if it's the latter category; you'll spend your life looking forward, overlooking the present.

Each year, the night of the 7th of April sees me in my bed having been told by multiple family members that "this is the last night of being ..." It sees me dribbling, half-falling out of the bed and changing my pyjamas without being concious of it. 

But this year, I flew back home and watched the hands of the clock turn to my birthday as we passed over a country dashed with a million little lights. I was alone but surrounded with hundreds of other passengers. I was watching films, eating curry and finishing off the packet of 'family-sized' popcorn I'd bought with me which had been an addition to breakfast, my entire lunch and now midnight snack. 

As I took in these surroundings, I spotted an opportunity. Ever the analyst, I saw this scene - being on a plane, without a care, in anticipation with many people I'd never met - as a pointer. Some sort of marker for the year to come. 

This birthday was different. Maybe this year: my last year of being a teenager (the last time I could excuse stupidity for naivety) ought to be something more than a routine living of life. Maybe it should mark time for some changes. Trying something new. And with the marathon plaguing social media, TV and conversations, I suddenly felt a little like I hadn't achieved what I could have had I put my mind to it. 

So I'm drawing up a list, like a bucket list, of a few things I could do. Not every one can run a marathon and I 100% fit into that category - if it hurts, I generally can't do it. But a thought a couple of things that would be good for me. I don't know how useful completing the Harry Potter series will be but I thought I ought to do since I never have. But it'll be some sort of achievement. 

So hopefully, when I check back next year, I will have done something that put my teen years out with a bang.