Did you know Apollo 13 blasted off today in 1970?

A few months ago, I took a seat next to a little white-haired woman on the 1 train.  I was listening to my iPod but my eyes wandered to the sheets of paper she held in her hands.  After a moment, I realized that she had noticed and was now talking to me.
I take out one of my earphones.  "Sorry?"
"They're for my piano recital," she repeats.
"You teach?"
She laughs and shakes her head.  "I'm a student."
This surprises me, and as I wasn't quite sure how to respond, I ask, "What songs are you playing?"
She shows me her pieces and proudly tells me that she's memorized them all.  "A hard thing to do at my age," she says with a wink. "But I've always wanted to learn ever since I was young."
I turn off my iPod.  Curiosity had won me over and I started to ask more questions.
She grew up during the depression and though she loved the piano, her family was too poor to afford one, so she never learned.  Decades later, when she had a family of her own, she told her husband that she wanted all of their children to learn how to play.  So they bought a piano and enrolled all of her children in lessons.  "But by that point, I was sure I was too old to learn."
I ask the obvious question.  "What made you decide to start now then?"
"You know, I realized one day that I could keep making excuses as to why I couldn't learn the piano or I could just learn how to play.  I took my first lesson when I was 73 and now it's almost been 5 years."
We reach her stop and with an excited, slightly nervous, grin, she says, "Wish me luck!"
I do and she hobbles off the train.  As the train pulled away, she waved.

I've thought about that exchange a lot over the past few weeks and while on vacation, I made a list:

Things I Want to Do

• Run a 10k
• Learn photography
• Read more books
• Go to more museums/galleries/readings/shows
• (Re-)Learn French
• Visit every state in the north east
• Explore the city
• Be more confident when meeting and talking to others
• Be more confident/Be more comfortable with self
• Learn how to skate board
• Learn how to roller blade
• Learn how to play the piano
• Learn how to play the guitar
• Learn how to sing/Overcome fear of singing in public
• Learn new recipes

So today I have created a blog to record my progress.  Hopefully, the fear of having nothing interesting to write on this will motivate me to see this list through.  I expect I will add things to this list as I go on, but this will do for now.  :-)