Yesterday, Al and I went skydiving.

I realize skydiving isn’t that unusual; people do it all the time. My instructor himself told me he would probably do it at least twelve more times after he jumped with me yesterday. The actual act of us jumping out of a plane is not what made yesterday important for me.

Al and I have talked about skydiving together since he watched me do it our sophomore year of college, back in 2006. We made lazy plans to do it ‘someday,’ but life and a million other excuses stopped us from nailing down when we’d actually do it.

We got married this past July, and decided a post wedding jump would be the perfect time to finally accomplish our skydive. We scheduled it for a Wednesday, four days after I walked down the aisle. We woke up that Wednesday morning to a lightning storm, and brutal Chicago winds (we don’t get much of a summer here) so the dive was cancelled. We rescheduled it for a random weekend in August, and forgot about it for the rest of the week.

And then continued to forget about it for the rest of August.

We completely forgot to go on our rescheduled date. A notification popped up in my gmail a few days later that we had lost our reservation. At this point, we had both semi-given up on the idea that we’d get it done in 2015. The weather was already starting to turn, and our weekends were full with plans well into November. The excuses had won again, or so I thought.

We saw a break in our weekend schedule, and decided we would try again. October 10th. We woke up Saturday morning to a near perfect Midwestern fall day. The kind of fall day that would give pinterest a heart attack. We drove the 90 minutes to Skydive Chicago in Ottawa, IL, and tumbled out of a plane together.

When we were getting back in the car to head home, Al looked at me and said ‘I never thought we’d actually do that.’

But we did.

This is not my first attempt at starting a blog. This is not my first attempt at making a change to live better Mondays.  I have been wanting to get scuba certified for over 12 years. I have dreamed of traveling for an extended period of time with my husband since we became friends in 2005. I have dreamed of experiencing what it would be like to live near the ocean. I have wanted to get a moped (no matter how nerdy my sister swears they are) since 6th grade when the cool boy who lived down the street scooted his yellow one past me while I chugged away on my roller blades.

There are so many things we want to do, that we are too scared to do, that we just aren’t ready for, that we never end up doing. This blog is one of those things for me. It is more intimidating to me to start this blog than it was to jump out of a plane.

But, I think that everyone has at least one thing, if not several, that gnaws at them slowly and steadily until they can’t ignore it anymore. All those things that you have wanted to do your whole life, that you haven’t yet done, have not left you. Some years they just sit patiently on the bottom of your heart saying nothing, but existing quietly, waiting. You can ignore them for awhile, but they always come back.

These things that follow you your whole life, want to get done just as badly as you want to do them. If we hadn’t done our skydive this year, the desire would not have left us. Next year, it would start knocking a little louder, and a little louder, until we couldn’t stand just talking about it anymore, and were forced to actually do it. Skydiving is not that thing for everyone, but it was just one of many of those things for us.

So, here is my blog, the thing that has quietly stalked me for the past 5 years. I hope it becomes a space where I can slowly start knocking out those things that I’ve been ignoring, so they can finally shut up and leave me alone, and stop trying to make me jump out of planes.

Love,

Meg