On November 24th, I turn 46.  And I know this is quite a ways off – 46 days to be exact.

A couple of months ago I was reading a blog where the author talked about turning 30 and wanting the year following her birthday to be filled with intentional experiences.  So she thought of 30 items that she wanted to accomplish before her 31st birthday.  Now if you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you’ll know I’m a sucker for this type of thing.  I love lists and planning stuff and when you wrap that all up in a nice birthday bow – well, I’m just giddy!

Additionally around this time, I was thinking a lot about purpose and intention in my own life and trying to figure out my next steps.  While I was in England with my grandpa, I read a book called The Happiness of Pursuit by Chris Guillebeau and he talked about pursuing quests and he even defined a quest.

• A quest has a clear goal and a specific end point.   (Goal: To improve in all areas of my life. I chose 46 items and thought about the purpose for each one.  Ends on November 24, 2015 – 365 days)
• A quest presents a clear challenge.  (Some of the 46 items are easy to accomplish; others are going to stretch me emotionally and spiritually.)
• A quest requires sacrifice of some kind.  (To remain true to the items I chose, I may be sacrificing sleep.  Actually I’m not sure what role sacrifice will play, but I know it will.)
• A quest is often driven by a calling or sense of mission. (I want to quit being someone that says ‘I’ll do that next year’.  I want to be a person of action that has no regrets.)
• A quest requires a series of small steps and incremental progress toward the goal. (I’ve mapped out each item on a calendar to help alleviate commitment overload.)

I devoured the book and highly recommend it and decided to put my plan into action on my 46th birthday.  I call it Quest46.

I divided my list of 46 into 9 categories.  I’m crazy for crafts and dogs, but I didn’t want those things to dominate my life for a year.  I wanted to balance my time and energy across the breadth and depth of my life.  The categories I chose are Faith, Health, Home & Yard, Crafts, Marriage, Family & Friends, Dogs, WWMD Blog and Personal.

Over the next 46 days I’m going to share each one of the items on my list.  Then after I start the Quest46 on November 24, 2014, I’ll do weekly updates to share progress and insights.  There’s a part of me that incredibly excited about this and another that is terrified.  I’m mostly terrified because I’m telling everyone about it and I’m afraid of falling flat on my face.  But if I’m really honest, I’m more afraid of not doing this.  Lately I’ve been very aware of the fleeting nature of time.  We only have a finite number of days and I want to make them count year by year.  So here’s to Quest46!

And on that note…. Quest 46, item #1

Faith Category
1.  Memorize Psalm 91.  This Psalm holds a special place in my heart and I want to commit it to memory.  I’m terrible at memorization so this is going to take work, but that’s okay because the truths contained in this Psalm will flow into every aspect of my life.

Woody, Ellie and I are with you all the way.  And we’re REALLY glad Dogs is one of your categories.  We’re not sure what a category is, but we know what dogs are so we’re breathing a sigh of relief.