Whether young or old, you’ll never have more time than you have today. So, all those things you’ve been meaning to do. You should do them.

I’ve been saying I want to brew beer. But I wasn’t taking any tangible steps. So last summer, I bought an extract kit, went to a UC Davis brewing short course and gave it a go. I brewed a second batch, learned many brewing lessons, and realized you have to love it more than I do. I have one more batch in me and I plan to do it at You Brew in Portland.

Another thing I want to do is run a 50K or 31.25 miles on trails. I’ve been racing half-marathons on a spotty training plan and doing okay. An occasional 1st or 3rd. Moving up in distance meant more intentional in training. So I went to a Run Voyages running training camp with Ultrarunner of the Year, Magdalena Boulet and got some structure so that I can go from a haphazard training plan to 1 core workout (Pilates, weights or Barre), 1 speed and hill repeat run, 1 easy run, 1 long run with some tempo each week. Yikes!

I ran my first 30K or 18.75 miles this month and while it was muddy with sideways rain, I am ready for another one.

The last outlandish thing that I’ve been wanting to do that I will share with you is to be a peony farmer. However, instead of buying land and trying this out, I am going to Chateau CharMarron gardens in San Jose near the Calaveras Reservoir every 2 weeks during bloom season this year to see if I can buy a bunch of peonies. If that satisfies my itch, I can stop there.

The funny thing about all this is that it is about what I want. But what God wants is quite different.

Isaiah 1:17 says “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.”

When I look around there is plenty of injustice. The Big Short, a recent movie about when four outsiders saw the global collapse of the economy and decided to short it, is a GIANT story of injustice. Martin Luther King Day celebrated earlier this month is a celebration of a man who sought justice. What can I do that’s in-line with what God wants?

Inspired by The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up  by Marie Kondo (more on that in another post soon) within a month I had several bags of women’s clothes that needed a good home. Serendipitously, I found out that a co-worker of mine was doing some volunteer work for Freedom House, an organization in San Jose and San Francisco that provides a new life for survivors of human-trafficking. She let me know of their need for clothing and voila those bags had a home!

Through another book (whose title I have forgotten) I found out about International Justice Mission, an organization that protects the poor from violence in the developing world. They are “inspired by God’s call to love all people and to seek justice for the oppressed. We protect the poor from violence without regard to religion, race or any other factor, and we seek to partner with all people of goodwill.” So I donated.

God’s dreams for my life are different from mine but they are such a rich addition. I am having fun and feeling fulfilled pursuing them.